Prototype DCM Speakers Found

mklein357

Active Member
I had to share my latest find and I hope some of you find this as intriguing as I do. I have a co-worker who, along with his brother were good friends with Steve Eberbach, one of the founders of DCM speakers of Ann Arbor. Steve designed these speakers back in the early 70's and were the precursors to those designs that eventually went in to full production. They are Phillips, 4 woofers and 4 tweeters per speaker and are designed to be room corner placement to accentuate bass reproduction. The brother had held on to these speakers since the early 70's and he warmly reminisced with me listening to Dark Side of the Moon as the heartbeat shook the apartment building. Great stuff. Anyways, he was ready to let these speakers go and they now await refurbishing in my garage. I am going to refinish the birch tops, re-paint the flat back sides and rear and take a look at the crossover. It seems that 3 of the 8 woofers are putting out a diminished amount of sound. I haven't looked at the crossovers yet, but I plant to take a look at these over the next week. I'll post more pics as I progress with the restoration. A neat piece of speaker history.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_1616.jpg
    IMG_1616.jpg
    70.2 KB · Views: 989
  • IMG_1617.jpg
    IMG_1617.jpg
    71.8 KB · Views: 640
  • IMG_1620.jpg
    IMG_1620.jpg
    66.3 KB · Views: 601
A neat piece of history indeed, I own a nice pair of DCM QED's, love the old DCM's which don't seem to get the credit they deserve, keep us posted and thanks . Al
 
I have been in this hobby for fifty years and thought I had seen just about everything. And these come along. Thanks for posting. It made my day....
 
Yes I had all three Time Window series. 1 1a loved them and the regretfully sold 3 that haunt me daily ! Steve was great at time aligning and phasing..
He used that Phillips tweeter and driver with the rubber surrounds in early TW series with foam grills.

I seen a rare pair of Time Bass once that matched the TW shape but shorter and stouter..
 
Very cool! :thmbsp: Depending on how diminished the sound is, that may be by design. Some line arrays will use the close woofers in parallel and the outlying ones in series. I forget why this is done.

Ol' Steve sure was a pioneer. :yes:
 
Very Cool!
The seem pretty large from the pics and remind me a little of the design of 901's.
 
They made me think of the 901's too. They are BIG. You need a little over 33" of wall space from the corner of your room. During my conversation with the original owner, he mentioned that Steve's mentor at MIT was Dr. Bose so maybe we see some influence here. I'll see what I can find out about the crossover design this week. Looks like my house projects are going to have to wait.
 
Woah - those are some amazing looking DCMs - good luck with the project ...!
 
Interesting. I see why they did not go into production. Those are huge for a speaker to throw in the corner. Would have looked like a suspended table placed at ear level. With the vibrations, not many things would stay on top of them so not a place for the mrs. to put the plants.

They do use the octagonal woofer of the early DCM speakers. The philips tweeter also common at that time in his designs. They will probably sound very nice.
 
Audio Archeology at its finest. Finding prototypes is more than rare and, in this case, you get some of the backstory.... priceless.
 
This may shed some light on these speakers. In a response that Steve sent re. a prototype of TimeWindows that a fellow AK'er has, Steve sent this explanation and I believe the "fan"speakers Steve refers to may be what you found:

The "strange" speakers are early DCM time windows made before time windows were even named. These are floor standing versions of monitors (to work with Crown DC-100 amplifiers) derived from larger "fan" shaped monitors built at my house and at Fanfare here in Ann Arbor (PA company doing professional sound reinforcement for rock concerts) for the purpose of providing sound track for TV show called Don Kirchner's "Rock Concert" broadcast with simulcast stereo sound tracks ( FM and Cable TV) Saturday nights in early 70's on old RCA color TV projector at my house. The color TV came thru U of M Property Disposition from the Medical School where it had been used for televising surgery O.R. to classroom. I was able to restore it to operation for very low cost making such entertainment available before we "kids" could usually afford it. My house was packed every Saturday night. In those days Fanfare was doing PA sound for Alice Cooper on tour. Alice Cooper's roots, BTW were in good ol' Detroit Michigan.

These speakers were not sold in stores, only by direct order to local "friends". This was during the formative years before we began to establish a dealer network. The early pre-DCM monitors used up to eight Phillips 6 1/2 inch woofers and eight Phillips tweeters and went into studios and homes of various people interested in and working in audio, radio, cable TV, and music concerts here in Michigan and on tour. A couple of these stacked on either side of a 100 inch TV screen with a couple of strapped Crowns sounded pretty good, and loud, and live in a living room sized venue.
 
HMMMMM- I like the potential those represent! Phillips drivers is not a bad start to most anything!. Thanks for the post- looks very intriguing- would love to sample the sound!
DC
 
Very cool. This sounds like the speakers all right. The gentleman that I got the speakers from did refer to them as "Fans".

I started sanding down the birch today and opened up the backs to examine the crossovers. I haven't mapped out the whole crossover yet, but it looks like you have two woofers running on one particular capacitor and the other two with a different cap. Same thing for the tweeters. The inductors are hand wound on the port tubes! I'll post pics later this week.
 
This may shed some light on these speakers. In a response that Steve sent re. a prototype of TimeWindows that a fellow AK'er has, Steve sent this explanation and I believe the "fan"speakers Steve refers to may be what you found:

The "strange" speakers are early DCM time windows made before time windows were even named. These are floor standing versions of monitors (to work with Crown DC-100 amplifiers) derived from larger "fan" shaped monitors built at my house and at Fanfare here in Ann Arbor (PA company doing professional sound reinforcement for rock concerts) for the purpose of providing sound track for TV show called Don Kirchner's "Rock Concert" broadcast with simulcast stereo sound tracks ( FM and Cable TV) Saturday nights in early 70's on old RCA color TV projector at my house. The color TV came thru U of M Property Disposition from the Medical School where it had been used for televising surgery O.R. to classroom. I was able to restore it to operation for very low cost making such entertainment available before we "kids" could usually afford it. My house was packed every Saturday night. In those days Fanfare was doing PA sound for Alice Cooper on tour. Alice Cooper's roots, BTW were in good ol' Detroit Michigan.

These speakers were not sold in stores, only by direct order to local "friends". This was during the formative years before we began to establish a dealer network. The early pre-DCM monitors used up to eight Phillips 6 1/2 inch woofers and eight Phillips tweeters and went into studios and homes of various people interested in and working in audio, radio, cable TV, and music concerts here in Michigan and on tour. A couple of these stacked on either side of a 100 inch TV screen with a couple of strapped Crowns sounded pretty good, and loud, and live in a living room sized venue.



Awesome! Watching this with very closely! Seems from his description that the design was almost modular in nature. The "fan" could be as many or as few drivers as needed for the room/use.

Add these to my list of MUST FIND SPEAKERS! (It's a short list with Sonus Faber Parva Mk1 at #1 and these now at #2)
 
Back
Top Bottom