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Klipsch lower market BBC style American crossover with a point to point soldering and big transformers in place of small chokes.  Connectors for thin silver strand wire between drivers.  British detail has positive and negative conductors twisted together to cancel invisible magnetic fields.  High-end American manufacturers don't...

...twist wires together, British preferred Hi-Fi sounds different, the Spendor BC1 unpopular in the United States, its shrill quality lacking in low frequencies, partly because British tube amplifiers before the 1967 year STA-100, had been very low powered.  Right, paranormal investigators identify points of light as a sign of haunting, not 'lens flare', but perceived intelligent movement, thought disturbing and the haunting of houses owned by the nobility, had in the past led to people moving out, not all possessions or houses with this quality of being 'alive' are lost, if out of harm's way, but architecture and fashions become dated and ugly.

Right, the nobility were aware that some houses became haunted so let them stand empty awhile before they were quietly demolished, and to later protests from onlookers that knew no better.  The house above from the 16th Century and aristocratic in origins has a still hard to fathom power in its architecture, roof windows are neo-Gothic, rooted in French medieval Gothic of the 12th century and superstitions of this time were believed by many, cold air drafts, strange knocking sounds, furniture moved, objects like keys disappearing and then during a frantic search, reappearing in an obvious place you'd never have put it.  Perhaps the buildings were meant to look creepy in order to deter thieves, long before electricity, alarms, cameras and horse drawn, slow traffic with at best, gas illumination.

Left, elite vintage speakers and rooms are often strange in appearances.  A 1950s corner speaker was used for the radio seen behind on the floor.  The antique oxblood leather Chesterfield sofa and candles might be unsettling, Satan is often depicted as colored red and/or wearing a red costume in both iconography and popular culture.

Right, an EMI 850 appears in a wall-mounted 4-channel speaker system from before the year 1972.  The 850 basket dates to WWII, of German Nazi Siemens origin, used in quality 1960s radiogram consoles with different cones and motors.  The Hi-Fi model lower register was 55Hz - 20KHz with a useful range from 150Hz to 15KHz supported by a sub-woofer using two coupled EMI 770NX, 14 x 9 elliptical woofers.  The 850 left is mounted full range with a ported reflex below on the baffle to increase sensitivity and reduce the nominal power needed as does the small voice coil former.  The type of suspension appears to be pleated PVC for a Damping Factor of 11.

 Left the only US-made High Fidelity loudspeaker able to compete with EMI in the year 1960 was Bozak.  In this example, the aluminum cone of the squawker will offer the superior middle range of the 1932 vintage Siemens based EMI 13 x 8.  EMI continued to use Lorenz type plastic coned tweeters for Lo-Fi and a paper tweeter cone for Hi-Fi.  Below the very thick pulp cone of the Bozak woofer left has a PVC edge like EMI and Klangfilm.  Early plastic enclosure for the squawker.  Point-to-point soldered x-over with the wiring not twisted, simple batting wrap, none on the rear panel and friction-fit spade connectors.

Left British, Radford Monitor crossover for Goodmans squawker and KEF B 139 woofer, Rola HF 1300 with rear clamp and Coles Super-Tweeter.  An interesting comparison with EMI LE.4 building detail.  A baffle is thick plywood and carefully finished.  This is a type of monitor with AlNiCo treble units and ceramic magnet woofer that needs a suitable amplifier.  The JBL Century has an AlNiCo woofer and ceramic ferrite magnet treble units so that a different amplifier sounds best on each.  Many internet reviewers audition their equipment, chalking up what is slightly better on the system they have but omit to say what's in it.  Hi-Fi magazines often send out article photos and a journalist makes a review out of many written at the same time by way of a career.  To partner up one set and another is obviously best left to specialist dealers.

  

Left EMI 300 point to point soldered crossover from 1967 shows a different version of the Tannoy choke than in the 1970s LE.4 below it, but remarkably similar in printed circuit board form.  The fewest components are used but specially engineered and restorers may struggle to get better sound by replacing any one element never mind all.  It's best to run the old ones very quietly at barely audible volume level over weeks on a Compact Disc repeat to rejuvenate something like the original sound.

 Left Radford designed and built EMI 14A/1413 crossover from the EMI LE.4 for 14A/770 woofer seen below in the EMI 215.  Plessey style coils are seen with Goodmans mass-market bipolar condensers.  Resistors, wire wound pots and a jumble of very thin wire using spade terminals.  These do sound quite good in the Goodmans Magister type speaker but just not up to the early 1960s EMI professional studio standards.








