What speakers are these - OOORILL or QOQRILL? 20120724
- Thread starter Mystery
- Start date
Mystery
constantly upgrading...
Thanks for information polygrinder. :thmbsp:
I the late 80's I ran the manufacturing part of the company North American Sound in Dallas, Texas. The Owner was Greg Dodrill. I also designed their logo (see attached). We manufactured three different speaker systems. The "Monitor", the "Squire" and the "Studio Monitor". The top of the line was the Studio Monitor with the Squire being a step down. The Squire was 46x15x16 with a 12” woofer. The Studio Monitor was a 54x15x20 behemoth that garnered a 15" woofer. Both of these two designs had the same identical vertically mounted midrange horn and a horn tweeter. The biggest seller however was the Monitor. They were 36x13x12. The early monitors also touted a vertically mounted 6”x9” speaker and a dome tweeter. You could also custom order a 48" tall Monitor to be used as back channels in a 4 speaker system. The 6”x9” woofers were Toby's from Ft. Worth. In later days the 6”x9”’s were replaced by 8" speakers. All of these speakers could be custom ordered in Formica (Black, Walnut, Ash) or oiled wood veneer in Walnut or Ash.
If you find these speakers with round grill attachments then they are early models. One of the first things I had to solve when I took over production was the problems with the round speaker attachments. They were prone to popping off the grill if not aligned properly. We switched to a square 3M attachment system that did not have the issue. We had a showroom on Northwest HWY and I35. We had some other stores but I can't remember exactly where. We did have one in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
I left the company when they started having serious money problems and I believe the company finally went under. The speakers shown above (Mystery) are definitely NAS Monitors. I have never seen the "Dodrill" name plate. My only guess is that NAS went under (creditor problems) and Dodrill went back to selling the speakers out of his house on Campbell Road, Dallas (that's where I first bought my pair of Studio Monitors) and branded the speakers with the “Dodrill” logo. However, this is purely speculation on my part.
Just some back story on the speakers. We used to have a showroom where we would put Klipsch and Altec Lansing speakers, among others, and AB them against the NAS speakers. The NAS speakers would put down the others quite easily based on the sonic purity. We had a special switcher built were we could equalize the sound pressure levels so all of the speakers were playing at the same sound level. We would even put a meter on a tripod and set it in front of the buyer to show that efficiency was not a factor. That they were only hearing the difference between the "sound" of each speaker system. The NAS speakers were pretty damn impressive.
We also manufactured "Fuseliers" for John Fuselier. John even designed a Fuselier/Monitor hybrid but as far as I know it never went into production. Or at least it never did before I left the company when they went under. Hope this sheds some light.
toxcrusadr
Omelette au Fromage
Thanks for committing that to the Interweb for posterity. Seems a lot went on down in Texas in those days, audio-wise.
PanTerra
Member
My NAS Monitors above are in the rosewood. One custom finish that we did was in mirrors. That was difficult to complete. I remember the Fusiliers but never heard any when I was selling these. Since I took that last picture I did pick up some old mini-monitors from another salesman from back in the day to refurbish. In his little demo-room he had the complete line, sans the Fusiliers. These speakers had some of the worst WAFs. Unfortunately he did get married and they had to go. I would have taken his squires, I had had been around to help him out. The Squires and Studios were the only speakers that I had heard that could handle Telarc's Tchaik's 1812 Overture. We knocked pictures off the walls!
Original Mini-monitors:
Refurbished with the Dayton Audio DA-215 and the North Creek D25-06S Tweeter:
Here is the brochure for the Monitors and Mini-monitors:
The monitor and mini-monitor, used the Toby 8" woofers, had such a nice upper end roll-off with no breakup that they could be run wide open. The XO was just a cap on the Phillips Tweeter, and not a drop of solder has touched my monitors.
Original Mini-monitors:
Refurbished with the Dayton Audio DA-215 and the North Creek D25-06S Tweeter:
Here is the brochure for the Monitors and Mini-monitors:
The monitor and mini-monitor, used the Toby 8" woofers, had such a nice upper end roll-off with no breakup that they could be run wide open. The XO was just a cap on the Phillips Tweeter, and not a drop of solder has touched my monitors.
