The Single Driver , Single Ended & Vintage Amp Era.
The LS35a as marvelous as it was had its limitations. Its a small speaker with 4.5" woofers while very impressive in what it does, its still a small speaker with limited capabilities.
For one, I was looking for more dynamics, more "out of the box" experience and looking for more 00mph.
I know many LS35a here will disagree with my opinion, but I will not argue with anyone here that its a very fine speaker. If I have an extra room for it in my store, i wouldn't mind having another pair. I have deep respect for them having lived with them for almost 2 years. (2 years is kinda long in my vocabulary).
In one of my visits to Manila, I met Tony Boy as we were discussing about his interests in the Spendor speakers and Rel subwoofers. Tony suggested to look at the single driver speakers seriously, specifically the ones made by Louis Chocos of Omega Loudspeakers.
Tony owned a customize pair of Omegas with the 8" fostex drivers. He was telling me about his positive experience with them that led me to investigate it further. It was also by coincidence that a few weeks later I had to leave for the US.
During my visit in San Francisco, I met up with my friend, Gary, another staring audiophile, who took me to various hi end stores. We passed by the saloons who carried Wilson Audio, Spectral Gears , CJ's, Levinsons and others . Most of these hi end stores are usually are by appointment ONLY!! but Gary had some persuasion that allowed the store owner to let us audition their gears w/o prior appointment, after all, a man wearing in suite and wearing Ferragamo shoes looks very respectable (though, the car we drove in is a 10 year old Toyota pickup that is parked 1 mile away from the store).
"Hi, am Gary and this is Ferdie, I have a new place in Hillsborough (a hi end subdivison in SFO with houses starting at $1.5million dollars) and I'd like to listen to these speakers as they match my furniture in my living room, would you be kind to let us hear this one right there." And Gary pointed his hands to the silver Wilson Watt Puppys. The store owner would go, "alright, but just for a few minutes as we are about to close." "well thank you sir". Here's Gary!
After playing two Cd's, Gary and I exchanged notes. "Heck, that wasn't worth $30,000.00 ". the sound is so polished man, artificial, exclaimed Gary. Man, my Polk Audio sounds better than these driven with sansui receiver. " Oh really. hmmmm.
Few minutes later, as we headed out to the door, the store owner goes, "how goes it gentlemen ?". "Oh, the silver WP don't quite match the wooden floor of my dinning set next to my sala, its too silvery, I'd have to bring my wife here for approval. " I'll be back!! " Store owner hands us each a calling card and back to the 1 mile hike were the truck was parked on a Savon parking lot.
Last stop was a store that was based in a house's basement. The store owner was Jacob, shown here with the white shirt. Jacob was very accommodating and gave us a few hours to listen to his set-up. (also on the pictures are the wilson speakers we listened to.)
As the saying goes, "Love at first sight" ,well, the Omegas was love at first audition. Gary and I looked at each other at the first note when the cd hit PLAY. "This is more like it."
The Omega 3r was very dynamic, very out of the box sounding and it was detailed. The midrange very pure but funny but that didn't seem to bother me at first.
Probably the word to describe its sound is "RAW". Its like, music was connected to you directly as these speakers had no crossovers to color anything which I felt was pure sound. No tweeters to hear, just midrange and some hint of highs. Listening to it at Jacob's room was very intoxicating. Me and Gary were just amazed at how much we liked the Omegas better than the Wilson Speakers we heard a few hours back.
As a result of this expedition, i bought a few pairs from Omega and that started the whole venture into single drivers. This is one of those first few moments were I had the opportunity to audition before buying. In normal circumstances its usually buy first then audition but in this case, audition first, then bought. Cool!!
As I learn more about single driver speakers, people usually use single ended triode (SET) with these like 2A3S, 45S OR 300B amps. Take your pick and they will have different flavours. I had the opportunity to use Sun Audios 6V6s and 2A3 amps along with the other amps (more on this). Overall the sound was different from the conventional speakers. With 3watts of Sun Audio SET power, these Omega speakers sounded "hhhhuuugggge", very dynamic and the bass was fast. It the very opposite of the LS3/5s that I lived for quite sometime. It had an addictive character that I really enjoyed in that time period. It wasnt as refine as the LS35s but it was "fun" and "involving". Musical- maybe ?