Right, the 215 was a very large floor speaker with a 20Hz low note from a fiberglass mix cone in the 14A/770NX 14 x 9 inch mid/woofer.  Baffles are best not painted as the covering is acoustically non-reflective and expensive.  Below, EMI 315 with Abbey Road professional studio 15 inch woofer, wide dispersion double squawkers and tweeters.

 

 

Left surprising 1980s point to point soldered crossover and input terminal panel in British Mission 770, that get near five stars on sound.  American REALISTIC led in mass-market point to point soldered crossover networks in the 1960s and 70s.  Maybe they had better sound but the non-distorting air gap coil above matters more.  Much depends on how the inside of a cabinet is tricked out.  The BBC in England found batting needs slightly adjusted for each different amplifier hooked up.  ELCAP above was used by EMI and REALISTIC ; they're a solid capacitor where the blue one left is a bipolar electrolytic.  Enthusiasts often change these but it's best to run them first over a few weeks as they all have a different tone.

Right, domestic FANE Model 122/17A is an early 1960s full range, 30Hz-17KHz, aluminum voice coil wire, often mistakenly used as a Beatles, VOX amplifier speaker in the US, audio versions of British musical instrument speakers bought and sold for musician's gold, albeit not built for long life.  Musical instrument speakers don't give good quality with an audio input and Hi-Fi speakers are destroyed by musical instruments within a week.  Even so they are destroyed on a regular basis and that puts their collector value prices up.

Left, the 1963 vintage cabinet for Fane Model 122/17A above an acoustic suspension type described in 1954 by Edgar Villchur,^[1] and brought to commercial production by Villchur and Henry Kloss with the founding of Acoustic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts.^[2] In 1960, Villchur^[3] reiterated that: The first aim of the acoustic suspension design, over and above uniformity of frequency response, compactness, and extension of response into the low-bass range, is to reduce significantly the level of bass distortion that had previously been tolerated in loudspeakers. This is accomplished by substituting an air-spring for a mechanical one. Subsequently, theory of closed-box loudspeakers was extensively described by Small.^[4][5] The British cabinet like those of modern Tannoy was weak, in not being 'V-planked' has a 'Live baffle', single acoustic wadding sheet over sides and block-board rear panel, claimed to sound awesome.

Right, tiny ceramic magnet FANE 12-inch speaker, for a ten watt 1963 vintage tube amplifier as opposed to a 25 watt ceramic magnet above, used with EL34, 18 watt tube amplifiers.  Motor makes the most of lower power, many modern tube enthusiasts unwittingly using high power Solid State Tannoy speakers designed for Silicon transistor outputs and not flattering tubes or germanium amplifiers.  'Live Box' cabinet construction with Live baffle, Live hardboard rear panel and side panels very strong and "V-planked", enclosure affects sound quality, so don't make it dead if needing a partly Live Box type.  Below left button mouse click for full reader view.

Left, in the year 1971, Imhof of London had a special limited offer of their Model IM 100 with PVC surround FANE 13 x 8 coupled to a KEF T-15 tweeter; IMHOF speakers were all aimed at middle-class Bang & Olufsen, new buyers - not the seasoned elite.  There was a more expensive Model 200 with its 13 x 9 being the KEF B139 and although cheaper to make than the EMI or FANE 13 x 8, they were much more expensive to buy, as before today's online auction sites, lower sensitivity suited the latest amplifiers and when the BBC LS3/5A appeared, of course it was lowest of all at 82dB for 1w and a 15-ohm load, later reduced to 11 ohms to suit the QUAD 405-2, a cheapened 405.

Right, FANE 13 x 8 with 10 watt ceramic motor, D.F. 5, long excursion (low D.F.) paper pleated surround compared to the doped cloth edge below, D.F. 20, paper edged deep bass in 1950s amplifiers, 1960s at 35 upwards, additional problems await the enthusiast, are they Germanium Solid State or tube amplifier suited?  Trial and error with B.B.C. Studio equipment might be useful, a QUAD II or Leak TL then the Solid State germanium QUAD 50 or 303, the later 303 is of simulated germanium sound, but a colder tone silicon wafer, perhaps subdued for a given volume level and some experiment needed to find the best sonic match.

