The Unofficial Wharfedale Gush Thread

Tried to PM you GT but you have to empty your box.I'll just say I have ordered the KBG caps from Bulgaria.(the waiting is the hardest part)Hopefully the 25uF's and 8uF's will do the deed.This is all your fault!:yes::scratch2:
 
Tried to PM you GT but you have to empty your box.I'll just say I have ordered the KBG caps from Bulgaria.(the waiting is the hardest part)Hopefully the 25uF's and 8uF's will do the deed.This is all your fault!:yes::scratch2:

Yeah, sorry about that. My subscription ran out, and I still have to renew it (I had to put it off temporarily, but I will do it this week.

It's funny you mentioning caps. I just saw this Fleabay listing for Russian oil caps (http://www.ebay.com/itm/2x-Russian-...015?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item25a67534b7), and this is what I found in the seller's description:

"New pair of Russian paper/oil MBGO 30uF @ 160 volt rated capacitors. These capacitors are well known for the best sonic signature. Excellent in speaker crossovers including the early Wharfedale W90. The additional 5uf capacitance vs stock 25uF adds approximately 200Hz lower range to the midrange speakers and sounds superior. Located in USA for fast shipping."


I am hoping others can weigh in on this. I have NEVER heard of that sort of crossover modification before (using a larger cap value in a vintage speaker to change the crossover frequency to a lower point/range for supposedly-better results), and certainly not with a pair of W90's, but if there is any truth to it, I'd be interested to know. Sounds hinky to me though (and I'm also getting the feeling that a lot of these Fleabay sellers are mining info from threads like ours and using that info in the listing... In some cases, I'm even seeing direct quotes from threads where myself and others had posted).

But that aside, I'm glad to see you doing those. I suspect you'll be spending an awful lot of time with them once the oils are in there. I've had my W90's for 3 years, and I've never been happier. They literally just keep getting better and better as I make adjustments/upgrades/refinements to my system. Those things are tone machines.

And I know I keep stressing this, but pay close attention to those mid & tweeter pot settings. They are VERY-interactive, so when you make adjustments, always keep that in mind. In other words, always adjust one with respect to the other (because any changes you make to the mid pot will always affect the tweeter pot, and vice versa). And once you get a handle on that, you can tailor the W90's sound to your personal micro-tastes and really-make them your own (more so than I ever imagined) with just the right amount of bass, mids, and highs. Just the slightest adjustments can make a huge difference (good OR bad). Experiment with them a bit, just to get used to them (Make sure those plastic knobs are calibrated... In other words, make sure the indicator arrow is at the same point for both pots when you have them both at the minimum setting).
 
Last edited:
I was in contact with the gentleman who sells the 30uF caps....he seems to be very knowledgeable about caps in general.However,I did not get any explanation about how this cap actually improved things.I was prepared to buy but decided to go retro this time around.Its important to note that he sang the praises of KBG caps for the Fisher phono section.(also sells on ebay)He was also a big fan of Westinghouse AX7's in preamp section.Much to learn!I'll report back once the cap switch occurs.
 
Yeah, those 30uF oil caps are n.o.s. too. Late '50's, best I can tell (Just wanted to be sure you understood that part). Anyway, I mainly just wanted to mention what he had said about using a larger value, which I had never heard before. Seemed awfully-strange to me, but since he mentioned the W90 specifically, I had to bring it up. Whatever the case, I think it's good that you heard them BEFORE someone had recapped them. This way you'll know if something's off. Mine were already recapped, so I didn't notice the glare right away in mine (And if yours are alnico, there would have indeed been a glare).
 
:thmbsp:

Definitely going to check out that "Right On" set - trying to get it on vinyl if I can!

PM your email address, I know where you can get a copy of the elusive "Movements" LP... :yes::smoke:

Nice... You changed your signature. :thmbsp:

(For someone with biamped/heavily-upgraded JBL L300's and AR9's, I think it's pretty-damn-cool to see the W90's getting top billing... There are still plenty of people out there who would easily-label them as "mid-fi at best", but that's a good thing... Balances out all of my gushing and keeps the prices low :smoke: )

Trying to figure out my next move. Maybe a pair of LED power meters (to run between the Fisher and the W90's) and a DAC upgrade. The first is for ensuring quick channel-balancing when I have the Fisher's volume knob set very-low (When it's set low, one of the channels starts to drop lower than the other), and the DAC upgrade is kind of a long overdue thing that needs to get done.
 
