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My speakers and receiver

M

moparjim

New Member
Hi, I just acquired these speakers for free from my dad's friend when we found them at his mom's house and bought this receiver from an old man who's nephew died recently and had a pretty good collection of receivers and other weird pieces for $65. I've never seen a speaker with this piece on it, it sounds amazing when i disconnect the woofers and plug in the other speaker that is in the pics I'm giving you a link to. it sounds really sharp and doesn't distort until it's VERY loud. I was wondering what these speakers are worth/if they're worth replacing/re skinning the woofers? I like the amplifier, once I buy a $25 antenna it will be all I'll need. thanks, enjoy






 
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Some say the ESS tweeter is as good as it gets. I'm kicking myself for not picking up a ragged out pair this summer just to test the tweeter. I was new and didn't know what they were.
 
The tall speaker you show is a very desireable ESS "rock monitor" If you keep playing it to the point of hearing distortion you're going to destroy a very desireable and soughtafter Heil air motion tweeter, which makes me ill just thinking about what kind of distorted mess of a signal it's already been fed.

IMO the JVC speakers are firewood.

Don't know much about the Mitsu receiver, other than Mitsu didn't really make "junk".

If you have a pair of the ESS's, you should see that they find a home with someone who will properly restore them.

Just my .02 y'all understand.............................
 
those are Heil AMT tweeters.
yes, they do sound great with open - almost like horns and detailed sound without distortion. i have a pair of ess speakers with smaller version of the tweeters.

they are very much worth restoring. replacing the woofer surround is easy with experience, but can be done professionaly for about $40 - $50 / pair.
if you're just wondering how much you can make by selling them, just look up on ebay. they're expensive.
 
I'll third the restoration of the big ESS speakers. Do a search on AK about "re-foaming" or "new surrounds" and you'll find a ton of great information. You'll need to re-do all four of the woofers, but you will end up with a very fine speaker indeed.

If you're not really into that level of involvment though, I'm sure someone on the forum here would buy them!

Whatever you do, please don't replace the woofers with something from another speaker, or otherwise "Frankenspeaker" them :)

That's a nice little setup you've got there, and will sound GREAT when it's all back in fighting trim.

Welcome to AK!
 
moparjim said:
I was wondering what these speakers are worth/if they're worth replacing/re skinning the woofers?
Click to expand...
As the others have noted, those ESS speakers are good and well worth refoaming the woofers. Once you have them up and singing, you'll have a great start to a great sounding system to enjoy your favorite tunes for.

The speaker in behind the ESS in the second picture, if it's what I think it is, is a nice, smooth sounding speaker that's worth listening to.

- JP
 
thank you

easy there, I worded it wrong. only the little jvc's distorted, there wasn't much point to put it past that point, i was keeping my ear to the ESS's to listen to them in depth. thanks for your comments. The amp and JVC's are setup in my garage right now which is good enough for me right now. I plan on re-foaming the woofers and putting them in my leisure room.:thmbsp:
 
Charivari said:
The speaker in behind the ESS in the second picture, if it's what I think it is, is a nice, smooth sounding speaker that's worth listening to.

- JP
Click to expand...

yes, i was wondering about that one, too. that looks like a dynaco speaker. if that's the case, i'd burn the jvc and use dyna.
 
Its even clearer that its a Dyanco, probably an A 25, when you look at the one the JVC is standing on. One of the most highly regarded bang for the buck speakers ever, and I am not alone in thinking it an appealling speaker by any standard.
 
Congrats on a couple of nice speakers (the ESS and the Dynacos) and welcome to AK.

Careful driving any of those into distortion- can be hard and expensive to find parts.

I wish you well with them!
 