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PanTerra
Member
I can concur with this. When put up against the Klipschorn the difference was amazing. Going from the KH to the NAS was like unstopping your ears - not in loundness as polygrinder explained, but in clarity. It was that different. The cabinets had no ring at all to add coloration. I would hit the top of the kH with my fist and it would ring like a hollow box. OTOH, I would hit the NAS and it was like hitting a granite outcrop.
again, thanks for continuing to contribute to this thread.
these look like a fantastic DIY project for someone wanting to replicate a bespoke design. Are there other drivers out there today that match the sonic characteristics of the ones in the original design? What made the box construction so solid? wall thickness?
these look like a fantastic DIY project for someone wanting to replicate a bespoke design. Are there other drivers out there today that match the sonic characteristics of the ones in the original design? What made the box construction so solid? wall thickness?
PanTerra
Member
3/4 inch particle board on the monitors and mini-monitors and no bracing at all. I couldn't tell you about any bracing on the Squire's and Studios, I never took them apart. From what I remember, and polygrinder would be able to comment on this much better, but I got it from Toby Guynn, the co-designer, that the cabinets were produced by a commercial furniture builder, and then the drivers and XO installed by NAS personnel.
PanTerra
Member
Here is the interior design drawing of the monitor.
http://panterragroup.home.mindspring.com/audio/NAS Speaker.pdf
http://panterragroup.home.mindspring.com/audio/NAS Speaker.pdf
PanTerra
Member
Yes. It is visible here.
I think in some of his literature it is referred to a transmission line speaker, but the brochure refers to it as a bass reflex system.
Here is the Audio Buyer's Guide entry (those retail prices are pretty inflated - the monitors were sold $500. The studios were maybe a little over $1000, and the Squires somewhere in the middle.:
and we even referred to it as a transmission line. But is it really? Maybe a hybrid. A bass reflex is just a hole, and a transmission line is much more involved. But you're right, it's just a big slotted port, that is as wide as the speaker.
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polygrinder
New Member
My first foray into high end audio was when I purchased a Nakamichi 600II Cassette (Black), a Nakamichi 610 Tuner/Preamp and a Sansui SR-929 Turntable. I purchased them in Garland, Texas at the Melody Shop. The Melody Shop carried musician’s equipment (guitars, amps, drums, etc.) but it also had a high end audiophile part to the store. I also purchased a pair of oiled walnut Altec Lansing Valencias (846B). The speakers were immaculate and in your face impressive. This would have been around 1975/76. I am also a musician and I had recently purchased a mint condition 1959 Les Paul Junior through a Dallas Times Herald ad. One day I am looking through the audio want ads and I see a three line ad for Klipsch and Altec’s at very low prices. So I call the number and I talk to this guy who invites me over to see what he has. So I drove over to Campbell Road in Dallas to a residence and Greg Dodrill answers the door. It was a classic bait and switch job. He ran ads selling high end speakers, Klipsch, Altec’s and Magneplanar’s to get you over to listen to his NAS speakers. He wasn't a dealer but he had connections and could get them for you. But I don't think he ever really sold anything other than his own brand. As a matter of fact when he found out I had a pair of Valencias he perked up and traded me a pair of Studio Monitors for them. This was perfect for him so he could AB them for customers against his the NAS speakers. This would have been in 1976 because the hot album I took with me to try out the speakers was Rush 2112. Man I had Geddy Lee screaming so loud that day Greg’s wife had to take the kids and leave the house. LOL.
One of the things I remember about Dodrill was that he was an awesome salesman. He was very good at marketing his product. He used to always have the Monitors with their grill on. After he’d AB them against some $1200 speakers and blew people away then he would take off the grill so you could see the 6"x9" speaker. An automotive shaped speaker just blew away a 15" woofer. It was impressive.
A few years later I was in the market for an additional set of speakers so I called Greg up. He had a new store out off of Northwest Hwy and I35. He had a showroom up front and had two or three salesmen working for him. He also had a huge warehouse in the same complex in the back. Greg enticed me to come on board and run his manufacturing. NAS was in pickle. He had two issues. The round speaker grill connections were just discontinued. So he had a couple of boxes (enough for about a month) of them left and then would not have a way to attach the grills. But even worst was the fact that the cabinet maker who made his cabinets went out of business. So he had no source to fill his current sales. He was still making sales even though he had no way to deliver the speakers.