Same one I've been using for the past 4 years. The HRT MSII. It's way-out of league with the rest of the gear in my system, but it's a good match for tube-era gear, so I keep putting it off. I'm concerned about three things when it comes to my next DAC purchase: Timbre, smoothness, and musicality, which the HRT has in spades (as do the Fisher and my W90's). But I'm also concerned about synergy (Fisher, Dual, and Wharfedale together are like a synergy trifecta, and I don't want to deviate from that). However, considering the sound I'm already getting on my digital side, a solid DAC upgrade should give my system a major boost.

The way I see it, with the right pieces in place, the W90's have the potential to be the foundation of one very-serious system, and I've already got most of the puzzle put together at this point, but a few pieces are hiding under the couch or something. I'll find 'em.
 
Last edited:
Nice... You changed your signature. :thmbsp:

(For someone with biamped/heavily-upgraded JBL L300's and AR9's, I think it's pretty-damn-cool to see the W90's getting top billing... There are still plenty of people out there who would easily-label them as "mid-fi at best", but that's a good thing... Balances out all of my gushing and keeps the prices low :smoke: )

Trying to figure out my next move. Maybe a pair of LED power meters (to run between the Fisher and the W90's) and a DAC upgrade. The first is for ensuring quick channel-balancing when I have the Fisher's volume knob set very-low (When it's set low, one of the channels starts to drop lower than the other), and the DAC upgrade is kind of a long overdue thing that needs to get done.

Top billing indeed. It comes down to musicality and synergy for me, and they just have the voodoo. Hey I sent you some emails - did you get em?

I really like my DAC, a Peachtree DAC-IT. It does everything the MSII did but better. Still has the warmth and smoothness though, it's been a great fit with my tubes and w90s. Pretty cheap too, I feel like DAC technology is constantly improving that it makes more sense to try to get a good deal on a used one.
 
Top billing indeed. It comes down to musicality and synergy for me, and they just have the voodoo. Hey I sent you some emails - did you get em?

I really like my DAC, a Peachtree DAC-IT. It does everything the MSII did but better. Still has the warmth and smoothness though, it's been a great fit with my tubes and w90s. Pretty cheap too, I feel like DAC technology is constantly improving that it makes more sense to try to get a good deal on a used one.

That's what I was thinking. Grab a used one off BT or something. I need to look at that Peachtree DAC. I see myself contlnuing the DAC upgrade over a long period of time because I listen to a lot of digital stuff. I need to put some work into my turntable rig, actually. But that's another story. My conflicted vinyl life.

Yeah, sorry about that. I'll check those. I've kinda' been on vacation from the internet world the last two weeks (My AK subscription ran out, and I've been procrastinatin' on the renew because I was enjoying the time off from my message box (When it ran out, my PM box shot straight to 100%).

I would love to know where that energy comes from, that "wind gust of life" that the W90's have (The W70's and W60's have it too... The W90's just happen to have a whole lot of it). Combined with that wide soundstage, it really grabs ya'. It's like WHOOOOSH. It lights up the room. How do you put that into a driver? And this from a bankrupted textile broker.

I bet the wool/paper cone is part of it. Maybe it's cone-drivers. Maybe it's the high flux (whatever that is) or the cast frames. Maybe it's alnic.. Whoops. Never mind that. Not getting into THAT topic. Not here.

Boy, disc four of that "What It Is" set has some funky funk. I think the W90's kinda' put it all out there (Dual idlers too). Even the quiet parts are coherent and easy to hear, so you're getting 100% of the funk. :D
 
Last edited:
It's a classic-rock weekend. Started off with the Velvet Undergarment (& Nico, debut (Mofi gold CD), but now I'm playing 3 or 4 of the Traffic Mofi gold CD's (through the Fisher 800C into my W90's). "Traffic", "Low Spark", and "Shootout", plus maybe "Mr Fantasy" as well if the opportunity presents itself. I wish I had a pair of W90's back in the late '80's and early '90's. My bandmates and I were HUGE Traffic fans.

