ESS AMT-3 replacement woofer candidates
- Thread starter kwingylee
- Start date
Porkloin
Oscar Heil Groupie
and two 33s. The big ones are a bit of an oddball, but the smaller are relatively common. Paralleling them is no big deal, but if you want to go with poly caps, they're a bit ungainly.
The woffer cap is perfecly common , except most of the time it would be just 50, nothing wrong with 51.5 ...this my first time seeing the amt network, the large ess speakers ihad ,were believe it or not , were altec 19 clones in ess cabinets build by ess using the legendary altec drivers , purchased in Sacramento at a massive ess store called Pacific Stereo 1979 , i got them from the 70 year old original owner ,",,,, so the heil is feed approximately 12uf through 2 to 12ohm's of resistance , wow , and the midrange is reversed polarity feed by 51.5uf to .83 inductor and out through another .33 inductor coil,,,i never owned the HEIL , but the midrange crossover is not great , i can see why some of you are not completely content with the midrange sound
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Porkloin
Oscar Heil Groupie
You bring up an interesting point. The speakers that Julie Newmar is trying to abscond with in my Avatar are just such speakers. I believe it's one of the reasons why ADS has such a broad appeal among vintage fans. "Sound as clear as light" is not so great for that, but how rewarding is it when a good piece of equipment is revealed?
The HEIL drawing some of its signal through the midrange cap that will draw down some mico farads off the 51.5,,can be a cool sound ,,ive never seen it done exactly that way ....imho a good midrange setup can blow away this one .///////...reversed phase midrange is seen from time to time......i hope everyone listened to them in regular phase.....to see which way sounded more pleasant.....as we all know reversed polarity mids is a softer sound
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Porkloin
Oscar Heil Groupie
I never understood the logic of ESS' layout when compared to more conventional parallel low-pass/band-pass/high-pass legs of a crossover, but I don't know enough about the method to their madness to pass judgement on it. I left well enough alone and rebuilt my crossovers to the same specs. My only beef with the midrange was a bit much volume from the 3rd party driver I installed that had to be toned down with an L-pad.
I wasted perfectly good money replacing ALL of the caps with poly-caps, which were big as pop cans. Odds are that my ear probably couldn't hear the difference if I replaced with electrolytic, but the durability of a poly-cap means that the Rock Monitors won't have to have them replaced until my grand kids inherit them from my kids.
If i may ,no money wasted .perfecting a legend is great pleasure .you been blessed with this interest.and changing things can make things sound different . not always better. Im no expert. ..we all have awsom knowledge in this thread ,,Yes those giant audyn caps are fun to look at and perfectly excellent in large values.a 50v cap would scare me 100 pound speaker
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kwingylee
Well-Known Member
We will wait for your report, automojo on the oem woofers. I am with porkloin on this one and don't think we should be going back. We are not talking vintage JBL or Altec drivers but cheap stamped ones. Meanwhile I have been busy cutting up 2x3, 2x4 and 3/4 plywood to reinforce the front and back panels of the AMT3 cabinets, which I found to be cheap boards stapled together. I am gluing and screwing mine to tighten up the corners and than sealing them with silicon. The holes of the midrange LPADs have been drilled for what is now the Alpha 6A... I should have things up and running in a few weeks.
If the RS270Ps work out, I will be looking for a mid with similar cone material and appearance to make them current. I will keep the crossovers the same for now as 51.5uF and 30uF caps are not cheap....
Regarding the need to match the Heils, I find that horns with compression drivers do a good job. For the times that the Heils sound dominant, maybe we can tame in down a bit the way some of the guys on the DIYaudio site did... anyway there is certainly no shortage of ideas...
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Porkloin
Oscar Heil Groupie
The front baffle on the ESS monitors was less than stellar. It was a thin rabbet joint held in with a few staples to a five sided box made of too damn much particle board. Improve that joint and you improve the enclosure. I went a little nuts with gussets and a three-piece arrangement, but some furring strip gussets behind the original baffle and plenty of polyurethane construction adhesive would give you a strong joint that wouldn't need screws driven through your exposed baffle. The adhesive would provide the seal that audiophiles seem to feel necessary and it's pliability is somewhere between Elmer's Glue and silicone adhesive.
Of course, if you're worried about a sealed enclosure, you're going to have a tough time being honest with yourself about those mounting flanges that got all torn up when you or a past owner removed the drivers with the factory sealant on there. Your best bet is to have a wife or girlfriend (chicks are so much better with scissors) cut you multiple gaskets of 1/16 closed cell foam and resign yourself to the drivers poking out a little further than stock - you've got a bit of room to play with behind the grille cloth
Porkloin
Oscar Heil Groupie
Enough with modesty crap! Who else has had the best Rock Monitors in existence named after them ?
kwingylee
Well-Known Member
IMHO, those Jantzen Superior Z caps are one of the best buys in capacitors. Their regular Z series is also good. I used them to recap my Tannoy and Urei crossovers and they sound excellent! I usually wait for the 25% off sales from partsconnexion before I buy them. I plan to use them in the ESS recaps. I used to use VCAPS, Mundorfs and Soniccaps but VCAPS and Mundorfs got too expensive. I tried the Jantzens and they sounded better than the Soniccaps to me for around the same price.
Ok men for some reason ess enginers desided to run 50mf to 33mf to 33mf 75v caps in series ...no shunt coil on tweeter , just a ground resistor YES that GIVES a smooth coherent sound to a tweeter(no sharpness) im starting to see what this speaker sounds like
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Tha 10ohm ground resistor , makes the heil crossover 2nd order ,only the mid is 1st . .its my guess with this crssovr ,the heil is not very analytical .... i looked at one other heil set up right off the bat , crssovr in the ESS 1b is much more STANDARD 3rd order.......much sharper crisper sound..even that one can be fine tuned some. im not trying make a argument.......i saw that you mentioned clean A/D/S sound .....you can have that sound fall somewhere in between
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