Wayne Parham, Akhilesh Bajaj, Norman Tracy and Bill Wassilak
Wayne Parham, Jim Denton, Norman Tracy and Bill Wassilak

Jim is a big fan of single driver speakers, and he had some new drivers to hear. His Martin King transmission line speakers were recently loaded with Lowther drivers, which sounded very nice.

Martin King TL speaker with Lowther driver

We listened to this speaker with and without a midrange notch filter. It also had a BSC, which was left in place. Comparison of the Lowther with the notch filter to the same setup without, as one might expect, the speaker was a little strident when the filter was removed. Some thought it more revealing without the notch filter, others thought it too shrill. Again, these are common reactions to Lowthers.

Fred Thompson Voigt Pipes

Jim bought these Voigt pipes from Fred Thompson last year. They use a Fostex driver and sound very nice. Jim later added a pair of "wings", to act as movable baffle extensions. We've all heard these speakers before, so it made a sort of baseline for comparison with Jim's Lowthers in the Martin King boxes. We also listened to several amplifiers through both sets of speakers.

Abraxas Audio "Yellow" amp

Jim bought another Abraxas amp since we'd all seen him last. I always like the colored transformer hoods, and have started naming them by colors. "Yellow" has a very nice sound and a little more power than "Blue", shown below.

Abraxas Audio "Blue" amp

Blue puts out a whopping three-quarter watts in triode mode, something like 1.5 in pentode mode. It's a neat little amp.

Akhilesh's custom 2A3 amp

Akhilesh bought a new SET amplifier based on 2A3 tubes. I thought it sounded good and looked very nice. The chassis is all brushed aluminum with a smart looking solid wood front panel, plain, no knobs or switches. It sounded a little conjested in the mids, but I think it was the slightly throaty sound of the speakers I was hearing, maybe not so much the amp. The speakers sounded great, but it may have been the combination that was a little off. We'll have to try it in some other settings to know for sure.

Jim Denton, Wayne Parham and Bill Wassilak checking out Akhilesh's new amp

It was really great to get together with everyone on Saturday. I think we all wanted to see each other as much as we wanted to check out audio gear, because we hadn't since GPAF in May. We've planned a meeting at Akhilesh's house in December and another at Mark Margiotta's house in January, so we're making up on lost time.

Dan

• http://abraxasaudio.home.att.net/quicklist.html

Good to see there will be Abraxas and Audio Tropic there. I've looked into building some of the amps from Jeff and Erik, specifically the Darling, Spud, and changing The Musical Machine to 6AQ5's on the output. I've got to come now.

First off thanks to Jim for hosting us and congratulations on your lovely new home. I want your Norton.

OK, enough pretending to be normal, let’s switch into full on audio geek mode.

For me the highlights of the meeting were talking shop with everybody and hearing Jim’s new Lowthers. After years of reading about Lowthers finally getting to hear a pair was a rare treat. I must say they largely lived up to their billing. Our initial listening was with the mandated (for a Martin King design) baffle step correction LRC circuit. In that state I thought they sounded very nice indeed. I commented this is really working and with the against type bass reflex enclosure and a Lowther! Once again showing the value of ignoring conventional wisdom and trying something different. Not a hint of the ‘Lowther shout’ we all read about. Then a group of angry torch carrying villagers arrived at the gates. After breaching the mote and battering in the gate they descended on the BSC boards and made off with the capacitor part of the circuit. Now the Lowthers sounded like the turbo and NOS had engaged. The reproduction exhibited lightening fast dynamics and a unique musical presence. Now one could really hear what all the excitement is about and why so many individuals worldwide have expended so many resources looking for the perfect Lowther implementation. At times it went a little over the top, something was now allowed to ‘zing’ at us. With just a little tweaking (or experimenting with a back horn?) and this could be something very special indeed.

A couple of notes to Jim related to our discussions.

The smooth bend back horn we were discussing is by Peter Van Vegchel and can be found here:
http://www.audiocraftersguild.com/Xtreme/xtreme.htm
scroll to bottom or here:
http://www.audiohobbyist.com/projects/fostexhorn.htm

Peter Van Vegchel has moved on to front Oris horns as seen here:
http://www.diy-systems.com/index.html?lang=en-uk&target=d15.html

While on diy-systems.com check out their new Quasar MkII DIY system. I have some pictures snagged off the web of this system sporting Lowther or AER drivers rather than the Fostex shown in the above link.
http://www.diy-systems.com/index.html?lang=en-uk&target=d84.html

Thanks again for the enjoyable afternoon!

Norman Tracy

"We listened to this speaker with and without a midrange notch filter. It also had a BSC, which was left in place. Comparison of the Lowther with the notch filter to the same setup without, as one might expect, the speaker was a little strident when the filter was removed. Some thought it more revealing without the notch filter, others thought it too shrill. Again, these are common reactions to Lowthers."

I am confused. From your description, it sounds like there was both a notch filter and a BSC filter. Can somebody tell me the values and layout of the filters since I have not seen this arrangment? What specifically was removed? I probably should know this already, but which EX driver was used? Just want to make sure I understand the set-up when reviewing the comments about the design so that I learn and make the next design even better.

Thanks in advance,

Martin

Martin