I could listen to stuff like this all day and night and then some.... I love it.

Hey, any of you that own one of the E*0 series models..... Maybe one of you can answer that guy's question about removing the woofer grills.
 
Last edited:
Not sure how, but my system is noticeably-more-resolving than it was like six months ago. Played a few albums tonight that are way-better than the last time I played them. Electronic stuff too, '90's and later.

Could it be the new tubes still breaking in, the n.o.s. ones in my Fisher? Those were put in last summer, like almost a year ago, so I gotta' wonder on that. Maybe it's just a combination of the new batch of tubes, cleaning up the clutter in front of the W90's, plus those changes I made to the mid & tweeter pots. Sounds great though. Holy crap. With an even better amp/preamp match, the W90's must get downright-serious.
 
Finally got the Russian pio caps installed,things seem much more articulate and the imaging has improved.Sound stage seems larger.I'm still giving these a trial run but the improvement is definitely significant.I've only used a CD player thus far so TT reviews should be even better.Thanks to all for leading me down this road!
 
Finally got the Russian pio caps installed,things seem much more articulate and the imaging has improved.Sound stage seems larger.I'm still giving these a trial run but the improvement is definitely significant.I've only used a CD player thus far so TT reviews should be even better.Thanks to all for leading me down this road!

That's awesome. You nailed it. More-articulate for sure. More-refined (If it were cheesecake, it'd be like growing up on Baby Watson's and suddenly being treated to a slice of REAL NY cheesecake at the Waldorf Astoria... Richer and more-refined).

I found mine really-opened up a lot too (Remember, I was coming from modern poly Daytons, which really don't suit the alnico Wharfedales well at all and caused more problems than they solved, WHATEVER the reason), and they seemed to have even more of a natural, organic tone. This is probably their biggest strength. That tone of a particular instrument or voice. It hits you like a blast of warm air. I was playing the James Brown box set yesterday ("Star Time"). Certain songs especially, they sound as if you went and hunted down a master tape and an old tube recording deck. Sounds perfect, and at totally-respectable volume levels (That's another area of serious improvement with mine, that performance at background music levels). But it's like this even on old MONO recordings. I use John Lee Hooker as a reference a lot because I've just never heard his voice sound so right before, and his guitar too. It's spooky, "American Graffiti" real, you know? The oil caps definitely upped the 'pure and natural' ante' in a big way.

:sing: "Well, my mama didn't 'low me.... just to stay out all night long."

Makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

W90's love a nice old-school format, so vinyl should be quite an improvement. I found that a nice formula is an old tube-cut pressing on an idler-driven Dual table (and an old Shure, Pickering, etc. with an OEM stylus) into a tube amp/receiver.

My computer modem died on me this week after the internet went down Monday night (When it came back on, the modem would no longer connect). Just got back online late this afternoon. The new modem is sweet though. Two separate lines, including WiFi. My old one was like 8 years old.
 
Last edited:
Those baritone sounds... They get me every time... I love it.

A nice, silky-smooth horn section can sound so-righteous. I used to think it was the midwoofers and the woofers, but I think the Super 3 might be a very-essential part of it, the leading edge they create. They have a germanium quality to them (germanium transistors, diodes, etc.).
 
Last edited:
Spent some time tonight, tweaking the mid and tweeter pots on the W90's again. I realized how important the W12's are, both to the bass AND the mids. I backed the pots down to the 3:00 mark, where Crestwood23 said he had his set. I tend to agree with that setting. As he had said, it's a good balance between the woofer section and the mid/tweeter section. But it's important for the midrange and it's relationship with the highs. That's because the woofers SUPPLY part of that midrange. Not enough, and you leave those midwoofers hanging (a result of having the midwoofers set too-high).