So I did a search and found a cabinet maker who agreed to gear up and make cabinets for us. The Formica ones were easy to make. Fiber board, glue, Formica, a jig and a router and there you go. And “PanTerra” was exactly right. I forgot about the rosewoods. But we could actually custom make any speaker in any Formica that existed. I remember us making some mirror finished Formica speakers. And I forgot we also made a book shelf version of the Monitors like “PanTerra” shows’. My biggest hassle was getting the veneer speakers made. Because you had to treat them with kid gloves. And if you had any little flaw then you had to ditch them. I can't tell you how many times we ended up with putting Formica over a beautiful veneer speaker that had a minor flaw in the finish. And the veneers were a matched mirror pair. That was tough.
Then Greg made a deal with John Fusilier to make his "Fusilier" speakers whiched added to my headaches. They were a very complicated design with an acoustically transparent fabric sock that pulled over the speakers which stood up on a 4 inch stand. The stand was a nice veneer and there was a 12" square inset on the top that matched the stands. I got to meet John once. He was intrigued with the NAS monitor. So we gave him a pair and then several weeks later he sent us a package which had a pair of 8" woofers, a Danish dome tweeter and a crossover with instructions on how to put together a Fusilier/Monitor hybrid. But everything went belly up before we ever got to make them. As a matter of fact I think somewhere in my attic is the box with the components and the instructions on how to put them together.
I also have a pair of the Fusiliers in my garage collecting dust. You see I am married now and the wife just doesn't understand great audio and they don't fit with her decor. Also somewhere in my attic is some of the original metal North American Sound name plates that we would put on the front of the grills. You see I am a graphic designer and designed the NAS logo, lettered and designed the metal name plates prior going to work for NAS.
Now that I have had more time to think about it, in my first post I gave a time frame of late 80's which was incorrect. It would have been early 80's. 1982 to be exact because the hot LP we used to demo with was Micheal Jacksons Thriller which had just been released.
Another odd thing I remember was this was when CD’s were just starting to make an impact and the public was being sold the idea that digital sound was superior to analogue sound. So we would set up an AB system where we could switch back and forth between a CD player and a Sota turntable with a Grado cartridge. We would play Dire Straits album Love Over Gold. It had some very wide open recordings of Grand pianos and acoustic guitars. We had a $25 Direct to Disc LP that was pressed on white silicon. You see oxygen attacks carbon so normal vinyl LP’s would get those awful clicks and pops but the silicon was immune to it. Anyway, we would AB them and the CD’s sounded like Schroeder form Charlie Brown playing on his little piano and then we would switch to the Direct to Disc LP and it was stunning the difference. Oh well, nowadays we have good ole mp3’s. LOL.
Anyway, a long winded blast from the past.
One of the things I remember about Dodrill was that he was an awesome salesman. He was very good at marketing his product. He used to always have the Monitors with their grill on. After he’d AB them against some $1200 speakers and blew people away then he would take off the grill so you could see the 6"x9" speaker. An automotive shaped speaker just blew away a 15" woofer. It was impressive.
A few years later I was in the market for an additional set of speakers so I called Greg up. He had a new store out off of Northwest Hwy and I35. He had a showroom up front and had two or three salesmen working for him. He also had a huge warehouse in the same complex in the back. Greg enticed me to come on board and run his manufacturing. NAS was in pickle. He had two issues. The round speaker grill connections were just discontinued. So he had a couple of boxes (enough for about a month) of them left and then would not have a way to attach the grills. But even worst was the fact that the cabinet maker who made his cabinets went out of business. So he had no source to fill his current sales. He was still making sales even though he had no way to deliver the speakers.
So I did a search and found a cabinet maker who agreed to gear up and make cabinets for us. The Formica ones were easy to make. Fiber board, glue, Formica, a jig and a router and there you go. And “PanTerra” was exactly right. I forgot about the rosewoods. But we could actually custom make any speaker in any Formica that existed. I remember us making some mirror finished Formica speakers. And I forgot we also made a book shelf version of the Monitors like “PanTerra” shows’. My biggest hassle was getting the veneer speakers made. Because you had to treat them with kid gloves. And if you had any little flaw then you had to ditch them. I can't tell you how many times we ended up with putting Formica over a beautiful veneer speaker that had a minor flaw in the finish. And the veneers were a matched mirror pair. That was tough.
Then Greg made a deal with John Fusilier to make his "Fusilier" speakers whiched added to my headaches. They were a very complicated design with an acoustically transparent fabric sock that pulled over the speakers which stood up on a 4 inch stand. The stand was a nice veneer and there was a 12" square inset on the top that matched the stands. I got to meet John once. He was intrigued with the NAS monitor. So we gave him a pair and then several weeks later he sent us a package which had a pair of 8" woofers, a Danish dome tweeter and a crossover with instructions on how to put together a Fusilier/Monitor hybrid. But everything went belly up before we ever got to make them. As a matter of fact I think somewhere in my attic is the box with the components and the instructions on how to put them together.
