Are "Fried" Speakers Any Good?

[djv8ga]

Never have seen them before.
http://phoenix.craigslist.org/cph/ele/2065264699.html

 

[kansei]

Apparently, a niche pair of speakers.

http://audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=192299

 

[Mortsnets]

I agree with this review: good on classical. Perhaps too big for small rooms. Keep on short stands away from walls.

http://www.marklev.com/IMF/documents/Fried/Fried ModelR+QAudioAdvisor.pdf

 

[Nat]

Fried Rs are very good speakers. They were designed and made by Bud Fried, who used to run CenterCity Lectronics in Philadephia, and was the importer for Decca, Quad, Goldring, Lowther(?), and IMF at various points in the 50s through 70s. He is most associated with IMF, which used his initials as its name (Irving M. Fried) -- the american market was the 800 pound gorilla of consumer demand in the 60s through the 80s -- but there is a good deal of acrimonious disagreement about how much input he had in their design.
In the mid 70s, IMF and Fried went their separate ways, and Fried put into production of line of speakers that used a variant of the transmission line enclosure that was IMF's specialty. The variant was the line tunnel, which was a very heavily damped short line or duct, which to my mind seems somewhere between an aperiodic port and a true transmission line, but sounded very good regardless of what it was. It allowed a smaller cheaper enclosure than a full transmission line, but the downside was the main part of the enclosure was less completely braced than a full transmission line would have been, so panel resonance was more evident. Fried was also one of the few designers who used series crossovers, which tend to produce a more even impedance.
The R was in a sort of sweet spot in the line -- it was a real full range speaker, which the Beta, Q, and A really were not, but it wasn't physically dominating like the full transmission lines that Fried made for the high end, or that IMF and its successor TDL built.
Were I close to this buyer, they would have been gone by now. If I recall correctly, the R used the KEF B 139, B110, and T27, all drivers of notable quality, and easily partible outable if you are impious and don't mind risking the wrath of the gods.

 

[mhardy6647]

Yes, very much so. Irving M "Bud" Fried, for whom the fabulous British speaker brand IMF was also named. Fried, though, was from Philadelphia (IIRC) and his connection to IMF was, at least, convoluted.


EDIT. Heh, Nat beat me to the answer, this time (and his is complete and correct, unlike mine which is sketchy in all senses of the word...)

 

[JimPA]

You have to be careful buying older models with foam rubber surrounds. The old models with pvc rubber surrounds using Kef or Dalesford units held up very well.

 

[Nat]

None of the R drivers used foam surrounds if I was correct in my list of drivers above.

 

[audiodon]

Why don't you have them yet djv8ga?

 

[JimPA]

Later R's A's and Q's did have the foam rubber surrounds though. The old lKef used PVC surrounds like the Dalesford units in the B2 , C and O which were all high build quality.

 

[Nat]

Well, I'm wrong. I thought the Rs all used the B 139, but at least the later ones, and maybe all of them, used a 10 polypro woofer. In which case, refoaming might be needed. But that's not a problem, nor is it symptomatic of lesser quality.