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How good are Dahlquist DQ-10's?

Bill Ferris said:
Good luck, Frode365, with finding a nice pair of 10s, and the hopefully WAF cooperation afterwards.

Since I`ve never been married, such A/V equipment`s placement considerations have not affected my chosen lifestyle.
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I am lucky enough to have chosen a wife with a fairly flexible WAF, but it does still exist, she does NOT like the DQ30's at all, but she loves the EPI 200B's and the L810's enough to refer to them as "her" speakers which I no longer can just get rid of without her consent hahaha
 
patfont said:
I worked in a HiFi store and we carried DQ-10's and Time windows.
They both had that intangible nack of sounding musical with what seemed like no effort at all.
And both have that sound stage magic.
Loved em both!
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thank you for the reply.. I just need to find some good ones
 
The trick is to find a pair that is all original, at least has the original Advent woofs. I had a pairr or so years ago, gave them to my son andforgot about them. Found another pair a month ago, all original. Just built sta ds, recovered etc, and I am not letting go. Only thing that gives them a slight edge over the dqm 9 or 9c is the open baffle and that airy soun stage.
And this might be polarizing, but they are better inmho that the Dq-20, 28 etc.
They do pop up, gotta be ready to hit the trail, get em, and not look back.
 

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If any of the magic in the DQ10 came from the open back mid, I've wondered for a long
time why they didn't make the mid open back in the DQ20.
The DQ10 does have felt over the back which is going to absorb most of the top end,
making it dipole only at the bottom of the FR band.
 
When people talk about 10's not being good rock music speakers it makes me think of how poor the old recordings were . I can hear big differences in SQ of the recordings with DQ 10's when you get a really good recording they shine like crazy . Life like band stage quality . And I play sax and have been on a few stages . The 10's for me shine with my B&K Reference 4420 I have serviced. I listen to mostly Hard Bop Jazz and B3 Jazz and Blues . Good jazz guitar sound killer also like Ed Cherry , Calvin Keys , Kenny Burrell , Wes Montgomery. But later recordings of Dr. LONNIE SMITH B3 Is some serious go too for me . And I have to throw in some Frank Zappa Is that a real poncho or a sears poncho !
 
I owned a set of DQ-10s for about 10 years. I purchased the set 'new', and ran them with a PP EL34 based power amp, so was running about 30 watts a side into them. The amp was 'integrated', and at the time I was primarily a 'vinyl' listener, as my CD collection was just developing and prices of those were pretty steep! Anyway, I loved the speakers, which is why I spent the money to buy them. For perhaps the first year or so I enjoyed things as they were, but I soon found an issue with 'compliance' of the bass motor that drove me crazy! To be honest, I had no way to measure SPL at the time, and this was a good number of years ago in the past. But my memory of this is quite vivid. I found that the bass drivers were SO compliant that they actually bottomed out against the speaker frame, seemingly quite easily, and most annoyingly! With any kind of low-frequency note at even a modest overall volume level there would be a 'clack' of the voice coil as it hit the back of the metal speaker frame. I would turn the volume down to where the problem would go away, but then I felt a total lack of satisfaction from the listening experience. My resolution: I purchased a pair of Infinity powered sub-woofers, and placed each one next to the corresponding DQ-10 speaker. And, after some 'adjustments' to the amp settings as well as those on the sub-woofer's plate amp, I got things dialed in quite well! This, in turn, provided me another 8 years or so of enjoyment from the entire system. The reason for selling them was actually a household move, and a neighbor who dearly wanted them and made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Were it not for that, I might still have that set today. And, I do still have the pair of Infinity subs.....and they're still working pretty much 'as new'. To conclude, upon arriving at my new home I ended up with a set of Klipsch Forte' IIs, and have never looked back. And, I fell in love with the Klipsch line of speakers to the point of owned about everything from the bottom KG-1 line up to Cornwalls. And I recommend the KG-4s to most any person just starting out. But, as to the DQ-10s, after buying and then quickly re-selling another set about 10 years ago, I pretty much lost my love of them. At the time, they were fine, but I attribute some of my satisfaction with them to what was actually my ignorance of what 'other' speakers had to offer. The 'Phased Array' concept was maybe more 'visually stimulating' than actually 'functional', and the 10" woofer just didn't work for me in the end. So............ I offer this not as criticism, but more just food for thought. They ARE an impressive looking set of speakers, and they do sound good. But, is 'good' good enough? Your call!! For what it's worth!! WC
 