I also have a pair of the Fusiliers in my garage collecting dust. You see I am married now and the wife just doesn't understand great audio and they don't fit with her decor. Also somewhere in my attic is some of the original metal North American Sound name plates that we would put on the front of the grills. You see I am a graphic designer and designed the NAS logo, lettered and designed the metal name plates prior going to work for NAS.
Now that I have had more time to think about it, in my first post I gave a time frame of late 80's which was incorrect. It would have been early 80's. 1982 to be exact because the hot LP we used to demo with was Micheal Jacksons Thriller which had just been released.
Another odd thing I remember was this was when CD’s were just starting to make an impact and the public was being sold the idea that digital sound was superior to analogue sound. So we would set up an AB system where we could switch back and forth between a CD player and a Sota turntable with a Grado cartridge. We would play Dire Straits album Love Over Gold. It had some very wide open recordings of Grand pianos and acoustic guitars. We had a $25 Direct to Disc LP that was pressed on white silicon. You see oxygen attacks carbon so normal vinyl LP’s would get those awful clicks and pops but the silicon was immune to it. Anyway, we would AB them and the CD’s sounded like Schroeder form Charlie Brown playing on his little piano and then we would switch to the Direct to Disc LP and it was stunning the difference. Oh well, nowadays we have good ole mp3’s. LOL.
Anyway, a long winded blast from the past.
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I could read stories like this all day. Thank you!
Would it be possible to get specs on the drivers used? If these speakers are as good as you guys claim in the stories, they'd be worth reproducing for a DIY setup.
I also wonder if the design could be tweaked a bit and modernized: baffle-less tweeter, angled cabinet sides to reduce cancelation, modified "port" etc...
Would it be possible to get specs on the drivers used? If these speakers are as good as you guys claim in the stories, they'd be worth reproducing for a DIY setup.
I also wonder if the design could be tweaked a bit and modernized: baffle-less tweeter, angled cabinet sides to reduce cancelation, modified "port" etc...
PanTerra
Member
How about that. I wonder if he still lives there. I live off of Campbell just on the other side of Coit Rd. in Richardson, maybe a mile away, if that. I did get my ADCOM GFA 555 amp and GPT-500 peamp-tuner through him, and at cost. Still have them- and that's all I ever got. Still runs like new, although I keep hearing I should get the amp re-capped.
That's where that shop was. Early to mid 80s, I was in there to hear the same demo with the monitors up against the Klipschorn and some other brands. They were hooked up to an ADCOM GFA 545. Yes the NAS were remarkable. The sales guy would take off the grills and take one of those BIC ball point pens (capped) and scrape it around the poly (TOBY) 8" round woofer to highlight that they weren't paper cones and impervious to that kind of abuse. I still remember the music that they demo-ed the speakers with. The Police: Tea in the Sahara off of the Synchronicity album (released June 1983).They had such a punch unlike any of the other speakers. FYI, they still do.
I got my Monitors in 85. They had the little round Velcro buttons that attached to the corresponding Velcro round buttons on the grill corners. They eventually wore out and I just got a Velcro sheet and cut out new ones.
I still have my Formica sample set, somewhere. I liked the rosewood and the black piano finish the best. Although, I saw some Squires in the light oak with white grills. Looked pretty good.
I don't know if you remember Barron H. That was the buddy of mine that sold these out of his house for Greg, and got me stated in selling them. I have never heard or seen the Fusiliers, just heard about them. I remember Barron telling me about them and that they were touted as a more "esoteric" speaker. Fitting description for them as they were very limited. So you need to dust them off and get some pictures of them. LOL
I didn't get into the shop until the next year when Synchronicity was released. So I might have met you - if you were also demo-ing the speakers. I didn't get the Monitors until 85, that's what is stamped on the TOBY drivers.
And much appreciated. Glad to see you posting on here. You have filled in some really big gaps in my recollections.