I sometimes forget about the fat bass the W90's can put out. Nice to have it back. I could never live with those pots all the way up or bypassed. It would drive me nuts. I still believe in rasing the tweeters a wee bit higher than the mids, which dials back a bit of the midrange bite & grit, but you can't leave all the midrange heavy-lifting up to those 5.25" mids. The woofers need to be supplying some of it, especially the LOWER mids, which those alnico W12's do very, very-well. It can mean the difference between a rich-sounding speaker and a lean-sounding speaker.
 
Last edited:
It's been a while since I last posted on this thread, but I figured the situation called for it.

The electrical outlets & wiring here leaves much to be desired, and I suspected that the noise, interference, and voltage fluxuations were wreaking havoc on my system's performance, adding to the noise floor, hampering the dynamic range and transient response, and even introducing a noticeable spike at a particular frequency. Well, I finally did something about it and bought a Tripp Lite SU1000RTXL2UA off Fleabay (Used, but fully-tested and guaranteed working at 100% performance). It's a heavy-duty uninterruptible power supply with high-grade voltage regulation, noise/interference filtering, and pure sine wave output. The thing is built like a tank, weighing in at 29lbs.

I can't even begin to say how much this thing has improved my setup. Clarity was the most-obvious change. Not just because it lowered my noise floor significantly, but also because my Fisher AND my computer are both operating on all eight cylinders now. Dynamics and transient response are a lot better, plus the extension has improved at both ends of the frequency spectrum. And on top of that, the frequency response is FLATTER now. That spike in the response that I spoke of earlier is gone. Best $120 I ever spent. The W90's are singing like never before.

I'm doing something I haven't done in a long time.... Enjoying classical music.
 
Last edited:
Wow. I'm just finding this thread now. Is there any chance I could get some of that wonderful w90 tone you are describing with the w60's? I'm looking for speakers now.That's about as big as I can fit the small room that I'll be using. Seems like the smallest "big" speaker around. I just posted a thread in the speaker forum yesterday concerning the w60's. If I had known there was a Wharfedale thread going here I'd have posted here.
 
Wow. I'm just finding this thread now. Is there any chance I could get some of that wonderful w90 tone you are describing with the w60's? I'm looking for speakers now.That's about as big as I can fit the small room that I'll be using. Seems like the smallest "big" speaker around. I just posted a thread in the speaker forum yesterday concerning the w60's. If I had known there was a Wharfedale thread going here I'd have posted here.

Hard to say. The W90 is on a different level, dynamically-speaking, and it dips a lot lower and slams a lot harder than the W60's. They both have the same kind of rich, lush, open-sounding British voicing when you hit them with tubes, but the W60's have more of that lush, bloomy character and are noticeably-more-indicative of the classic BRITISH-marketed Wharfedale models of the 1950's, much more so than the W90's, which have a noticeably-more-American bass response. Remember, the W60 was the first of BIC-Wharfedale's 'bass-loving-American-friendly' W*0 models which were designed specifically to compete with AR's east coast offerings of the early '60's, as well as other east coast brands of the 1960's, including KLH.

But that bigger, tighter, more-focused and dynamic bass response is surely also a result of the W90's much-more-ambitious, TOTL design. It's more than twice the speaker the W60 is, thanks to it's better tweeters, isolated/subdivided dual woofer section, and mirror-imaged dual 3-way, six-driver design. It has much better extension, dynamics, and transient response. The W60 can only do so much with two drivers.

The W60 is a great speaker though. I believe Leopold Stokowski had a pair in his home system. Excellent for old jazz and blues stuff, and I think it's perfect for Beatles, Doors, Hendrix, '60's and early '70' Stones and Zeppelin, etc. (especially on vinyl) not to mention late '60's blues-rock and psychedelic-rock as well as early rock & roll, rockabilly, and country from the '50's and '60's.

The W60 is certainly the more-old-school of the two, but I may have been a little hasty saying it was like a smaller version of that sound, because the two models do have their differences. Think of it as maybe a Jaguar XJ6 compared to the 12-cylinder, TOTL Jaguar XJS. That's one way to describe the W60 and W90. But one important thing that separates the two is the W90's ability to serve up the kind of 'big speaker' bass response, control, and imaging that can only come from multiple woofers/mids/tweeters.

Bigger... Better... More.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom