refurbishing a set of Quad 57s

[HiFiFan]

Amazing stuff Fran. To have the electronics and mechanical (carpentry) skills, nice.

[Ken Moreland]

Inspiring work Fran, keep me a front seat at the next meet-up. I love the bit where you hand some "Southern Yellow pine to hand".
KM

[Fran]

LOL - I know. I had some left over from doing the skirting and architraves (still not finished!) in the house.

Paulb - thanks kindly. I'm going to trick about with the angles and positioning first and when I'm happy with that then I'll move on to the amp. I'm also going to try the Naksa amp if I can prise it out of jkenys hands for a few hours to try out. That was really really nice with a single set of quads, so it would be interesting to see how it goes with the stacks.



Fran

[dubber]

Nice work Fran - I hadn't realised you'd refurbished them when you posted in the other thread!

[Derek]

I blagged an invite to Fran’s last night, I had to hear these.

First up they are huge, standing about 6’6” in their bear feet.

Fran is currently driving them with a wee 10-watt DIY valve amp that can’t be delivering any more than 6-watts in reality.

The sound, sourced from his hard drive via the squeezebox was at first a bit muddy/veiled/loose not what I know 57s can deliver, but lots of it, much more of everything (I’ll get back to this in a bit).

Switching to vinyl changed the sound quality, giving sweeter vocals, cleaner guitars but a bit edgy, the background was still somewhat muddied and a surprisingly light weak bass coupled to undefined instruments pointed to some tweaking needed in the phono stage. Fran has done a lot of work with this and it’s very nearly there.

We changed back to the Squeezebox, and up to this I hadn’t realised the amp was operating from its 4 Ohm output, Fran put the setting to 8 Ohms and Snap the Synergy was suddenly there giving the ESL sound I’m familiar with, open and effortless.

So what do the stacked 57s give over the norm, well, MORE, more of the instrument, more timbre, more sense of the recording venue, vocals flesh-out the vocalist. At no stage did they go deeper or higher or sweeter or …
All the usual attributes associated with the 57s were still there, but with more dept, it’s a difficult thing to describe, but, to use a visual analogy, if you watch a 2D move then look at the same in HD, or going from 2D to 3D (I know some will disagree).

Fran has the them mounted slightly, tilted back, and while I sat in the sweet spot he gently tilted one of the speakers about the equivalent distance toward me, immediately the speaker disappeared from my hearing radar, the sound from centre out to that side was seamless. I did the same for Fran and he agreed this was better, I feel there will be some changes applied to speaker alignment sometime soon.

I can’t wait to get back to the sweet spot in front of stacked Quads, maybe being driven with a more controlling amp, the bottom end needs better grip and more defined instrument separation.

We finished up with some Cuban Choral (The Creole Choir of Cuba, “Tande-La”), this system was made for his kind of music, very real vocal and range, great power and feeling, an in-the-room experience to a frightening degree. The hair on me back took some time to flatten back down.

Fran keep at it they will become the yardstick for music systems to get measured, mine included.

[Ivor]

It sounds like an ongoing project. Let the tweaking begin!

Are you saying that the speakers sounded better leaning forward? I've heard this opinion before but in my experience a slight tilt back produced a more coherent soundstage. Of course it's all trial and error and every system/room brings new variables. With ES Ls we learn a little more every time we adjust them.

[Fran]

Yes - all that Derek says is true. As I told him, I'm not convinced that I have them set up right yet. I knew I would have to play with the rake - which is kinda hard to do on your own!! Also, I wanted to play a bit with them with that set-up to get used to them. Then I would know better whats an improvement and whats not.

So today I have fitted some new risers and stabilisers* to have them a tiny bit off dead vertical. I haven't had the peace or time to listen to them that way yet - but later tonight!!

When I'm more confident that I have that bit right, I'll be swapping in an amp with more juice. The first port of call will be the Pass F5.... and after that I will be ahem, trying out other peoples amps!! High on the list are Ivor's EL34 and Derek's 6L6 airtights and maybe also jkeny's Naksa. The Naksa in particular sounded wonderful with the single quads - in fact one of the best sounding amps ever I heard.

I expect to be back in the area of diminishing returns after that.... but who knows!! Its an evolving journey no doubt!



Fran


* translates as a couple of lumps of 2 x 1 under the rear legs and a couple of concrete blocks to keep them from falling forward!

[Ivor]

So today I have fitted some new risers and stabilisers* to have them a tiny bit off dead vertical.

If I remember correctly (this happens less and less these days) the Quad 988s (latest version of the 63s) left the facory with a five degree rake backwards.

[james]

Hi Fran,

Have you seen this ...

http://www.pinkfishmedia.net/forum/show ... hp?t=86560

called "Building Stacked Quads" on pinkfishmedia

james

[Fran]

Yeah - I've posted in that thread..... theres a lot of talk out there about stacked quads, but few enough who have played around with angles and positioning etc. Probably because a lot of this was done before the advent of t'internet.