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PanTerra
Member
The Toby Woofers were very nice as they had a very smooth roll-off as the frequency increased and therefore was wired to run wide open and full range. Toby has recently gone through ownership changes, now owned by a long time employee, Toby Guynn has retired and turned it over to the new owner. The story is on their website, and with their new location, is operating again. They make their own drivers, and used to sell the individual drives. I suppose they will be continuing that but I don't see anything on their website to indicate that, yet. It is just up and running. They have a Facebook page that you can pose questions on. IIRC these woofers were in the $60-$70 range but that was years ago, but they haven't made these specific woofers in a long time. When I took them in to have Toby do some minor repairs on the surrounds, he didn't recall when he built them, except for the stamp in the back of the motor assembly.
The tweeter was a Philips...
...that was used in a lot of applications with other speaker builders. They were limited in how they were used as they required a pretty high crossover point, above 3500Hz, so just a cap was used to protect the tweeter. But since the woofer rolled off so nicely, it worked. And worked well. The tweeter was responsible for the system's more open sounding. It had an open airiness to it, which seemed to sound "clearer." I was able to get a few replacement tweeters from Audioclassics.com for spares at $25 a piece.
Now all that being said, drivers have gotten better, although crossovers are done at much lower frequencies (1500Hz-2000Hz) since new woofers, to get the low range, exhibit cone breakup in the higher frequencies and must be rolled of much lower. But tweeters are now able to be crossed much lower to accommodate that. For example, I was able to duplicate the sound of the Mini-monitor by replacing the woofer and tweeter with a Dayton Audio DA215-8 8" Aluminum Cone Woofer and the North Creek D25 Tweeter and a custom crossover. It worked great. It is not at the original 92 db efficiency, but more like 88db. It is crossed about 1700hz.
I am sure you can do better, especially in the DIY realm. I took my monitors to a DIY get-together for a demo and comparison. This get-together had some very experienced designers and listeners. One guy was the chief speaker designer for Marantz. He designs all my crossovers. Their comments about the monitors were that they were a bit "shouty." The vocalists sound was very forward, as the Marantz Engineer said, "sounds almost like she was sitting in your lap."
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not a bad thing, depending on the singer!
polygrinder
New Member
Yea. Greg pushed the Adcom products. He had several places around the country where he mail ordered them from and got good deals. He wasn't actually a dealer for any electronics. He would take peoples orders and then mail order them. I had an Adcom GFP-1A Preamp and a GFA-2 Amp. They were very clean and neutral. I will pull out the Fusiliers and take some photos. Maybe I will crawl up in the attack and see if I can find the box with the Fusilier/Monitor hybrid parts.
I never worked up in the store. Of course I was in it everyday. The salesmen he had were ridiculously good at selling his products. They marketed to college kids. The monitors were perfect, small and relatively cheap. He used to also sell them to the Highland Park (SMU) crowd through Kellum & Sons.
One of the strangest incidents was one night I got a call and the store had been broken into and the alarm went off. They had busted out the glass front to the store. When I got down there Greg was there with the cops. I can't remember what all was stolen. The store was in a fairly high crime rate area. It was very near Harry Hines industrial district where all the strip bars were located. Anyway Greg asked me to stay in the store through the night because we couldn't secure the store before we could get a glass company out the next day. Greg new that I used to run a Kerr McGee gas station night shift on Harry Hines. I always carried a 38 pistol at the gas station for protection. So Dodrill drove to his house, he was gun collector, and came back with a hand carved Nickle plated 45 automatic. A beautiful pistol. So anyway, I spent the night in the store. It was pretty creepy but nothing ever happened. You know when I look back at some of the crazy crap I did as a kid I am surprised I am still here. Oh well, I guess you could say I was an "Audio Enthusiast"!
PanTerra
Member
Ahhh, good times, good times.
I never met Greg, all my dealings were through Barron. We sold speakers to our friends. I even sold a pair of Squires, in the high gloss piano black formica, to the Dallas Greater Chamber for their large meeting room, where they would conduct multi-media presentations selling the benefits of moving to Dallas to potential corporations relocating here. They previously were using some Bozak monkey coffins that sounded terrible.
Towards the end of our affiliation with Greg and his speaker enterprise, he started selling automotive systems - a modular system, specifically fitted as a drop-in box for the Camaro/Firebird's rear recessed compartment. If I recall correctly, Barron brought over Greg's Camaro that was fully loaded and with an in-dash CD-player to give it an even more "Oh my God" factor - great salesmanship! One friend bought a Camaro Z-28 to sell these, and would drive to shopping centers in the area to give demo's to anyone that would get in a listen. He shortly thereafter got his Camaro stolen while he was in a Sam's Club. (funny I can remember these details) Barron told me after several years, that Greg was selling jewelry or watches or something to that effect.
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