Txsaxkat said:
When people talk about 10's not being good rock music speakers it makes me think of how poor the old recordings were . I can hear big differences in SQ of the recordings with DQ 10's when you get a really good recording they shine like crazy . Life like band stage quality . And I play sax and have been on a few stages . The 10's for me shine with my B&K Reference 4420 I have serviced. I listen to mostly Hard Bop Jazz and B3 Jazz and Blues . Good jazz guitar sound killer also like Ed Cherry , Calvin Keys , Kenny Burrell , Wes Montgomery. But later recordings of Dr. LONNIE SMITH B3 Is some serious go too for me . And I have to throw in some Frank Zappa Is that a real poncho or a sears poncho !
Click to expand...
Thank you for the reply and growing up with a highly skilled organist father, Love me some Dr. Lonnie Smith. I am a big Jimmy Smith fan too.. Funny little story, my dad was over years ago when I was just getting into Jimmy Smith and I played some Jimmy for him and I made the mistake of calling him an Organist. My dad looked at me smirked/smiled and asked, "do you know for sure he is an organist and not a keyboard player?" So I learned that day that Keyboard players can play most of an organ, the key is who is playing the bass line? the bass player or the keyboard players feet who than becomes the organist. I will have to dig deeper into Calvin Keys, that name on your list above is the least known to me.
 
Wharfcreek said:
I owned a set of DQ-10s for about 10 years. I purchased the set 'new', and ran them with a PP EL34 based power amp, so was running about 30 watts a side into them. The amp was 'integrated', and at the time I was primarily a 'vinyl' listener, as my CD collection was just developing and prices of those were pretty steep! Anyway, I loved the speakers, which is why I spent the money to buy them. For perhaps the first year or so I enjoyed things as they were, but I soon found an issue with 'compliance' of the bass motor that drove me crazy! To be honest, I had no way to measure SPL at the time, and this was a good number of years ago in the past. But my memory of this is quite vivid. I found that the bass drivers were SO compliant that they actually bottomed out against the speaker frame, seemingly quite easily, and most annoyingly! With any kind of low-frequency note at even a modest overall volume level there would be a 'clack' of the voice coil as it hit the back of the metal speaker frame. I would turn the volume down to where the problem would go away, but then I felt a total lack of satisfaction from the listening experience. My resolution: I purchased a pair of Infinity powered sub-woofers, and placed each one next to the corresponding DQ-10 speaker. And, after some 'adjustments' to the amp settings as well as those on the sub-woofer's plate amp, I got things dialed in quite well! This, in turn, provided me another 8 years or so of enjoyment from the entire system. The reason for selling them was actually a household move, and a neighbor who dearly wanted them and made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Were it not for that, I might still have that set today. And, I do still have the pair of Infinity subs.....and they're still working pretty much 'as new'. To conclude, upon arriving at my new home I ended up with a set of Klipsch Forte' IIs, and have never looked back. And, I fell in love with the Klipsch line of speakers to the point of owned about everything from the bottom KG-1 line up to Cornwalls. And I recommend the KG-4s to most any person just starting out. But, as to the DQ-10s, after buying and then quickly re-selling another set about 10 years ago, I pretty much lost my love of them. At the time, they were fine, but I attribute some of my satisfaction with them to what was actually my ignorance of what 'other' speakers had to offer. The 'Phased Array' concept was maybe more 'visually stimulating' than actually 'functional', and the 10" woofer just didn't work for me in the end. So............ I offer this not as criticism, but more just food for thought. They ARE an impressive looking set of speakers, and they do sound good. But, is 'good' good enough? Your call!! For what it's worth!! WC
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Thank you for the insight and wisdom.. I have a buddy with Forte's and DQ-20's standing side by side in his living room, and though I don't have a ton of time listening to the two critically in the space, one day we did do some switching back and forth and man did the 20's really win in that instance, but to this day I keep telling him I want to hear those forte's fed some tubes. He is a techy guy, goes through alot of and loves vintage receivers and the day we were comparing, it was a big power Pioneer receiver from the 70's SX-1250 maybe.. He does have a dynaco Pas 2 or 3 can't recall for sure and an ST-70 that he needs to go through, and that is what I would really like to hear the Klipsch coming through.. I think he has a set of KG-4's now too. I would definitely like to hear some horns/tubes.
 
Txsaxkat said:
When people talk about 10's not being good rock music speakers it makes me think of how poor the old recordings were . I can hear big differences in SQ of the recordings with DQ 10's when you get a really good recording they shine like crazy . Life like band stage quality . And I play sax and have been on a few stages . The 10's for me shine with my B&K Reference 4420 I have serviced. I listen to mostly Hard Bop Jazz and B3 Jazz and Blues . Good jazz guitar sound killer also like Ed Cherry , Calvin Keys , Kenny Burrell , Wes Montgomery. But later recordings of Dr. LONNIE SMITH B3 Is some serious go too for me . And I have to throw in some Frank Zappa Is that a real poncho or a sears poncho !
Click to expand...

