Deang

Don't get me wrong, they sound great, and since they are in the general family hang out zone -- they will never go much over 90db anyway. Debbie and me watched 'The Bourne Identity' last night, and the Cornwalls kicked some serious butt. Fabulous.

Hmmm. I should probably duct tape the other one just to be on the safe side.

It's about time. I never want to see a Reference speaker in Best Buy or Circuit City. It is totally unbecoming for them. You guys say you are the "value leader". It is important that you really believe this, because to a consumer like me -- YOU ARE the value leader. No one touches you. No one. I recently bought a set of Cornwalls. They are nice, but they are not in the same class as the RF-7s. I will take a lot of heat for this position -- so be it. Over the last two years, I have driven my RF-7's with several different circuit types: Solid State, Pentode, Triode, Ultralinear, and SET. The RF-7's always respond favorably. I just finished building a set of crossovers using designer parts in an attempt to squeeze the last ounce of performance out of them. I have made this offer to Bob before, and I'll offer it again. Pay me $65,000 a year, and within two years -- I'll have every high-end retailer in the midwest selling them.

Sweet. Trade you my Cornwalls for your amp.

I think I might be living in Odds and Mods for a while. The Cornwalls are a wonderful sounding speaker -- to a point. That point would be about 90db. Up until about 9 o'clock position on the volume knob, I have a set of speakers that give me everything I could possibly want in a speaker. They are crisp, tight, airy, and smooth. There are times I am listening, where the sound is so similiar to the RF-7's it's spooky. Excellent in every way. Beyond this point, the angelic character of the Cornwalls is replaced by that of a howling demon. Where the RF-7 maintains the integrity of its signature regardless of SPL -- the Cornwalls quickly degrade into an incoherent mess. I am however very pleased with their performance with movies, and they certainly seem to excel in this area. I now understand why most run these with 3.5 watts.

...no preamp yet. It's killing me. Edmond, send that Cary -- I'm dying over here!

For a second there I thought old Hofy grabbed something else.

Mike, How much 'rope' should one use on the sqawker? Cornwalls sound very good to a point. After that 'point' they are quite horrid sounding. I'm getting ready to post on 2-channel regarding this.

This thing? Couple of hundred dollars more and he can have one built by 'Jeff'. Damn, that thing is ugly.

What you say, I for the most part know. Don't laugh, but I REALLY want to hear these amps on the DQ's. I still haven't discounted the Joplin -- I will probably wait till late spring or early summer before I make any other decisions. No money for a while.

Sorry I didn't email you or something, but I've been busy as hell. Until recently, I haven't even posted anything substantial on the forum. I just got the Cornwalls on Saturday. See the thread, "Compliments of Ken Krandazzo". I did post the following at the "Tubes DIY" forum at the Asylum after your initial comment regarding the use of quad output tubes per amp. I've got my eye on a set of mint Quicksilver M60 monoblocks. Each amp uses four EL-34's. When I related this possible choice to someone, he remarked in effect that four output tubes per channel would be "grainy as hell." He said I should stay with tube offerings utilizing two tubes per channel. I only received two responses: "With good matched quads of tubes, there is no inherent reason that I know of which would cause grain." /Jim Carlon "A push pull, parallel arrangement should allow a lower turn ratio transformer and much more power before the onset of clipping. Sounds like one of the guys from the rubber room ward (TUBES)."//James Guillebeau However, the choice was primarily made for me. I couldn't afford to keep the Apollos, I had less than $1000 to spend, and I definitely needed something with which I could power and test the DQ's with. This next set of DQ's are almost finished, and though I haven't said much about them -- I've done some interesting things with the crossover, and I'm looking forward to hearing them as well. When it is all said and done, I will make a decision regarding the Quicksilvers. Depending on what I find when I pull the bottom plate off, I may opt for modding them. I have already talked to Craig, who has agreed to step me through the process of converting them to triode. I looked at the several other amps: A nice CV-55, but the seller would not respond to my emails. I had a bee-line on a CV-60 as well, but the bidding went over my affordibility level. Horn Monos were there as well, but sold before I could jump on them. At any rate, after this round with the DQ's -- the amp situation will be up in the air again. I will in all probablily lean towards modding the Quicksilvers. It's time I learn a thing or two about amps, and I think I might fling some solder around these. Of course, if they sound disappointing -- they'll be drop kicked by UPS as soon as I can sell them.

Leo, I got a feeling you might not believe in this kind of thing -- but it's kind of too early to tell. So far, it seems to be a fairly neutral cable. It's certainly smoother sounding than the 14 gauge stranded I was using Tuesday. I won't do any critical listening on this system until tomorrow night. I'm just letting things burn and settle in for now. Playing "Blue Guitar" by the Moody Blues right now. Treble is smooth and extended with an absence of grain. This is pretty much the most I expect from any cable I use. Slight shifts in signature don't bug me, and after few CD's -- I pretty much get used to whatever is going on. For the most, I listen for grain and strain. The Goertz passes this test. Very smooth. The acid test is when I dump some power into the speakers. Must wait for that. You might find the information at the Alphacore site of interest. What we are looking at here is a somewhat different animal. Low inductance, HIGH capacitance, and very low impedance. The higher capacitance drops the impedance closer to what the amps and speakers deal with. Whether this is true or not beats me. However, I'm a sucker for technobabble. Characteristic Impedance The degree of distortion along a loudspeaker cable depends on its resistance ( R ), inductance ( L ) and capacitance ( C ). The square root of the ratio L/C is termed Characteristic Impedance, and is a quality inherent in a cable, dependent on its geometry and materials, but not dependent on its length. The characteristic impedance of the Goertz MI cables in the order of 2 to 4 ohms closely matches the impedance of loudspeakers. Almost all other speaker cables have characteristic impedance ranging from 50 to 200 ohms, a mismatch which causes distortion due to signal reflections. Impedance matching primarily improves the clarity of the highs and upper mid-range, but many users have also experienced improvements in the lower mid-range. The cause seems to be that signal reflections caused by impedance mismatch enter the feedback loop of many amplifiers and disturb their ability to reproduce faithfully even lower frequency signals.