Left odd BBC Fane 13 x 8 basket designed after the EMI 92390 reverts to the original Siemens steel form, deeper basket pushes more air than the 92390 and QUAD ESL57 using Solid State rectifier abilities pioneered by the EMI 600 amplifier.  One Spendor BC1 has a blue alnico magnet partnered with 1950s tube amplifiers, later ceramic magnets of which Fane is a high-end anisotropic variety match 1960s tube amplifiers.  Fane made copies and a replacement for the EMI round woofer and squawker in the rare Mordaunt Short MS-700 speaker.  Small 10w magnet likely matches the EMI Stereoscope 555 amplifier having the Solid State rectifier.

The Fane 13 x 8 for the BBC suffer from the need for very special or to put it another way - very expensive amplifiers.  The main criticism of EMI has been their studio monitor origins, they don't sound bad but if your partnering equipment is in any way lacking in

 compatibility, by Damping Factor, by connecting wire or design, it's going to sound inferior to speakers that flatter lower-cost equipment.  Left 1962 metal-bodied 10w peak Celestion HF-1300 with radial pattern grille.  Below Rola, T314 uses the mounting cup of 13-watt peak HF1400 so twice the price of the Celestion labeled part below.  Old metal HF1300 was clamped at the rear of the baffle.  Spiral GEC BCS 1853 style grille below is in the metal-bodied T718, also fixed

 to the baffle rear. Early plastic-bodied T-602 retains the radial grille, then the later plastic-bodied HF1300 and 1400 appear. The later plastic body was a mass-market measure, possibly inferior.

Left the GEC 1853 in the EMI DLS-1 developed from the BBC GEC 1852 and BCS 1851 woofer.  Later made as to the Celestion HF1400 in the B&W DM.3 and SONY 5000 then as a mass-market HF1300 series, 1852 was ranked by the BBC an equal to their Fane IonoFane plasma tweeter.  Later Celestion mass-market versions go to 15KHz rather than 14KHz and use a Coles super-tweeter to reach 30KHz.  The unit in the BBC LS.5/5B above left isn't mass market and aimed at more expensive equipment.

Right Coles tweeter behind a dispersion slit and 6w Rola HF1400 mounted across an EMI 711 woofer, appears to be a reconstructed B&W DM.3 but has a curious machine cut 13 x 8 baffle.  Strives to recreate effects of a 20 watt EMI 319, that back in the day was elite only.  Long baffle with 1950s drone hole, possibly offered to convert a DM.3.  Below, a project made by an enthusiast copies the Output Stage of the above and doesn't need big magnets as the amplifier puts out only 200Hz-4KHz by Frequency Response, improved by tone controls, the AM radio type amplifier to 4KHz, Lo-Fi, to 13KHz, MiD-Fi to 15KHz and Hi-Fi to 20KHz or above depending on quality upper-Frequency Response.

Note the very small screened Al-Ni-Co right, goes loud with feeble Single-Ended amplifiers below.  Above right, a 1990s Lowther Fidelio in plain wood finish.

Left mid-1970s Hitachi SR-603 with FM radio up to 12KHz has a Lo-Fi tuner stage, the set thought at the time to equal the 1960s QUAD 303 in quality.  Many such sets claim a much wider Frequency Response, say 15Hz-25KHz as in the REALISTIC STA-2000 from the same time.  Lab testing in the USA found it only 14KHz top but its FM radio is of similar quality and one of the best when working as new.

Left harman/kardon Citation II, powerful American mass-market Hi-Fi amplifier with high distortion tubes usual in musical instrument use, sounds dry and cold but in New York was made for University speakers still offering a good used mid-market match up as with modern QUAD II Classic and powerful McIntosh with the guitar amplifier KT88 Output Tube, not best for EMI speakers.

 Right Radford STA-15 for the EMI 319.  Top seal 6CA7 are seen, the tube more often viewed in 'fat bottle' form has a sound closer to the elite M.O. KT77, that for many years was discontinued.  It also sounds like the WW2 RCA 6L6 used in theaters.  STA-15 has special transformers limiting supporting components to a minimum.

Left elite only EMI 319 cabinet for Radford STA-15 above.  Note thick panels and see-through grille cloth, speakers for very low power that contains a wide-band sound.  Most modern amplifiers need turned to higher wattage for best sound and that ruins speakers like the 319, B&W DM.1, etc.  6CA7 was created in the United States around 1970, one of the last useful Output Tubes.  Its equivalent EL34 was first made by the Dutch around 1950, the British Mullard version has a different sound, aimed at guitar amplifiers.  Marconi Osram had made the KT77 to fit into an EL34 socket without modification but it was elite only and long kept a secret.