The little 5" has a 1" voice coil with a paper former and does not handle much power at all.
They will fail if you like to crank them at party levels. They were used in some of the large,
very large, Infinity floor standers and I remember seeing them removed for repairs in demo rooms.
My pair of DQ10 s is the only pair that I've seen with the much later metal former version of
that driver, or perhaps metalized paper.
 
Wharfcreek said:
I owned a set of DQ-10s for about 10 years. I purchased the set 'new', and ran them with a PP EL34 based power amp, so was running about 30 watts a side into them. The amp was 'integrated', and at the time I was primarily a 'vinyl' listener, as my CD collection was just developing and prices of those were pretty steep! Anyway, I loved the speakers, which is why I spent the money to buy them. For perhaps the first year or so I enjoyed things as they were, but I soon found an issue with 'compliance' of the bass motor that drove me crazy! To be honest, I had no way to measure SPL at the time, and this was a good number of years ago in the past. But my memory of this is quite vivid. I found that the bass drivers were SO compliant that they actually bottomed out against the speaker frame, seemingly quite easily, and most annoyingly! With any kind of low-frequency note at even a modest overall volume level there would be a 'clack' of the voice coil as it hit the back of the metal speaker frame. I would turn the volume down to where the problem would go away, but then I felt a total lack of satisfaction from the listening experience. My resolution: I purchased a pair of Infinity powered sub-woofers, and placed each one next to the corresponding DQ-10 speaker. And, after some 'adjustments' to the amp settings as well as those on the sub-woofer's plate amp, I got things dialed in quite well! This, in turn, provided me another 8 years or so of enjoyment from the entire system. The reason for selling them was actually a household move, and a neighbor who dearly wanted them and made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Were it not for that, I might still have that set today. And, I do still have the pair of Infinity subs.....and they're still working pretty much 'as new'. To conclude, upon arriving at my new home I ended up with a set of Klipsch Forte' IIs, and have never looked back. And, I fell in love with the Klipsch line of speakers to the point of owned about everything from the bottom KG-1 line up to Cornwalls. And I recommend the KG-4s to most any person just starting out. But, as to the DQ-10s, after buying and then quickly re-selling another set about 10 years ago, I pretty much lost my love of them. At the time, they were fine, but I attribute some of my satisfaction with them to what was actually my ignorance of what 'other' speakers had to offer. The 'Phased Array' concept was maybe more 'visually stimulating' than actually 'functional', and the 10" woofer just didn't work for me in the end. So............ I offer this not as criticism, but more just food for thought. They ARE an impressive looking set of speakers, and they do sound good. But, is 'good' good enough? Your call!! For what it's worth!! WC
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What you were most likely hearing was the amplifier clipping.
The clipping causes the woofers to react:

The clipped, square-wave signal forces the woofer to make hard, unnatural stops and starts, generating heat and mechanical stress that mimics the sound of physical bottoming out, even though the issue originates with the signal, not the speaker's physical limits.

YMMV

Pat
 
Actually Pat, I'm quite sure it was not the amp, but indeed the speakers. I have run into this in the past, where speaker suspension is compliant 'just enough' to create this condition. Frankly, I consider it either a design or build flaw, as I know they shouldn't do it! Though no expert at it, I've reconed a good number of speakers myself, and in looking at the parts and process, its not all that surprising to me that it did happen. And in building amps for 40+ years now, I've never heard a LF clip that sounded anything like what my DQ-10s were doing. So, I'm stickin' to my original theory!
 
I agree with patfont, I have never heard a DQ-10 woofer bottom out. You were running them with thirty watts and that would be very easy to clip even at normal volumes.

I used the to hear same thing quite a bit when I was a club DJ in the 70's and would visit some other clubs on nights off. Some the small cheap clubs had this problem all the time because they were running the amps into clipping because they didn't have enough power for Disco. It was the same clack you describe. Didn't understand how the people could stand it, but they were just oblivious to it.
 
Well, twas nearly 30 years ago, and if indeed thats what is was, so be it. Its indeterminanable at this point. That said, I have had 100 different speaker sets over the years, and those were the ONLY set of speakers I ever had that did that! Also had (and still have) over 100 amps in this power range, and have no doubt driven most of them into clipping WITHOUT ever hearing anything close to this noise. So, at this point I'll stand on my prior evalustion that it was a 'motor' problem with the Dahlquist 10" woofer in that particular speaker system. Maybe 'unique' to just my pair of speakers, but the system itself didn't exhibit the problem upon being resurrected in my new home with a different set of speakers, and I didn't have the subs hooked up here, and if anything my SPL desires increased! So, I remain firm in my opinion... for better or worse!
 
