>>92390GK EMI 350, green basket, 15 watt. Motor pattern suggests it's from the early 1960s DANGEROUS SPEAKER series matched with a tube rectifier amplifier at low power, 200mW for high output. Solid State rectifier MERCILESS SPEAKERS 350 will need much more power and have more bass extension. Tweeter is an imperial French Audax Polydax as is the x-over, very early Audax.
Left, more upper class, elite society EMI 13 x 8 show tweeters heavily doped and in small bookshelf boxes, not to drain low power tube or germanium SS amplifiers, effectively limiting low frequencies reproduced by to above 70Hz. Many EMI 13 x 8 are capable of low notes at 20Hz but it isn't needed for Jazz of the 1950s Swing Band style and these use Leak TL12 or TL10 amplifiers, besides the very pricey Stereo 20.
Right, 20 watt version of the above. Some will wonder where on Earth they come from. These elite speakers belong to a closed upper class society and are sent to high priced auctions from all over the world but are certainly not to be found on the most obvious online auction sites. David Lindesay-Bethune, 15th Earl of Lindsay, Baron Gretton of Stapleford's estate railway.
Left, a 1970 year advert from Practical Wireless Sinclair Project 60, a 20 watt EMI 350 - today one of the rarest 13 x 8 variants and unlikely that a Project 60 could have powered as needing near 100 watts of high quality tube amplifier.
Left, 20 watt 319, the lower sensitivity 20 watt 350 is either extinct today or in elite places, as rare as Helme Audio Bextrene cone 13 x 8 kits and most expensive on the mid-70s custom builder's market.Right, amplifier for 20w EMI 350, pairs of American Bogen MO-100A restored and found working in Australia, here on Zebra wood veneered plinths. The size of the Output Iron goes some way to explain why 20 watt 350 weren't the most popular of EMI 13 x 8 speakers. 4 x Sylvania 8417 tubes are fitted capable of 100 watts. Below, two stud diodes mean Full Wave rectification via center-tapped power iron, the EMI 350 suited to Solid State rectifiers of the stud type, these later EMI Merciless Speakers weren't often heard of.
The
community using Bogen MO-100A with 20 watt EMI 350 were the
professional studio recording fraternity, EMI speakers elite, their use
by hobbyists somewhat novel, getting good sound with EMI 319 more
likely, the 350 has a heavier cone, a third overall weaker in magnetic flux density of the gap,
designed to have deeper extended bass sounds, more powerful, demanding
too much from domestic amplifiers, it's using professional equipment but
on appearances, EMI 350 were attractive to buyers who just didn't
realize they couldn't hope to use them to any successful degree, and
weren't liked compared to 15 watt EMI 319.
Semon's synthetic rubber - 'plasticized PVC' first used in Klangfilm theater speakers.
KMAL, Expert, Marsden Hall.
Above, the very rare 92390PE, only made available to the mass-market since 1964 and as 'P' professional cores. High gloss finish a curious feature of elite only items, estates with a manor house, typical owners of EMI speakers. Left, Adolf Hitler's type 1932 year Siemens 13 x 8 with stray electromagnetic field copper shielding, the original EMI 13 x 8 loudspeaker.
>>EMI 92390DE, 3-ohm, (150TC series)
...and 4T with four Schaub Lorenz LPH65 (30-18). Keesonic, Below, Hacker. Left and above EMI 9206.
Left a Dyna-Sonic 2T one of the early cobbled-together EMI, surplus core speakers for the general public using 10w ceramic magnet 92390DM and 17KHz twin tweeters over a back wave baffle space. The Dyna-Static was launched in 1960 when in the USA the very first EMI 'DANGEROUS SPEAKER' was offered, the famous DLS 529 based on elite only 1950s speakers. The idea that EMI speakers were hidden from a larger market seems very strange but was due to a social class war.
Haut-parleur, Lautsprecher, Zvučnik, Reproduktor, 扩音器, Højttaleren, luidspreker altoparlante emi.
Głośnik, Kaiutin, 拡声器, altoparlante, μεγάφωνο, Hangszóró.
Marconi-EMI Model 907 from the year 1938.
Anthony Eden
Above 'Humph' born at Eton College, his father, George William Lyttelton a housemaster.[1]
Monitor Audio MA3 Mk.II
Above the Radford, STA-7 had a tube rectifier and suits the B&W DM.1 right above. Zmags Opera.
EMI 300T, a pair at £1800. DLS 529 £580- £2200 a pair.
Apes Hill Club
The 1950s 9206 (the British bespoke market equivalent of DLS529 above wasn't available to the ordinary chap). The 92390V Plessey cube magnet 13 x 8 and open back 98890 tweeters have a compressed paper enclosure. Alnico woofers work with harman/kardon A 402 (on account of its being made for the JBL...
