"Keith G" wrote in message
...

"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....





Mine were very like those - including the Coles 4001 supertweeter
that I added to the originals. (A friend built thme but when he
got married and moved into a small terraced house there was no
room for them. I paid £50 but the drive units at that time were
worth £130 so I don't think I did too badly?)


--
Woody

harrogate three at ntlworld dot com