Oh Crap!!

Yes, I'm using the 15 AWG 'HT' cable. It's a perfect fit. With the exception of the AWG rating and white exterior, it's identical to the M series. I knew this stuff would be magic when I ran across it, and it is. And yes, I ordered it through their website. Instead of calling it 'HT cable', which is tacky as hell -- they should have called it 'cables for old stuff'.

New cables breaking in, and want to run some heat on those new coupling caps and tubes as well. Actually, I need to run everyone out of the freaking house for a couple of hours so I can blow all the crap out of my ears.

The nice thing about the terminal blocks is that they are very low mass -- which is great for tube amps. A great solution is the Goertz cable. Just drill a hole through the cable, split the sheathing away, scape the film from around the hole, screw in -- and never have to 'screw' with 'em again. $84 gets you 25'.

Tired of fighting those terminal screws on your McIntosh and vintage tube amps? Fun huh?

Pretty funny. You had to insist to speak to him? I just call and ask for "Dennis" -- and he gets on the phone. This is one person I absolutely cannot imagine being rough, sour, or rude. Was the 90 with the 6SN7's a problem -- or just your particular preamp?

If I have three strands of 22 AWG wire, and twist them together -- what is the final 'AWG'?

Thank you Leo, coming from you -- that means much to me. Did Chris make it over yesterday? What did he think? You didn't let him touch the wicker did you?

About right. Throw in shipping and they're home for close to $3K. Of course, it is said that not all K-horns are created equally -- as some supposedly sound better than others. I was recently told about a 200Hz midbass resonance problem with the 15 incher and bass bin. Any truth to this? The jist is that the midbass response of the K-horn is somewhat inarticulate.

Good eye Mark. Everything is extremely secure -- except the resistors, which I suspend off of the board so they can dissipate heat. You are the first person to mention this. Everyone else has told me to get them off the board. Hmmm. Probably not a problem though. The board will be hot glued to a 1" thick pad of acoustic foam, which is then hot glued to one of the window pane cross-braces in the cabinet. They will be exposed to acoustic vibration -- but mechancial vibration will be just about nil. I'll post pictures of what this looks like tomorrow morning.

Just two. This one is in the basement. Basically the family hang out area. Music and movies. I have another one upstairs. Well, right now it's just two RF-7's. Looks like it will end up being the modded RF-7's, Edmond's Cary SLP-90/4, and a pair of ultralinear, EL-34 based Quicksilver M-60's. I called Mike Sanders of Quicksilver yesterday, and he says he used between 12 and 14 db of feedback on these. I forgot to ask about the pole filter thing. Oh well, who cares? They were mint, and all I could afford right now. I'm sure they'll do nicely. I wanted some mint Horn Monos, but someone beat me to them. At any rate, I really kind of need the extra power right now because I'm almost done with this second set of DQ's, and I need something with balls to test them with. When I'm all done, I'll either keep them or sell them -- depending on what I think about them.

I think the Scott and Cornwalls are a perfect marriage. I've only been doing low level listening to this point, but so far -- I'm extremely pleased with the combination. Craig did his usual magic on the 299b. Coupling caps replaced with the Russian film/oils, replacement of drifting resistors, yanked a bad can, and then added some power supply capacitance for his fellow headbanger. I'm sure he will elaborate, since I know amps about as well as I know...uh...amps.

I built these with the help of Leo, who taught me how to trace out a PCB and read his schematic. Overall, I'm happy with the job I did. I didn't have the proper standoffs for the multiple contact points for the wire. I made them using lead free silver solder with a higher melting point than the Cardas I used to actually solder the speaker wires with. I pinched two together, set them on the back of one of the PCB's, and melted them together. The wire is 14 AWG silver coated stranded copper. It was the best I could do with the money I had left. It will have to do for now. Inductors were custom wound by Madisound. Inductance values are dead on, but the DCR's are slightly off. Only talking 10ths of an ohm here, so I should be O.K. We'll see. If this doesn't work out, I'll wind some myself with 23 gauge, instead of the 22 gauge Madisound used. This will bring the DCR's up to the original spec. Should be interesting. As far as my "earbleeder" comments of the past, I can only say I couldn't have been more wrong. Of course, I realized this after having the Heresies in the house. The RF-7's ARE the pinnacle of sound as far as I'm concerned. They fit in with my ears perfectly. Now, I was going to save this -- but I will say it now. The cat is out of the bag. The similairity in signatures between the Cornwalls and RF-7's are striking. I can guarantee you that Klipsch compared the prototype RF-7's to the Cornwalls every step of the way. Mr. Gassel? Would you care to comment?