...Century L100) and if replaced in the 1960s with the ferrite magnet 92390BV (an early 550) to get a 20Hz low note or better low-frequency than the 40Hz 92390V 9206 is then used with amplifiers for the resulting colder ceramic magnet tone. So the 1960s Marantz Model 8B and not the 1950s alnico speaker Model 8, 2 or 5. The elite used the EMI 600 with round toroidal transformers some 15 years before SONY V-FET or Sansui. The baffle with metal grille removed right is very thick for deep, clear notes. EMI 550 Merciless Speaker Below the EMI 600 (link pg.36) that
outperformed the Marantz Model 8 was probably VOX made rather than an STD 373 below in its US market black chassis version. Neither was a brand known by most and described in glowing terms by the elite when asked, as 'nice stuff'. Below the EMI DLS-1 is a US domestic market scaled-up British 9206 and closer mock-up of the 1957 Peter Dix REDD.36 professional market...
...like the EMI 550, pleated edge, and alloy portion.
EMI 901 right according to BBC texts were developed to become a new studio monitor in the year 1964 but are never seen in any publications thereafter. A mystery that carried on in various versions and isn't discussed.
Left, Carad Belgium. Below,
Jchefss rebuilt EMI STD.373.
Above black chassis STD.373 powers 4-ohm cores with Plessey alnico magnets, in original Dutton DLS529 and DLS-1 differing in materials from the later Scope 529X and Benjamin 529A. Gold chassis STD.373 right has a different under chassis build. Gold STD controller has Acoustical Manufacturing Co. cast knobs and front panel resembling QUAD QCII (mono) and 22 (stereo) controllers. Dutton 102 below at twice the price of DLS529 is rare in internet auctions.
When the 711 below right ran out of 10 x 6 squawkers, the Dutton 102 above 20 watts, 150,000...
...Maxwells ceramic magnet core is in some DLS 529X above. EMI 750 a revised 711 has a weaker magnet only 100,000 Maxwells for Solid State power. Left below a European HMV 711 likely from before the American Scope Dangerous Speakers.
Gulf Craft. DSS Ferretti Yachts
Sir Dhunjibhoy Bomanji
Sir Orme Garton Sargent
Sir David Ormsby-Gore
QUAD II is very popular today, particularly in Solid State rectifier versions. The 1982 year Concordant was by Doug Dunlop. The 1960s, elite only one left had been owned by horse racing people, its details published in the 1970 Hi-Fi News and Record Review magazine for fellow listeners of the EMI Merciless Speakers. The AcroSound made REALISTIC 210 below had a Solid State rectifier in 1962 and retains separate ECC82, unlike the Scottish Concordant modification that controversially used space compromised vacuum tube, ECC 83 to increase power to...
...22 watts, bettering the RCA Orthophonic. Increased power allows speakers to be further apart. QUAD II isn't much liked by the elite, using the LEAK TL12 instead but the 1950s QUAD II has a very low, 0.02% THD and was used first with Stentorian speakers when Harvard University Law graduate, 'Bud' Fried planned his I.M.F. Hi-Fi Company to import the first American, QUAD ESL57 electrostatic speakers in the 1960s. Right the stereo pair QUAD II differs from the mono sets as nearer tolerance of stereo speaker pairs sold at the time. QUAD electrostatic ESL57 gave within 40Hz-18KHz when sold in specially matched stereo amplifier/ speaker pairs, mono QUAD II reckoned too difficult to make a stereo pair from.
Right, although the 14A/770C is excluded from the Merciless speaker advert, it's part of the mid-1960s 14A series, the 950 being the 14A/600. To say nothing is known of these would be untrue, they're 105, 205, and 215, early versions have a choke on the chassis leg and they were used with Radford STA-25 valve amplifiers below, an affordable upper-middle-class favorite.
EMI 215 right had appeared in 1967 and was the 14 x 9 version of the fiberglass mix cone 13 x 8 of B&W, Bowers & Wilkins of England, the 92390DJ of the DM.3. The 215 enclosure boasted of its ability to reproduce bass to 20Hz. Today not many speakers offer below 35Hz but in those far off days before sub-woofers, followers of Hi-Fi could pay high prices for amplifiers able to give 20Hz at low power and minimal distortion. Mostly lower frequencies are poor quality in affordable amplifiers and this made the 80Hz of the BBC LS3/5A attractive to buyers of the lower society. Another problem of superb speakers for low frequencies is the room acoustics and inputs to make the most of speakers like the EMI. The Radford STA-25 above is today very pricey and rare.
Right BBC style self-damping speaker enclosure by 'Heathkit of England', part of the U.S. company - uses EMI 550 below and two cube form alnico 3.5-inch tweeters (like the DLS529) but with Single-Ended amplifiers like the 'Class A' Dynatron above, supplied to Buckingham Palace. Below an actual 550 as 92390CR, one of the rarest EMI 13 x 8 and only found in 4 or 5-ohm impedance. 574G valve. Right bass-reflex slit.
Early EMI drivers from before the 1967 Merciless Speakers offer hope of something special but speakers like the cobbled-together Mordaunt Short MS-400 below are for lesser equipment. Just don't judge EMI from a mass-market perspective, they were for British elite buyers with deep pockets.
