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Kraut's New Listening Space

Johnny_Law said:
Incredible! The stands compliment the zebra veneer nicely to me anyway. How do they sound with all that bracing and damping?
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Thanks. I'm breaking in the new caps right now.
Regarding the dampening, it's tough to say because it's been so long since I last played the speakers which was before a recent move, in a different room of course. They've never had much bass and I was only using them as nearfield computer desk speakers.
STILL, initial gut reaction is that they are overdamped / overstuffed at this point. I will probably experiment with removing some foam.
 
KrautNotRice said:
That about wraps up this shenanigans. Oh, I did switch the inputs on the terminal cup and turned it upside down so that the speaker wires angle down rather than up.
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I have mixed emotions about this thread. Watching your evolution is a reminder of how us audio nuts get where we are.
Beautiful work performed by torch carriers of a younger generation is a wonderful thing.

Conversely, this thread causes tremendous feelings of inadequacy and guilty laziness on my part. But that's my issue not yours.
Keep the fire burning!
 
ClusterChuck said:
I have mixed emotions about this thread. Watching your evolution is a reminder of how us audio nuts get where we are.
Beautiful work performed by torch carriers of a younger generation is a wonderful thing.

Conversely, this thread causes tremendous feelings of inadequacy and guilty laziness on my part. But that's my issue not yours.
Keep the fire burning!
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Thanks for the kind words!

Johnny_Law said:
How do they sound with all that bracing and damping?
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I just removed half the foam from the cabs. I left the top and one whole side, removed the bottom and the whole other side.
That made a big difference to the better! More mid bass and better dynamics.

I will most likely call it quits at this point, the bass is at least as good as before if not better, going off of memory.
If I were to mess with it any more, I could remove all of the foam and listen again.
Then I could loosely stuff with actual fiberglass to see if that's even better.

As always, I'm open to suggestions / input.
 
Johnny_Law said:
Your caps are new, yes? If they were my speakers I would spend another couple days listening to them, and then decide if they need any more tweaks ...
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Good advice for sure, I break in new caps with 50 hours of continuous playing. Got a dedicated mini amp in the garage for that, so it doesn't bother anyone.
On these speakers there's no cap on the woofer (just a coil), hence me messing with the stuffing earlier.
 
I recently had to move into a smaller space and my listening room got demoted to a 10 x 11' room with 8' ceilings. I've been trying to make it sound good, but it's been an uphill battle even with some treatment.
The system is cramped into a corner and the speakers are way too close to walls, but it's only temporary. The Tannoys sound amazing as always, I've been thoroughly spoiled by their creamy midrange and texture on strings. Tannoys have been my daily drivers for the last few months, still not recapped though.

NEW PROJECT: Spendor BC1
Giggiddy







Serial #s 202xx
All original condition, rosewood veneer. I do have the grilles.
I'm just giving them a first listen right now and they're wonderful. Van Morrison, Tom Petty, The Eagles, David Gray, Tupac, 311, it all sounds good.
However, these are hailed to be flat-like BBC midfield monitors with just a 'BBC dip', but the mids are severely scooped and the treble slightly sibilant. Maybe I'm too Tannoy spoiled, or perhaps them caps be far out of spec. Recap is #1 priority.
I plan on doing a full restore and mild upgrading where appropriate.

Game plan:
Veneer: Sadly, the original veneer has enough blemishes that I'm leaning towards a full reveneer to bring them up to par. I hate to do that, but these really need it even though they look alright from afar.
Crossovers: full recap, upgrade internal wiring. Possibly a trial with eliminating the original crossover entirely in favor of a much simpler design that greatly increases the speakers' efficiency.
Grilles: Rewrap in Huntley Audio dark blue (already on hand), or Klipsch type grey fabric from Crites.
Front baffles: Depending on new veneer, I might either paint of even veneer the fronts.
Drivers: Woofers are solid, no cracking at all around the cone-to-surround area as is allegedly common with these Bextrene woofers. Celestion tweeters will get flush mounted as per Troels Gravesen's testing / measuring that resulted in a notable improvement. The Coles super tweeters just need a little paint touch up.

