Post by dsjr on Apr 27, 2022 12:22:36 GMT
I maintain the looks are deliberate for old fogeys like me who remember (and even sold in various versions) the originals. No doubt the performance will be better as the originals used the than 'new thing' polyprop cones (proven since to be too soft and self absorbing) and a tweeter that was good then but not as good as modern ones. Henry used to tweak and tweak during production so each batch varied a bit - that won't be the case now
I agree the new ES14 is just a monika on a totally new design that doesn't even look like the originals. The original tweeter in the final version was absolutely awful looking back and Robin would have have sorted it, given the chance. Wouldn't surprise me if the cone and tweeter dome didn't come from Celestion to be honest, but I'll never know for sure.
Harbeth is often a shit word on enthusiast forums, but don't knock the C7-XD, not even on price compared to its competition (looked at Spendor classic prices lately - they started the price inflation). Whatever the 'old man speaker' reputation the brand has in the UK (it's revered in the far east), the new ones are very good and measure properly now too apart from dispersion, which will need a total re-design and investigation into waveguides to sort methinks (no Andr'e, I'm not a designer, but I didn't stop learning my trade in 1977 either...).
Anyway, ear-health developments this morning may indicate a complete change on speaker preferences, as a 'gentle, warm and sweet' speaker tone is acting against my hearing - provably now too
I agree the new ES14 is just a monika on a totally new design that doesn't even look like the originals. The original tweeter in the final version was absolutely awful looking back and Robin would have have sorted it, given the chance. Wouldn't surprise me if the cone and tweeter dome didn't come from Celestion to be honest, but I'll never know for sure.
Harbeth is often a shit word on enthusiast forums, but don't knock the C7-XD, not even on price compared to its competition (looked at Spendor classic prices lately - they started the price inflation). Whatever the 'old man speaker' reputation the brand has in the UK (it's revered in the far east), the new ones are very good and measure properly now too apart from dispersion, which will need a total re-design and investigation into waveguides to sort methinks (no Andr'e, I'm not a designer, but I didn't stop learning my trade in 1977 either...).
Anyway, ear-health developments this morning may indicate a complete change on speaker preferences, as a 'gentle, warm and sweet' speaker tone is acting against my hearing - provably now too