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Fulton Musical Industries

Thanks Brian...very interesting. I hope JM chimes in about the P20's,as I have never heard them. I have a pair of little Maestros and FMI 100's. I First heard the J's in the mid 70's at Garland Audio in San Jose, I was blown away! Thanks
 
Hello,

Jeff here,

Yes, I owned P-20s and one time, and then P-22's. I don't recall much that would be helpful to share about P-20s, sorry.

The P-22 was the last Premiere design Bob did. This had been designed after Bob started using his TEKTRONICS 2 GIG scope to look at audio events, and the Premiere.

A P-22 was an absolute BEAR to tune properly. Everything had to be 100% right feeding the speaker, and back then, there were too many equipment variables that would lead us astray. ( A P-22 "assumed" a perfect front end and amplifier... Ha Ha, OMG ).

So, I had a HARD TIME getting a P-22 to tune into the room and to play consistently, it was super-sensitive to get it to lock into optimal balance, even with all my years of FMI speaker adjustment experience.

I eventually ( on 9-13-1991 ) re-modded my P-22 back to a slightly more forgiving P-12 circuit, and never told Bob I did that !!

Take your time and have fun. Email me privately if you have more questions.

I never ever saw or heard of a FMI-120 till I saw this mentioned in this thread. Would love to hear a pair.

I am mostly involved in high efficiency speakers that will use low powered DC SET amps these days. To this day, audio amplifiers are the weakest link in the whole audio chain in my personal opinion !!! Most amplifiers are a travesty.

Jeff Medwin .... aka... Drlowmu
 
I have a pair of FMI Little Maestros. I use them for low level info retrieval in my system. I have noticed a low bass distortion in one of the speakers. When I lower the amplifier output level it goes away. But if I up the level it returns. I think the voice coil in the 5 inch driver must be damaged.

Does anybody know if this driver is a Rola or RTR? Or is it some other make. These speaker sound great and fit my application perfectly. I doubt I could find another pair.

Thanks Jeff
 
This has turned into a very interesting thread. I'm interested in what other speakers fans of FMI listen to. I own a pair of Aura Sound LST827 speakers that are perhaps not as 'natural' as the Fultons, but are still very musical (my wife actually prefers them) and I'm considering getting a pair of the smaller maggies (MMG's).

Brian - when is your site dedicated to Fulton going online?
Rudygrooves - how about some pic's of your 120's ?
 
Other speakers? My main speakers are Apogee Divas (#1) and Quad ESL-63s (relegated to #2). The Apogees are in a league of their own as far as I am concerned.

The Fulton website is WAY overdue due to my severe lack of time, much to the chagrin of my good buddies. However, one of them recently "volunteered" his son, a software engineer, to help me with the web mechanics. I have tons of information to post. So let's hope soon!
 
Fast996 said:
I have a pair of FMI Little Maestros...Does anybody know if this driver is a Rola or RTR? Or is it some other make.
Click to expand...

I have been told that the woofer driver is a Pyle #6517. The tweeter is the Philips AD0163T8. Don't hold me to this being 100% accurate, but maybe this will get you started in the right direction. These are departures from the drivers that he traditionally used: Peerless, Rola, RTR, etc.
 
Brian Beck said:
Other speakers? My main speakers are Apogee Divas (#1) and Quad ESL-63s (relegated to #2). The Apogees are in a league of their own as far as I am concerned.

The Fulton website is WAY overdue due to my severe lack of time, much to the chagrin of my good buddies. However, one of them recently "volunteered" his son, a software engineer, to help me with the web mechanics. I have tons of information to post. So let's hope soon!
Click to expand...

I have not heard an Apogee recently, but I prefer my Fulton Js to both the Quad 57s or the 63s.
 
Both are great speakers with their strengths and weaknesses. The Quads have that incredible focus and coherence. On the frequency extremes, the Fultons win hands-down. Both have very natural midrange tonality.

The big Apogees do it all, and then some, IMO.
 
Mike,

Yes, I almost forgot that I too still "have" a pair of Chartwell LS3/5As from the same source. I wrote "have" because my parents have them. I doubt they've been played in several years at their house.
 
Found this photo of Steve Weimann and Ray Marion and some Fultons

Hi,

I thought the readers of this thread might be interested in this. I found this photo of Steve Weimann and Ray Marion seated in their home (Pro-Musica) with some J-Mods and other speakers in an online copy of the 'Illio 76' University of Illinois yearbook.

Interesting that the article had the caption wrong. Steve & Ray captioned as the "Good Vibes Stereo Store Owners" - they would have hated that.

You can see the article here:

https://archive.org/details/illio197683univ

(also contains a couple articles about Steve Goodman and Roger Ebert)

Marty
 

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Marty, thanks for posting that. I remember sitting in that very listening room, really a converted garage in a house in Urbana, and hearing those J Modulars in 1976. Steve and Ray had a knack for making a system sound musical. Wow, we were all so young then!
 
