Halfin
New Member
I got lucky and bought these LS3/5A homemade speakers from the 70s. The person I bought it from had inherited it from family who ran a HiFi shop in the 70s. As they sold KEF speakers they had access to KEF parts and BBC papers I believe. Though it seems to also have some resemblance to the CS1A, a kit from KEF that looks almost identical to the LS3/5A. It uses the same drivers. Though it has 8 ohms which there seems to be a bit of discussion in the forums on whether they really existed. These are by default not certified by bbc so I have no idea if they sound anything close to the real deal. Tho the way the cabinet and filling is put together looks exactly like the pictures of ls3s on the interneFixed a dented tweeter with some tape, but both the dustcaps on the woofers have cuts on them. I messaged falcon acoustics asking about replacement dust caps. They said I'd have to replace the whole woofer. It will definitely be considered in the feature when I have more money. But for now I will try to replace them later myself and see what happens.
I played them on my fathers naim stereo with a seperate power supply and preamp. The source was an LP12 vinyl player. The speakers where a bit "shouty" which could make them a little uncomfortable to listen to over time. When I plugged them into my own yamaha CA 810 the woofers distorted the sound, the same happened with the Nait 2 I tested them on. I tried recapping them after that.
The crossover is a KEF model SP1017 which seems to have been used in a rogers ls3/5a, one of the earliest models from the 70s I think. However I cant find a lot of info and this was just something I got from an expired listing on some identical crossovers online. I replaced the caps with Janzten NP electrolytics. At worst some of the caps was 0.10uF under spec, but I presumed that would be fine. In the future I might put a few of the old capacitors back to see if they can bring more vintage and warm sound. Especially around the tweeter.
The woofer control became a lot better, I could now play them on my yamaha and the nait 2. However it still had that shoutyness and is way too forward. When playing them on my yamaha ca 810 and switching between the ls3s and my KEF C30s the difference was night and day. The C30s made me feel like I was in the room with the musicians and the ls3 was more like a wall. But I can still feel how great the tweeters perfom with percussion so I know there's potential.
I understand that these speakers were made to be matched with some older tube amps that tended to have some very sweet sounds so the ls3s got a more rounded sound because of this. But I hope there is an alternative to this. Tube amps are nice but they are too impractical for me and way too expensive. There seems to be people out there who has gotten nice results with the nait 2 and some who dont like the combo. So I am really wondering if this is either a problem surrounding the fact that these are homemade speakers and not licensed by BBC or that this is just the difficulty of matching the LS3s. I am toying with the idea of thrifting some old LEAK 30 amp on my trip to Britain this summer. But then I need to know if its a good match. Is what I have experienced the pure BBC sound that all the enthusiasts talk about or do I have to match the right amp? Or perhaps the speakers just arent right.
Thanks for the expertise!