So the HiFi store I worked in carried the DQ-10's and we had them out on the floor for demo.
The earlier DQ-10's had CTS woofers, and there was a change to a more compliant type woofer.
So YMMV.
 
patfont said:
So the HiFi store I worked in carried the DQ-10's and we had them out on the floor for demo.
The earlier DQ-10's had CTS woofers, and there was a change to a more compliant type woofer.
So YMMV.
Click to expand...

That was only the first few hundred sets or so iirc, would be very rare to find any today. Would not be mirrored either. I've never seen one myself but I'd be curious how different they might sound.
 
The timeline of the DQ-10 is detailed in the Dahlquist .io group wiki.
DahlquistSpeakers groups.io Group Probably need to join to see files and wiki and such. Former yahoo group.

The non-mirror imaged CTS woofered 10s would have all electrolytic caps except the 0.1 and 0.15μF caps for the tweeter and supertweeter.

The 10 is an amazing speaker. I made two older pair identical, mirroring, film caps to replace ‘lytics and bespoke stands. Sold one pair cheap to Terry in our audio group. Then updated the 80μF cap, which I had bypassed with a small film cap, installing a nice coffee mug sized Clarity cap.

These speakers are very balanced and smooth across the entire audio spectrum except the deep bass where I can use the DQ-1W or powered subs with the Dahlquist LP1 crossover. It has 4 outputs for subs, one each channel and two summed mono outs.

My system seems to sound best with
50 watts of tube power o the 10s
Two powered subs from the LP1 so the tubes don’t have to do the deep bass that sucks power.

Every change I have made to my 10s seem to make them sound better. I’m very happy with them. I have a pair of vintage ‘hot rodded’ 10s here, too. I say vintage HD because these appear to have the Randall Research upgrades which were from before the www and there is limited info about this upgrade out there. I did post pics of the speakers with their different tweeter and supertweeter as well as multiple bypass caps. These were brighter than my regular pair and sound very good but I would want to fine tune them. They also make me want to tweak mine a bit more. That is in the planning stages now.

The looks when undressed show a lot of thought went into the superstructures. You folks saying it looks like a kids project, take a close look. Mine, older units, were completely bolted together, no rivets, so disassembly was easy for mirroring and cleaning. Kids project, look at the Acoustic Research AR-3 and their other speakers of the time. Messy hot glue, partially painted soundboards, just ugly cost cutting looks which was fine cause the hot glue kept folks from getting inside and seeing the mess.

Now look at the 10s with thinner grille cloth and a light colored background behind the speakers. Those hidden superstructures look cool as heck. You know something is going on when you see them that way.

These speakers can still compete today, but if someone wanted to swap for a pair of Magico S3 speakers, I’d sure consider it with a proper listening session with the S3 which I only heard briefly at a local dealer.
 
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Well I have a pair of DQ-10 that are not perfect but still play very nice. I bought them about a year ago, they are missing the back metal grille covers and the cross-overs have not been re-capped. However the original woofers have been re-foamed so the bass plays pretty tight.

As far as the sound I would have to agree they are a pair of speakers that you have to hear and experience at least once. I have played them with many different SS amps and my ARC tube amp and overall they sound pretty special. I usually supplement the bass with a RSL 12S and Def Tech SuperCube 6000 subs which fills in the lower frequencies nicely.

I have other speakers that I rotate and compare them with (Klipsch LSI, Vandersteen 2ce SIG II, Kef 107 v1, Magnepan LRS, JBL L112, Pioneer HPM-100, GoldenEar Triton 3, as well as some nice bookshelf speakers). All my speakers are special in some way, the old Dahlquist DQ-10 belong in the collection.
 
I too had a pair of old school Eclipse 10 inch subs dual VC under my 10's on my B&K reference 4430 with a passive EQ controlling roll off and volume . So I could fine tweek them in my living room . I found that when you got some good solid bass from them it took a little of the detail off the top or muddied it slightly . And the eclipse are very good subs in small sealed enclosures . its a fine line you walk with adjusting this with trade off on each end .
 
Good revealing speakers can make recordings you've enjoyed for decades that really have poor SQ. The Canton Karat 300's are like this. Stevie Ray Vaughan is a favorite but every CD sounds like there's missing sound, sounding slightly muted. I can't listen to them anymore. That's the price you pay for speakers that deliver the sound their fed. Another stark example is Dark Side of the Moon. The CD remastered version blows compared to the original CD and that's on the person doing the remaster.
 
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