Yes - the photo brought back memories. I graduated in 76 and met Steve & Ray in 75. I was looking for a 'stereo' system and spent lots of time at the local shops before finding out about Pro-Musica. They were able to put together a system that a poor college student could afford that worked for me for the next 40 years. Not only turned me on to tube amplifiers and the importance of the tt in your system - but to Bob Fine and Mercury Living Presence. I have a pretty good collection of albums started from those purchases in the mid 70's on trips to Rose Records in Chicago. I recall at the time I was dazzled by the transcriptor turntable they had until Steve told me it was really a pretty crappy table. They started putting together a table based on the ERA Mk 6 + Grace 707 and Shure VIIIG cartridge. Way out of my price range - so I made due with an AR XA.
 
Our stories are remarkably similar. I wonder if we crossed paths back then. I graduated in 1977 (EE) and probably was introduced to Steve and Ray in late 1975 or early 1976. At the time, I had Crown electronics and double Advents. I didn't realize how really grisly these sounded until I heard the Fulton 80s and 100s on Dyna tube amps at Pro Musica. Soon I had their modified Dynaco tube gear, Fulton 100s with the FMI-6 electrostatic tweeters and the table you mentioned: the ERA Mk 6 table with Grace 707 tonearm and Shure type III conical cartridge, as modified by them. My octogenarian parents still have my old table, which sits idle except for when I visit and I fire it up. Yes, I too started collecting Mercury LP records after hearing them at Pro Musica. Soon I found a way on meager resources to buy a demo Audio Research SP3-A-1 preamp and a lightly-used ARC D75A amp (not from Pro Musica), probably in late 1976. Steve and Ray sold their own speaker cable, rather than, or in addition to, the pricey Fulton Gold cable. It was a stiff red-jacketed wire that looked suspiciously like battery cable. It worked quite well though. Still have that somewhere. My introduction to the world of the high end audio was complete thanks to Steve and Ray. Looking back, I don't know how I did it, getting all that good stuff on part-time wages while still in college. Maybe a decade later, when they had a falling out with Fulton, they sold the Chartwell LS3/5A, which I bought. My parents still have those too! Here I am, now a senior citizen, still very much enjoying listening to music on a nice system. Without Steve's and Ray's inspiration, I wonder if audio would have been so important to me all these decades.

Sorry to the rest of you for having to read our little reminiscences :)
 
I met Ray & Steve in 95 - I think there must have been a few graduates of their intro to true hi fidelity - a focus on accurate tonal and 'musical' reproduction using live acoustic and symphonic music as your reference. That hi fidelity is a compromise, with errors of omission better than errors of commission. This was also my intro to JGH and Stereophile. I also subscribed to the Audio Amateur and built a few Old Colony amps - including the Audio Research ST-70-C3 based on a ST-70 chassis.

Hey - I just found some FMI 100's today at a local electrical recycling center. Picked them up for $60. I haven't hooked them up yet - hope to get around to that tomorrow - so it will be interesting to see / hear what I found.
 
Wow, good score! Those don't come along very often. I sold my original pair of 100s long ago. I bought a pair on nostalgia recently. I chuckled to myself: Wouldn't it be funny if these happened to be my old pair that had made it back home after almost 30 years? Let us know how they work out for you.
 
Newbie inherits pair of J woofers. Help?

Have read this thread a couple of times--very impressed with combination of knowledge, and willingness to share.

I just got a pair of J woofers and want to put them back into service. What is the polite and appropriate way to get some advice?

Best,
John
 

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More photos from the newbie

If you click on the pdf in my previous post, you'll see that it's a "mailgram" from a dealer to the previous owner.

I opened the back and the only thing I see that is problematic is the residue in the attached photo. I have to look more carefully to see whether the down-firing woofer has "warped" from its off-center placement as described previously in this thread.

Thanks again for your consideration,

John

ps, Mr. Fulton's phone number on the other attachment. I have a lot of other original documentation that I will share.
 

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John ,

Let's start with a couple of basics.

What is your intended use? Do you have the rest of the J Modular system, the FMI-80s and the FMI-6 tweeters? This woofer can be used with other brands of speakers, but it was usually used in a complete Fulton system. The hand sketches seem to show speaker arrangements that might imply it was used with another brand of speakers. So, what is your plan?

Do they play? How do they sound? Maybe they need no repairs. Now that you've opened the back you will need to replace the weather seal gasket around the perimeter as it has gone flat through the years.

The corrosion on the driver's frame is not unusual and probably has no affect on performance. Yes, if you can pull a woofer, see if it is off-center. There is a seller on eBay who bought the original RTR inventory and he may still have a few NOS 12" drivers.

Can you take photos of the crossover and post them?
 
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