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Interesting Electro voice Sentry III speakers found

RS Steve said:
The Heresy's have moved on, someone purchased them to have in their record shop they were opening. They don't compare well to the Sentry III's, the EV's have one of the best midrange horns ever in my opinion, and others have said this also. I wouldn't worry too much about biamping if I were you, you can always build specific crossovers at some point to do that down the road. I ran my III's on 60 watt tube gear for quite some time, and only recently hooked them to my high power solid state gear. They certainly like wattage and seem more balanced with not as much a need to biamp.
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Thanks for the (somewhat disapointing) feedback - i like the looks (and especially size) of the heresy's. I will have to research some more. Sadly the market in Germany is ruled by relatively compact (esp. compared to the sentry's) bookshelf and tower speakers.

I do not actually want to use them bi-amped, but as i have 4 speakers, 2 of the must go (and probably finance some higher quality gear). As they have custom made Cabinets, they used to have XLR plugs, and wanted to bring them as close to original as possible. About the 2nd pair, i have to decide if i shall store them in the basement, or let them go, as they are much too large for my living room.

Currently they are driven by a Braun A2 amplifier (2x75w nominal), and i am not overwhelmed by how they sound - but that might be due to the room acoustics.
 
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Welcome to the finest vintage horn loaded loudspeakers I've ever heard, anywhere, andoz I've heard dozens of models from many major and minor manufacturers.


With the crossover looking to be a DIY affair, and certainly not a clone of the original, I encourage you to triamp the speakers using the following frequencies and slopes:

Woofer lo-pass: 600hz 12db/oct
Mid hi-pass: 600hz 18db/oct
Mid lo-pass: 3500hz 12db/oct
Tweeter hi-pass 3500hz 12db/oct

This should enable you to get very close to the original sound.

You could also just go 24db/oct on everything and do okay.

When working properly, they are stunning, and I miss both my pairs.
 
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vinyldavid said:
Welcome to the finest vintage horn loaded loudspeakers I've ever heard, anywhere.

With the crossover looking to be a DIY affair, and certainly not a clone of the original, I encourage you to triamp the speakers using the following frequencies and slopes:

Woofer lo-pass: 600hz 12db/oct
Mid hi-pass: 600hz 18db/oct
Mid lo-pass: 3500hz 12db/oct
Tweeter hi-pass 3500hz 12db/oct

This should enable you to get very close to the original sound.

You could also just go 24db/oct on everything and do okay.

When working properly, they are stunning, and I miss both my pairs.
Click to expand...

As already stated, the crossovers are not DIY, but where a part of a kit sold in Europe (along with the speakers and horns). Also contacted EV Europe and they confirmed it, along with sending the crossover diagram (see post #9). As i have no knowledge of crossover design, i cannot say how different the crossovers are compared to the ones you have in the States.
 
A pair of Sentry III's was listed for sale on Facebook, as of this weekend, in Lee's Summit MO for a nice price for anybody on the lookout.

EV3
 
A few years later, the 1st pair moved on quickly, while the second pair currently fills the livingroom with music, driven by a nice vintage threshold power amp.

They sat in the basement for aprox. 3 years, and after moving to a larger place, they finaly made it. To be honest i can not imagine finding a better pair of speakers in my budget. It is the first time ever that I experienced the speaker disapearing effect.

I recently saw a foto of a crossover similar to mine, which had a rotary switch connected to the 4 unidentified connections, so i am assuming that those are for tweeter attenuation (attaching a foto for archival purpose)

But as happy as I am, i still have the urge to further tweakthe speakers, so have a few ideas that i would like to implement:

1. build a pair of stands to raise the speakers off the floor, and/of place the tweeter on top of the speaker (or maybe in the mids horn)

2. upgrade the crossover with better components or maybe use an active crossover, with the possibility of biamping sometime

3. I found out that a german hi fi magazine tested them and also suggested some mods that would improve them

I would be curious to hear if anybody has experience with tweaking the sentrys, does not matter if positive or negative
 

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After doing a bit more research, and looking into the boxes themselves, i discovered that the horns were in fact wired in phase with the woofer which (according to all crossover schematics found) is wrong. Rewired them and what can I say, they sound totally different than before - the sound is fuller with improved bass, but the imaging seems to suffer a bit. These are observation after a short listening session.

Also purchase a magazine where a crossover tuning is presented, which should flatten some spikes in the frequency response. If anybody is interested, let me know and I can send a cutout from the article.

Also found the reason for the open connections on the crossover, they are for the hf rolloff switch often seen on the front of the speakers. These will be added once I source a couple of rotary switches.

I also wanted to measure the speaker in room frequency response but I misplaced a usb cable needed for the mic. To be continued during the weekend
 
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