Right Output Tube for HMV 13 x 8 top of the page was the RL12P35 of the Wehrmacht.  It led to EL34, the shape with straight sides and smooth top first seen in the 1936 year Telefunken EL11.  Although German Hi-Fi was reckoned best of all in the 1950s, it hadn't been seen outside Germany.  (Some U.S. Lorenz speaker cores).  Like the British EMI KT66, the German RP12P35 was a wartime radio transmitting tube and although of super sound quality wasn't widely available, most likely due to production costs.

1954 HMV 3001, refitted with later EMI 13 x 8.  Capitol 936

1950s Belgian HMV 3034-2 speakers 13 x 8.


Left field coil magnet of EMI/ HMV 13 x 8 that Lowther began making again as alnico lose charge over time.  Field coils give 'as new' tone throughout working life, the preferred magnet if the price, only suited to the elite, can be paid.  Although a big field coil on this 13 x 8 compared to some American Jensen, a comparable permanent unit is so massive as only to be found in early Jukeboxes, trying to get the most marketable product.  Ceramic magnets keep charge better than alnico but suffer narrow Frequency Response and low efficiency, needing more amplifier power.  Earl of Wemyss.  Expert Gramophones using EMI speakers like the Club 16 x 12 and spherical dome tweeter in the reflecting style of the cryptic meaning 'OMAR M.M. Box' below.

Left Heathkit AA-22 kit from the mid-1960s uses RCA... ...semiconductors following best selling Dynaco kit symmetrical layout.  Such kits weren't made by home constructors as soldering skills are too difficult and additional radio tech know-how is needed.  Expensive kits were built for distinguished locals by radio and television servicing engineers.  Below round-edged mains iron in EMI 557 may be an amorphous core, early 1960s vintage Gold-Silicon design by Caltech, USA. 

 Right, HMV Model 599 is a controller amplifier using the 10 + 10 watt RMS 557 seen below it in the upmarket EMI version with the round corner mains transformer believed to be an amorphous design influenced by Caltech of California but the downmarket HMV version has the conventional laminated mains power transformer.  The 599 Controller bears the arms of Buckingham Palace in London, suggesting use by the British royals of its day.  In the 1960s many publications had these colored panels to illustrate grayscale images of poor resolution.

 

Right comparing the size of Output Transformers in the EMI 557 amplifier with those in the AR-22 above, tells the difference between these.  The 557 is built as the 'Rolls-Royce' of stereo amplifiers, similar to the 600.



Left EMI STD.381, hum -80dB.

The Goshawk Society.


















Royal Lancers.

 

Left, a Fane 10 x 6 also with an AlNiCo motor tweeter but not of the 'knob' type magnet above right. The 'Live Baffle' is curious, hardboard used between the retaining dowels and chipboard baffle are puzzling and the tweeter is wired Network-Free.  Enthusiasts will need to discover just what amplifier runs best with the Fane, but to be sure different from the EMI.  The large magnet on the EMI above relates to the 35Hz low note, the power handling only 5 watts continuous, later improved to 8 watts using amplifiers with a Solid State rectifier of the stud diode bridge type, the Fane motor is similarly weak.  Fane drivers remain an unknown quantity compared to EMI.

Left Heathkit SP2 of Herbert Keroes and David Hafler, linked to Dynaco and Acrosound that made a similar S 1001 for elite people.  Here the SP2 has survived from the American occupation of Vietnam.  Below 5 inch EMI 250, 8/BNP, now worth £140 each, were used in tall cabinets of two enclosures with a twin cone 150, the example here, a 92390DF - one of the oldest 13 x 8 twin cones.

Left an EMI 850 and below, a 1947 year Plessey made HMV uses the same steel basket stamping, must have been worthwhile to put an expensive cube alnico on a 6.5-inch speaker.  A large number of WW2 ex-war department cores have fitted in a tight
space needing the square cutout in the steel basket.  The 850 boasts a small cabinet but will be loud and clear, some community pays high prices to this day.  A number of EMI speakers are seen less, the 9 x 5 plastic cone one of the rarest. EMI likely achieved its unique accuracy of Frequency Response at room-filling volumes and low power via military computer research began in 1954, the EMIDEC by 1958.































