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Lafayette Criterion 2004

nelsress

nelsress

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Lafayette Criterion 2004 w/ Heil Air Motion Transformer

Anyone ever heard these speakers? I saw a pair at a nearby GW and when I removed the grill was surprised to see the words "Heil Air Motion Transformer" in big letters on both and what looked more like an Infinity Emit tweeter than a Heil AMT but I think I've seen this style in later "bookshelf" ESS models. In this case price is not an issue, they're cheap, but are they worth getting? In the past I had four ESS AMT-4's with the original style AMT's on top and now have ESS AMT1b's with the same setup. Would these be worth picking up and playing with or stashing the parts for a later DIY speaker project?Thanks in advance for any advice.
 
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Pretty well built speaker. Little known but yep, Heil tweeter. Passive radiators, good woofers.
 
Thanks nclh77. There was a woofer but no passive radiator but they did seem well built, not monstrously heavy but not light either. Both woofers looked identical so I'm going to make an assumption that they're original, but I don't know for sure.
 
imo, avoid these. they are not really Heil AMT they are a cheapo knock-off 'corona field' bs of the Heil Powering tweeter. I fell hard on these when they came out in 1976. I should have taken them back to the store. they have no real bass and the tweeter is crossed way too low and will 'squeak' on some only moderately loud transients (they were prone to failure). i tried many attempts at making these into decent speakers and even used the tweeters in another somewhat poor speaker (EV Interface B - original). good sound? no dice. Lafayette did sell a few very decent speakers in their history but these are NOT those!

please read what i wrote about my experience in a little more detail here:http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=261869&page=2 post 23
 
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