I'm open to veneer suggestions. I've got walnut, teak, golden teak, mahogany, cherry, zebrano and rosewood on hand. I'm leaning towards teak or rosewood or walnut. Possibly with an olive green front baffle?
 
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KrautNotRice said:
Veneer: Sadly, the original veneer has enough blemishes that I'm leaning towards a full reveneer to bring them up to par. I hate to do that, but these really need it even though they look alright from afar.
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Wow, they really do look great in the pics. Where are the flaws?
And what are those nifty midrange drivers? Ah: 'Celestion tweeters'

Looked them up (I'd never heard of them before) and to my surprise
staging was a 'thing' even back in the 1970s:

Stereophile said:
Its assets include truly remarkable reproduction of depth and superb imaging and scale (footnote 2). Instrumental placement remains stable across the stereo "stage" between the speakers, and there is no tendency toward that U configuration where center instruments sound distant and vaguely imaged while flanking ones are definite but crowded toward the sides.
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Heck, I also didn't know they had banana plugs way back when.
 
Archguy said:
Wow, they really do look great in the pics. Where are the flaws?
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There's several smaller damages, some discoloration, a tiny area that's lifting, and a small piece of veneer ripped off one of the bottoms. As is they're a 4 / 10 cosmetically.
I'm gonna make a serious effort to restore the original rosewood veneer, if I can't get it to be at least a 7 or 8 out of 10, I will have to strip all of the old veneer off (yikes) and reveneer in rosewood. Many labors, much expensive.

Some impressions after playing them for several hours:
They're special and sweet, seductive. Really great speakers for listening to many hours of music.
The stock caps are apparently Philips film caps that are not prone to aging, so I will leave them for now. Rewiring internally is said to make a notable improvement, so I may take a crack at that.
New, grey grille fabric is ordered.
The stands they're on are too high, so I may play with flipping the speakers upside down until I build proper 12 - 15" high stands for these.
So far I'm very much loving these speakers, they're definitely music lovers' speakers.
 
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Little bit of an update: AKer @sp58 suggested the front and rear baffles can be flipped easily on the BC1 to eliminate the diffraction associated with a recessed front baffle. It seemed like an easy, free thing to try. I wanted to paint the front baffles anyway, so I did it to one of the speakers for starters (then ran out of daylight).

Red alnico woofers:







Not exactly the olive green I was looking for, but very close.
 
A final update and round of pics for the Spendors. The grilles are reupholstered, both baffles painted. The veneer is still original and I don't plan on messing with it anymore, as they are quite nice from a couple feet away.
They do best with the open style stands, even though they're still a couple inches too tall to be 'ideal' for the BC1s.
I've played them on a number of amps with different sources and logged many hours of enjoyable listening.
While they are great speakers, I am selling them on (locally only). An upcoming move is making me drastically down size and I think I'll be keeping only the Tannoys.

















 
Are the fronts green? The wood looks sort of military green. It's a different look.

The veneer looks killer.

Are you downsizing to a smaller house? Hope everything goes well!
 
lokerola said:
Are the fronts green? The wood looks sort of military green. It's a different look.

The veneer looks killer.

Are you downsizing to a smaller house? Hope everything goes well!
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Thanks! Yes the fronts are olive green.
I'm drastically downsizing bc I'll be moving into a much smaller space for a while. My car's system will be my only system for about a year.
 
lokerola said:
Holy cow man - hope everything's OK, that's a lot of downsizing.
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Thanks, yeah everything's OK. Just 'going for broke' to start up a business and moving back to the west coast. If it goes well, I'll start buying vintage hifi again after a year or so. And if it fails, well... I just lost all mein Scheissa...

Edit: I may document my car's system build in this thread. It will be an interesting build involving speakers and wood working and things.
 
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