"Woody" wrote in message
...
"Keith G" wrote


Stupid, thick, blurry *pistonic* bass may well keep the Chavs happy, but
it has no place in a decent 'audio system' in my book!





Wah-hey! Support for once.


Well. there's more - see below!



There is one 'application' where good bass is worthwhile and where it does
carry - (pipe) organ music.


Yes, that was on my mind when I made my reply but I feel it's a case of more
attempting to replicate the 'acoustic' than simply play the notes - IOW, you
can listed to Bach's T&F on a Roberts radio and enjoy it!



Until the decision was made some years ago that they were 'too big now' we
used to have a pair of home built transmission line speakers on the Dr.
Arthur Bailey design published in Wireless World in 1972 - the nearest
commercial equivalent was the IMF TLS80. Line up was KEF B139 and B110
with (in my case) T27 although the original design was for the (then no
longer obtainable) T15. They had an ease of listening that was beguiling
albeit at the expense of stereo staging.


You mean like the ones I had - in this pic:

http://www.moirac.adsl24.co.uk/IMFandothers.JPG

:-)


The place where their bass ability really showed up was on pipe organ
pedals. I had a sampler disc - I think it might have been Denon - which
had a recording of Bach played on the organ of Limburg cathedral. There
was one sequence where there was a descending scale played on pedal woods
couple to pedal reeds; you could hear every note - clearly - all the way
down without resonance, 'bloom,' or rattle - it was fantastic. For a short
while I had a borrowed pair of Cambridge R50's which used the same drive
units in a transmission line-ish structure - they are the only other
speakers that I have ever heard that could reproduce that cadence with the
same detail.



You say 'at the expense of imaging' - I was always quite impressed with the
imaging, expecially for a cabinet so big. Nothing like the Fidelios in the
same pic though.



My speakers since then have been Spendor BC1's and (now) KEF Q5 (or is it
Q55?) and neither have that ability to produce the
depth+clarity+'musicality' of the TL. :-((


Your 'beguiling' is a good descriptive - they were an absolute delight at
low, 'past midnight' levels I remember which made it difficult to shut the
system down sometimes! (I'm sure I said that here, at the time!)

That pic is an interesting one - it shows some of the stuff I still have
which are keepers and some which has been passed along:

Keepers: 2A3 SET in the rack, replinthed Lencos, Jericho speakers with PM6C
Lowthers.

Gone: Technics power amp (and the matching control amp), IMFs, Chinese 300B
SET (on the speaker).

- that was when I was *trying stuff for myself* and exploring possibilities
rather than yapping about stuff I had only read about or going on hearsay
from others....