82 Cornwalls

My 1982 Cornwalls have the serial number stamped in the wood on one side.

2 (or more) subs is not about more capability for music, it's about better. With Fortes it's like you have 3. :-)

Nice! Did you consider getting two S/812s?

Ad said HEI

Have you modified the crossovers? The ones pictured are Heresy HIE right?

Post 14 type and post 17 source https://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/my-restored-la-scala-are-finally-home-before-and-after-pics.1049638/

@Jeff frantz Speaker A - L & R and B - L & R are just 2 amplifier channels so left on A and right on B is not changing anything.

Guitar amp world where some purposely overdrive the amp for compression, an effect for creating music.

Different opinions are amusing at times. I really enjoy tube amps with digital/CDs. @Cacti Are you a guitar player?

You can find a used Staco for $100 or less. I looked a lot and wasn't sure how much I would use one since a friend has a variac, but finally got one for $35-$40? that works great.

He said they are on Jan 6th.

From the spec page: "1.5 volt input sensitivity (can be used without a preamplifier if using a high voltage source with a volume control" I don't write them, I just search and reply with the info I find.

1.5 volt according to the specs. https://aricaudio.com/products.php?product=SPR300BSET#desc

@GravityBored Your comments sound very familiar. I have a pair of '82 Cornwalls that I bought in the summer of 2022 and had listening to almost ever day for a year. A friend had a pair of '83 La Scala Industrials that had been sitting mostly unused for a couple of years (or more) that needed some cosmetic work, so I brought them to my house last summer ('23) to do the work. When I finished I hooked them up positioned in front of my CWs and put my chair back a few more feet. The sound I heard is like you describe concerning the tunnel effect, it was terrible with all the music coming from between the speakers. I listened the next day and the next day and all of a sudden the width made a dramatic change with soundstage becoming very wide, it was quite unexpected. The only thing I could think of that caused the change was my ears/brain getting used to and adjusting to, I will just let JA from Stereophile explain it from his measurements of the AL5 La Scala: "This can be seen in fig.3, which shows the La Scala's step response on the tweeter axis. All three drive units are connected in positive acoustic polarity, but the tweeter's output arrives first at the microphone. The output of the midrange unit doesn't arrive at the microphone for another 1.5ms, while the woofer's output starts to arrive 2ms after that. Although the arrivals of all three horn outputs are within the ear's tolerance for arrival time difference (footnote 2), such behavior could interfere somewhat with stereo imaging precision." This may have nothing at all to do with the dramatic change, but is the only thing I could think of that might have caused it. After that initial time the soundstage has always been more normal and similar to what I have experienced with various speakers in this same space over 30 years. The midrange horn on the LS is much deeper than the CW1. One other thing happened, the owner complained about the bass and wondered if something was wrong with the woofers. When I first hooked up just the bottoms (I did the work needed on them first) they didn't sound very good to me, so I played bass heavy music through them for several days to loosen up the driver/spider and they soon started to sound better.

No longer for sale.

Only about reading and responding to your posts being a waste of my time.

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It has been sitting unused for years? I would have to plug it in and play something through it for a while (not necessarily even listening to it) before I could make a judgement. Not saying it will make a difference, but just what I would do. Also fwiw I have what I feel is a very neutral 6922 tube preamp that just seems to add something positive with my tube amplifiers whether the gain is needed or not, but especially so with amps that don't have a super high input sensitivity. I'm not familiar enough with 45 tubes to know how much drive they need, but I have seen pictures of these amplifiers with 2 small driver tubes instead of just 1 like yours.

Hope it works well for you (I have been pondering one of them myself), but as someone that has owned a lot of tube amplifiers and heard many more, I will say not to judge all tube amplifiers from one example.

@revrseat70 Are you going to do any mods?

Some small boards and point to point.

Compared to what? At all SPL levels? smh

You probably have me on ignore, but I mentioned a few posts up that output impedance is cut in half with 2 paralleled tubes. Half output impedance = double damping factor. In my experience paralleled tubes also give the impression that the tubes have been working out at the gym and yet still retain their SE like nimbleness.

Dick Olsher famously remarked that “The first watt is the most important watt.” This sentiment has also been expressed by others as “Who cares what an amplifier sounds like at 500 watts if it sounds like crap at one watt?” With this in mind, I created First Watt in 1998 as a "kitchen-table" effort, exploring unusual low power amplifiers with an emphasis on sound quality.

I was listening to some jazz the other day and was curious, so I got the SPL meter out and did some calculations. My average power was @ 1/20 of a watt.