Before I knew it, I got so gaga into single driver speakers that i wanted something "upgrade" to the Fostex based speakers. The Lowthers were suggested & I went ahead and bought the Lowther based speaker named "rethm-the 3rd". I had the chance to audition these while I was a Jacobs place and I liked them. Definitely a step up from the Omegas.
These speakers arrived at my doorstep in a wooden crate a few months after I ordered them, only to discover that the top part got cracked. I was so disappointed seeing the crack.
My heart sank and "lost interest". As timed went by I discovered that this was a very choosy and quirky speaker. They were not easy to match.They can be very shouty or too thin sounding with certain amps. Cabling them was a bit tricky as they were 98 db sensitive so warm copper basedcables were preferred as they sounded anemic with silver based cables. Positioning was also very difficult as they sounded lightweight when far away from the rear walls. Among the amps I had on disposal at that time, only the Air Tight 300b sounded good on these. But still, it was lacking. In my CD collection, I can play about 5-10% on this system. The Rethm excelled at instrumental music. Guitars was out of this world, along with trumpets, violins was sweet. Anything with fast instrumental transients was very good. However vocals were just not my type of sound, female vocals sounded as if the singer or artist had colds, kinda nasaly or honky sounding. I admit, i moved in too fast with these speakers and I was just too inexperienced at that time to learn their character. Nonetheless after a few weeks of trial and error, they became furniture pieces. They sat in one corner of my store and each time an innocent customers passes by, they look for the opening because they assume it was a "trashcan". I said, oh, no, please don't. The Rethms was among the more disappointing purchases I made in my audio journey.
James, once again adding more gasoline to the fire introduced me to the open baffle system using an Altec 403 driver. This was a relatively inexpensive project that involved buying some plywood, screws and a 403 driver. My friend Vic lent me his pair as he wasn't using it.
Driven with my favorite vintage amp, the Scott 299a El84 based integrated amp. I had a lot of sleepless nights listening to this small system. It was promising considering that i can only play very well about "15-20 cds" out of my 300 cd collection. Therefore, i only had 15 cd's there in that room. Vocals were good, guitars were good, anything simple was very good. Vocals had a certain charm to them. Very natural sounding. My favorites Artist Stacey Kent played a lot of hours in that system.
Coincidentally at this time period of the single driver speakers, again, thanks to James and Dan (tubedude), I got the amusement of vintage amps. At one time in this addictive hobby, i had about 20 vintage amps of different sorts at my disposal. Eico, Fisher, Scott, Dynaco, Bogen, and others I couldn't care to remember. E"pay" as Dan would term Ebay was a very good supplier of those amps. Countless nights were spent bidding at the auctions at Epay. My wife would wonder why at 2 am I would wake up and stare at the computer. " Honey, pls go to bed, I had to watch this bid which ends in 5 minutes. " And this went on for a few weeks. I also spend a lot of time going to the post office waiting for those packages to arrive. It was agony. Once an amp arrives, james and I would meet up to exchange notes.
As cheap as they were at that time with prices ranging from $100 to $400.00, as the saying goes, "nothing is free". Since these vintage amps were old, some of them as old as my parents.
Every now and then, tubes pop in the middle of a session, caps would smoke out all of a sudden fearing that it will destroy my speakers. Static and hum are very common. One channel is louder or weaker than the other. Boy, this was not good. Because of these problems, technicians from Manila were my best friend as well as the freight forwarders. Every week or every few days, I had to send the amps to either Rene or Mang Rod for repair and restorations. When they come back a few days later, another one had to be sent for the same reason.
Eventually I got tired of it , little by little, I started selling them until none was left in my possession. . They were good sounding, they had certain charms in them but I always felt something was missing in them. For one, most of these amps have the Highs rolled off, the mids are there, bass a bit loose. Later did i know that changing the caps, resistors, power supply to boutique parts does improve things significantly. By that time, it was all too late as I sold most of them.
As for the single driver speakers & the open baffle speaker experience, they were marvelous speakers in their own right. They were different from conventional bass reflex speakers. They had their own peculiar beauty and I know of some people here are die-hard fans of these type of speakers and I can understand their point of view. However in my case, while I appreciate their strengths, I couldn't live with their deficiencies. My marriage with the OB's and Single driver speakers was short lived, 6 months tops. Would i ever go back to them ? maybe ? time will tell.
Among the better set-up below is a pair of Proac Tablette Speakers driven with Eico ST40 integrated amp with all Audio Note sourcing. Quite musical!