I've had those for 10 years

Restored them one year ago, now my dream system is complete. Marantz Powered. Ask me what you want to know. Vocal and lead guitar are stunning. Have in a big room and cannot walk past without listening about 3 hours a night. I can send pix and links where these go for 1500. to 2500. on ebay unrestored. I listen to B+W 802s regularly and I like the ESS in my house better.:banana:
 
Done some digging on the amt-3s

I am not at my home so pix will have to come in a few days.
The tweeters are very fast. The cones are slow in comparisin. I've read that the woofers were the low point anyway, and by pulling them out, you can see that they are cheap. I settled on four new 10" vifas and two new mids. I spent a lot on the drivers. Slow bass problem solved. The reconed originals sounded tubby to me in the sealed cabinets. I had the crossovers reconditioned also. BIG difference after what, 30 years? The mid only is bass reflex. The heils response starts at 700Hz! Take half the stuffing out to unblock the port. I have one of mine behind a baby grand piano (damn waf) and trust me, piano sounds like piano. Be very carefull with putting distortion in the heils. Replace the old fuses with matching originals only. They only protect the heils. These are something you keep for life. This weekend, they're doing a party for 80! Wish the three of us luck. And show them respect, they replaced my L100s.
 
Ht

I read about a guy who has four AMT3s on a HT Receiver. Says with eight 10" woofers, who needs a sub? At my place the wood floor is pretty active too.
A garage might introduce dust and humidity into the heils. Remember when placing these heavyweights that the rear of the heil puts out the same output and probably should be away from the wall.
 
Marantz2270 said:
The mid only is bass reflex.
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Really? Wow. Does the mid/woof have its own subenclosure inside the big box? That's bizarre. But that was ESS.
 
wualta said:
Really? Wow. Does the mid/woof have its own subenclosure inside the big box? That's bizarre. But that was ESS.
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JBL does the same thing, except they use a sealed sub-enclosure for their midbasses. Well now I'm convinced that ESS did produce two versions of the AMT3. One version did not have the port and the other does. I really thought that the few I'd seen with the port were modified. Ya learn something new every day. I've now seen about 5 pairs that are ported over the past year. Rubber surrounds on the midbasses in the ported models too. Welcome to the fold moparjim. So do you have a pair of the ESS AMT3's, or just a single?

Here is a link to check out http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=116397&highlight=ess
 
wualta said:
Really? Wow. Does the mid/woof have its own subenclosure inside the big box? That's bizarre. But that was ESS.
Click to expand...
Tannoy did the same. Their DC drivers have kind of impractically low Q. To be able to obtain any extension from them in a standard box, the options are either a port or an enclosure the size of a refrigerator. Thus, when they were used in three way designs (Buckingham, Dreadnought, etc), the DC mid/treble unit was placed into a ported sub-enclosure inside the larger ported enclosure housing the woofer(s).

Perhaps with the ESS, the driver they wanted had too low of Q to work in a practically sized sub-enclosure, so they went with a bass reflex alignment to make it handle the frequency range they wanted and, likely, to increase efficiency. That's giving them the benefit of the doubt, a former ESS employee I know feels that the Heil designs were all compromised and represent a decrease in quality.

- JP
 
gonzomeep said:
I'm convinced that ESS did produce two versions of the AMT3. One version did not have the port and the other does. I really thought that the few I'd seen with the port were modified. Ya learn something new every day. I've now seen about 5 pairs that are ported over the past year. Rubber surrounds on the midbasses in the ported models too.
Click to expand...
I went back to my photo archive and sure enough, some are ported and some are sealed. But look at the size of that port! Pretty big for a driver that won't even get down into the bass before it hands off to the woofers. Or maybe there's no high-pass filter and it does go into the bass? Weird.

There are apparently two versions of the amt-4 as well.
 
Charivari said:
a former ESS employee I know feels that the Heil designs were all compromised and represent a decrease in quality.
Click to expand...
I think I know who you mean. Well, believe him. Never buy an ESS speaker with a Heil tweeter; in fact, just tell me where the cheap ones are and I'll sweep them out of your way and dispose of them like the trash they are!
 
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