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ID Weird Kef speakers

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AntoineLM

New Member
Hi all! There is a pair of weird KEF speakers for sale right now near my place and I can't ID them. They loo clearly are in the vein of the 105/107. Seller says there is no info or label on them, and that they are from around 1975... though the glossy finish looks more 80s to me. The units are B139, B10 and T27... do you think they are home made? Worth buying? Thanks!

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Hi... I've seen those too on Kij.... very near by my place.... Most likely DIY, 'cause very weird. They seem to use the '' cube '' but it's not a Kef '' cube '' And it's a B110... they made a typo there.
I'm passing... have too many anyway !
 
Considering we cannot deal any price issues on this thread, Mod, if you can ( but I'm not the OP ) would it be possible to move this one over to DS ?
 
Yea KEF drivers were widely available to hobbyists in the olden days.

Crazy design - hope they sound good!

The fact they are no-name shoud keep the price down, but the fact these are KEF drivers could have pple interested.

I would wonder what the xover is - if thats a genuine KEF one, it would be great - but its also possible there could be anything else in there instead.....
 
My experience is that KEF crossovers are roughly the same as other commercial crossovers of the same price range. Not surprising, since they need to compete in the market place, and fancy pants caps may have a subtle effect on the sound, but will add significantly to the cost. And unless the design is just a standard KEF design in a DIY box, using a standard KEF crossover may be a negative, not a positive.
 
Thanks for all the answers,

I think I'll pass. they are not cheap, and would not be a great enough upgrade from my ESS translinear II that carry similar units. I got excited for a bit but it's not for me...
 
I suspect that they might be very good speakers, but I think that whatever money and space you have might be better directed at speakers that are less similar to what you already are using.
 
I'd jump on these if the price is right. There are enough parts to make a LS3/5a clone!
Sell the woofers to recoup some $....and you'd be golden! (If the price is right)
 
Okay - let me get this. You suggest buying what may be an excellent full range system in order to pull not inexpensive but commonly available drivers out to make a small speaker well known for having little low end? The qualities of the LS3/5a are not simply those of the drivers, but also have to do with specific cabinet construction and damping, and a complex crossover that allowed very tight control of the final sound. There is some (slight) chance that the upper portion of the speakers would sound as good, or better than the LS3/5a, but the whole system almost certainly would sound fuller and more balanced.
 
Nat said:
Okay - let me get this. You suggest buying what may be an excellent full range system in order to pull not inexpensive but commonly available drivers out to make a small speaker well known for having little low end? The qualities of the LS3/5a are not simply those of the drivers, but also have to do with specific cabinet construction and damping, and a complex crossover that allowed very tight control of the final sound. There is some (slight) chance that the upper portion of the speakers would sound as good, or better than the LS3/5a, but the whole system almost certainly would sound fuller and more balanced.
Click to expand...

Nat, I hear what you're saying. You have a valid point. However.....

To say that real KEF T27 and B110 drivers are "commonly available" is a stretch. There are copies and clones of these drivers available, yes. Real deal? Not common in my opinion.

LS3/5a is legendary. The homebrew speakers mentioned here? NOT legendary.

Do the upper portion sound like LS3/5a? Maybe. Maybe not. As you mentioned, the beauty of the LS3/5a is in its crossover and cabinet design, and how they were engineered to work with the drivers mentioned above.
Did the builder of this speaker have the expertise to pull off this creation with the skills of a fine cabinet craftsman? Did he possess the technical understanding of the intricacies of the crossover design? So much so that he was able to create a seamless crossover to add the B139 into the mix? Maybe....maybe not.

Now, that being said, I wouldn't just buy and gut these things without listening to them for a while. But in my experience, I've never heard homebrew speakers that sounded great. Some sounded pretty good...but never great.
Also, have you seen how much $ LS3/5a clones are selling for? Clones without original drivers are fetching like a grand. Falcon sells their clones for $3k!

This is pure speculation, since I don't know how much the seller is asking for these speakers, but IMHO, this is a case where the value of these speakers are higher parted out.

I'm not arguing your point. As you said....these may be excellent. My point is, they probably aren't. Just a diff in opinion.
 
While I agree with much of what you say, I still have doubts about your proposal.
Certainly there are plenty of homebrew speakers that are not particularly good, even ones with good drivers, but I would guess that by the time someone built speakers that look as well finished as those do, and whose enclosures seem as well thought out as those, and used high end drivers, they might actually know what they are doing. It is also possible that the speakers were kits from Fried or one of the other high end kit sellers, in which case they might be the equivalent, or better, given the build quality, than serious commercial speakers. Your original post made it sound like you were suggesting gutting them immediately, which I'm glad isn't what you really meant.
Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but when I've been able to sell KEF drivers, they have gone for much less than the optimistic asking prices one sees - they are desirable, but they aren't that hard to find, and if you wanted to come up with the tweeters and mid/woofer, I suspect you could without paying through the nose.
And perhaps I overestimate the validity of the claims about tight specifications and quality control for every part of the LS3/5a, but given that the BBC required specific grill cloth and frames, and other such components, the touted exact matching of drivers that was part of the protocol would seem to be important, and would make the probably somewhat random matching of the drivers in these speakers not a great choice for LS 3/5a clones. It is possible, of course, that the drivers in these speakers are, in fact, tightly matched, but that would argue for keeping them as they are.
Different people have different views, of course, and it is always worth remembering that the alternative to parting out often is simply tossing the whole speaker in the dumpster to be crushed, which is clearly the worst possible option.
 
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