Right not on YouTube to date, five or more Mordaunt Short MS-400 appear, this the first issue 'brown baffle' with early 13 x 8 bass. Note the wonderful, Lockwood Audio black tinted baffle, washed from around the driver apertures to limit reflections. A cobbled-together resin board x-over isn't for elite EMI sound, only profit-led thinking, quickly getting rid of unsold drivers. IMF dropped the KEF T-15 aluminum dome tweeter seen in the rare split baffle STUDIO as the BBC found it colored and the later Rogers LS3/5A, with its KEF drive units isn't a genuine BBC monitor either but a purple social class mass market speaker, good as working well with affordable amplifiers. The next MS-400 is the 'black baffle' left with a round 12 inch EMI bass unit. An enthusiast could rebuild the x-overs to a BBC reference using the Klipsch x-over as a model. People who restore, must not paint the baffle, just leave the finish. Very difficult to improve such a surface, intended to absorb sound reflections. Painting may well look and sell better but intended sound needs it left original. As to what amplifier best suits the KEF T-15, any purple mass-market Solid State amplifier that suits a Rogers LS3/5A is easy to find.
Right the record player part of the Concert Grand French Provincial console, American mass-market reply to the British elite's DECCA Decola Aristocrat. A 'Phantom' control electronically mimics the EMI speakers in the upmarket DECCA. The search tune sensitivity hails from days before PLL tuning but really caters to 'knob twiddlers'. Below Export American market EMI 556 Stereoscope Control Center, for 557 and 600 power amplifiers. Too many knobs and an oscilloscope, home constructors using instead magic-eye tubes. EMI speakers of today weren't available to the mass-market but only upper-class bespoke dealers.
British export EMI Stereoscope 555 right says 'Made in England' but from a Hungarian design of the 1959 year, perhaps obscure Habsburg and Ottoman royal lineage in UK influences valued by an elite. The video set right offers +/-0.5dB, 30Hz-15KHz, 20 + 20 watts American (nearer 10 watts British power). Below chrome trim and black trim above are seen with many EMI and HMV detail differences.
Left an elite magnetic badge from the steel basket weave 'Dangerous Speakers' of the early 1960s, often missing in auctions. Some of the steel grilles are copper color or gold. The red felt edge and grille cloth show remarkable workmanship for superior buyers.
Above photo credit B5234t, Left a Chinese cabinet mounted stereo in a posh townhouse with tall narrow EMI speakers ahead of their time as today the favored modern design. Western Electric, Altec Lansing, AudioVision SF, Ampex, ELAC Audio, Dynaudio, YG Acoustics, Bel Canto Black Pear Audio, Nordost, Fairchild, GOODELL (St Paul MA) ATB-3, NSA-20, Eico, EMI, Heathkit, Leak, Brook, Quad, VOM, Radio Craftsmen, Acrosound, Interelectronics, RCA, Sota, Audio Research, AMC, H.H. Scott, E.H. Scott Radio, Fisher, Harman Kardon, Pilot, GENERAL ELECTRIC AS4A, Grommes 100BA, 215BA, 216BA, 50PG, 51PG, 50PG2, 55C, 55PG, 60PG, LJ-2, Dynaco, Maas-Rowe, Daven, Bogen Presto, Thorens, Telefunken, Yamaha, Shure, Univox, Gretsch, Fender, Allen, AKG, Crown, B&O, Sherwood, Nakamichi, Tascam, Edison, Denon, Contex, Kenwood, Luxman, Counterpoint, Allen, Viking, Gray Research, Empire, Dual, Rek-O-Kut, Mitsubishi, United States Audio, Grado, ESL, Ortophon, Uher, KLH Model 16, Krell.
Berlant, Concord, Conrad-Johnson, Teac, Sony, Pioneer, Tandberg, Electro-Voice, Revox, DBX, Sansui, Spiral Groove, Onkyo, JVC, Panasonic, Howell FilmOSound, Univox, Webster, Hammond, Garrard, Hammarlund, Collins, Hallicrafters, Drake, Conley, Lincoln, Meisner,
Speakers (cores cabinets and horns) Wilson Audio, Jensen, JBL, Altec Lansing, Western Electric, Stephens Trusonic, Tannoy, Electro-Voice, University, RCA, General Electric, Ampex, Acoustic Research AR, Heathkit, Klipsch, Telefunken, McIntosh, ADS, B&W, Alon, Mission, Quad, Decca, Dukane, Dukane & EV Ionovac, Rola (Celestion), Magnavox, Eminence, C.T.S., Utah, Quam, Pioneer, Sansui, Bose, Allied, Knight, Infinity, Advent, Hammond, Leslie, Vox, Fender, Allen, Fisher, Nabarro, NAB 2 (Tory MP)>>>
EMI 92390 13 x 8 suit low powers and differing Damping Factor amplifiers. The 319 sounds good with 1970s vintage but the 450 needs 1960s. 1990s amplifiers of Damping Factor 60 are for polypropylene cones and won't give the best results with 319 or 350.