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Opinions: Best Tweeters

CraigVMN said:
Unless you listen exclusively to high frequencies, a tweeter is only a part of the whole. It has to be properly integrated with other drivers, through a crossover, in an enclosure...
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True enough, but the topic of this thread is best tweeter.
 
If we're talking aftermarket, I was VERY pleasantly surprised when I swapped out the dead Philips tweeter in my Pio1980-donated Dynaco A25's with Morel MDT-37's I had bought for another project that didn't pan out.

It took that humble 2 way into rather rare air. There's a thread here on the restoration of those....somewhere.
 
432HzBob said:
EMIT K's for me. R's are not far behind.
Just wired some 1970's ESS Heil's into some Klipsch KG2's and it's light years ahead of the Klipsch "dome-horn" tweeter.
The Heil's have a sound very similar to infinity Emit's but reach a little lower in the spectrum
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I will have to give them a listen, I am looking for a couple more pairs for my house. It's easy to get stuck on classic Infinity, lol wanting to branch out a little bit.
 
onwardjames said:
If we're talking aftermarket, I was VERY pleasantly surprised when I swapped out the dead Philips tweeter in my Pio1980-donated Dynaco A25's with Morel MDT-37's I had bought for another project that didn't pan out.

It took that humble 2 way into rather rare air. There's a thread here on the restoration of those....somewhere.
Click to expand...
Nice! It's hard to explain just what it is sometimes that makes your body hair stand up on end from a great tweeter, I like to call it magic.. :)
 
432HzBob said:
EMIT K's for me. R's are not far behind.
Just wired some 1970's ESS Heil's into some Klipsch KG2's and it's light years ahead of the Klipsch "dome-horn" tweeter.
The Heil's have a sound very similar to infinity Emit's but reach a little lower in the spectrum
Click to expand...

I just bought a pair of Klipsch 3.2's for a great price. I really wanted to like them and did like aspects of the speaker. Very upfront, with certain types of music I like that. but the high end was just ok, and the lack of midrange had me listing them for sale. P am going to try some other Klipsch speakers soon however
 
I would ask: What tweeter is so good, you usually start wondering what other speakers can have better highs by using them? :rflmao:
EMIT junkies have :idea: wondered it forever

Alot of it depends on how much range a tweeter handles high and low..
The most important and detailed parts of any music is in the tweeter range.. vocals, horns, cymbals etc.
Some tweeters handle only a small part of that range ie: JBL Cat Eyes, HP-100 tweeter and those ubiquitous 3/4" Peerless and even old paper tweeters like fried eggs that do sound fabulous
Horns and ribbons can handle a much larger piece of the sound. A good midrange and crossover is beneficial piece of it all as well.
For now I simply stunned by how enormous this old Heil AMT sounds replacing the stock Klipsch dome "horns"
The original 8" driver is all stock and and blends reasonably well, just needing a 2Ohm resistor in the XO to cut a few DB's between them.
P1090829.JPG
This old Heil turned "meh" 1989 speakers with great cabinets into "YEA!" speakers with one of my convinced, now-favorite "tweeter" :banana:
It has the famous Heil Hump @ 2-4k but an EQ smoothes it out real nice..
 
432HzBob said:
I would ask: What tweeter is so good, you usually start wondering what other speakers can have better highs by using them? :rflmao:
EMIT junkies have :idea: wondered it forever

Alot of it depends on how much range a tweeter handles high and low..
The most important and detailed parts of any music is in the tweeter range.. vocals, horns, cymbals etc.
Some tweeters handle only a small part of that range ie: JBL Cat Eyes, HP-100 tweeter and those ubiquitous 3/4" Peerless and even old paper tweeters like fried eggs that do sound fabulous
Horns and ribbons can handle a much larger piece of the sound. A good midrange and crossover is beneficial piece of it all as well.
For now I simply stunned by how enormous this old Heil AMT sounds replacing the stock Klipsch dome "horns"
The original 8" driver is all stock and and blends reasonably well, just needing a 2Ohm resistor in the XO to cut a few DB's between them.
View attachment 1923088
This old Heil turned "meh" 1989 speakers with great cabinets into "YEA!" speakers with one of my convinced, now-favorite "tweeter" :banana:
It has the famous Heil Hump @ 2-4k but an EQ smoothes it out real nice..
Click to expand...
Hear-Hear! It took long enough for an AMT'er to chime in here.
amt_Silver.jpg
 
Nixxuz said:
I've got a pair of the new production large AMT1's showing up on Wed. Super excited to hear what the fuss is about.
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You will become a convert to the cult of Oskar. The most robotic looking of tweeters is actually the most organic sounding.
The bad part is that after listening to anything else, I have to take a quick listen to the Heils to avoid falling into a funk.

amt_Black.jpg
 
Well I doubt it's the "best", but my favorite is the 033 in the JBL L150, as well as other JBLs such as the L110 and the L40. It's a soft-dome tweeter, and I really love it. It occupies a space between the paper-cone JBL tweeters that came before, and the metal-dome tweeters that came afterward, and better than both in terms of my personal preferences.
 
Porkloin said:
Hear-Hear! It took long enough for an AMT'er to chime in here.
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Actually, Heather mentioned them back in post #18.

I agree with the numerous posters suggesting that there really is no best.

That said, some fine examples have been mentioned, ADS domes, EPI inverted domes, Emits, Heil AMT's. I guess i would refer to them as among the best tweeters.

What's the best tire?
 
Hah... I actually have or have had many mentioned here. EPI inverted domes, EMIT, JBL titanium, and some Morel soft domes (as replacements in Wharfedale W70Ds).

Does this mean I have to find some Heils now?
 
kfa888 said:
6 foot tall Magnapans.

I also enjoy the inverted dome EPI/Genesis tweets.
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To be more specific it's the true Ribbon tweeter in Magnepans.

The best tweeters I've ever heard were in Hill Plasmatronic speakers. There is no moving mass. They modulate a Plasma to produce sound. Plasma tweeters are nothing new. The DuKane Ionovac was introduced in 1956. Currently some models from Lansch (Germany) have plasma tweeters.

I would place the big Heils and the Magnepan true Ribbon a close second, to Plasma drivers. Most other ribbons and ESL tweeters are IME/O the next step down. IME no conventional voice coil driven speaker comes anywhere close to Plasma, Ribbon, Heil (including the copies frequently called folded ribbon) or ESL's.


Nelson Pass demoed a full range massless speaker at a CES many years ago. It was an amp killer, required enormous amounts of power and produced large amounts of Ozone. Nelson was subsequently hospitalized for Ozone poisoning. Picture below.

Nelson Pass massless speaker.jpg
 
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