Below Lo-Fi version of the 812 possibly elite only.  Note alnico magnet for a Single End valve output.  Left American Scope EMI 812 with ceramic magnet tweeter, cloth choke and solid capacitor, they'd used more power from amplifiers of double end known as Push-Pull and had a different tone and much higher Damping Factor than Single-Ended. Early 1960s double-ended matching, Scope EMI 812 differ from the Single Ended match below.  Grampian Reproducer M.A. 5-10/A likely based on the 1950s Mullard 10 resembles the much better finished EMI STD.381 by Clarke & Smith who'd sourced from the government and the British military?  In the US, a rugged 6BQ5 version of EL84 appears in double-ended Heathkit AA-30 and Dynaco ST-35 kits but tone and build differ from the Single-Ended Magnavox 8600 series, needing Single-End speakers.

Right custom-made SANYO speaker system for the JA-222 amplifier below uses rubberized, long-throw pleated-edge mid-woofers in a stamped steel basket, similar to the Lo-Fi EMI above.  JA-222 will suit some 1960s pleated-edge long-throw speakers and has an elderly power supply, using 4 discrete plastic bodied diodes.  The 222 parasitic tuners and belt-drive turntable capture the best ghetto-blaster sounds by today, a cheaper route. A heat-sink in the JA-220 amplifier has screw mount holes for added cooling when the amplifier then assumes a harman/kardon sound as it has similar Toshiba devices in the output.

<<Amplifier for the SANYO mid/woofer above.  Unlike AMSTRAD a dual rail supply is seen and sounds different, probably not as good as the single-rail Executive Series Ex 222.  Buyers however prefer its lower noise quiescent current.  The SANYO heat-sink allows extra cooling devices to be added, recommended as Japanese sets don't have chassis-cooled devices relying on a heat-sink instead, that in the JA-220 can get too hot.  Added devices change the sound signature but speakers and connecting wires need first to be optimal.  Many will not have the best wiring or input sources connected when trying to obtain audiophile sound from these lower price designs.

Left the retro 1970s tech level SANYO was engineered to outperform British AMSTRAD systems in the early 1980s with competition from upmarket Linear Tracking Turntables and Quartz Synthesizer radio tuners.  It is great with Japanese Tamon, Coral or its own loudspeakers above and at the flat tone position shown, gives excellent sound quality second to none.  

 

Below tiny Output Transformers in a 1960s Concord STA-30B is the sound the JA-222 aims to replicate.  SANYO JA-240

Right, one of the elite FANE 13 x 8 twin cone speakers used by the BBC as a desk studio monitor in the late 1960s and still in service into the 1980s, the true BBC studio monitor and not the Rogers LS3/5A that everybody knows very well, was a domestic design from the outset, specifically designed to work well with domestic Hi-Fi amplifiers and in particular, the QUAD 405 but used instead with the 50, that was a germanium output amplifier.  What of the FANE 13 x 8?  Well, nothing, the BBC are keeping 'mum' on that front but unofficially it was so awesome in sound that everybody that heard it, you know really had to have one only it wasn't available, which might have been part of the attraction.

Left a BBC FANE studio monitor with leather baffle damping, fitted with a rubber gasket EMI 150 13 x 8 with pleated-paper surround for Lo-Fi, low amplifier Damping Factor and 'Class A', Single-End amplifiers likely below D.F. 5 that the British elite used between 1920 and 1960, not seen much on eBay.  The 92390CS below is Lo-Fi similar to the EMI 450.  92390CS were likely aftermarket for the 9206 enclosure with the same paper edge two pleat surround of the HMV/ Marconi 92390V.









Aristocratic Uffizi society.


Right in the DECCA Decola Aristocrat gramophone, a green tuning indicator glows through a knob.   Below the Benjamin EMI 92 with various EMI 319 surplus cores.  The gold plated terminals standard in some.

 Left another EMI 92, with 13 x 8 core more efficient in being loud whilst the smaller EMI 62 has a 10 x 6 core below, more efficient in Frequency Response and dispersion but not so loud.  The 62 hails from the 1967 year as does the DLS629 Liberator model.  Monitor Audio started off in Cambridge with KEF influence.  Richard Allan made an LS3/5A and had BBC influence.

Rare Monitor Audio 'Monitor Series 80' above and Richard Allan studio monitor right that used an OTTO DCA-1400 back in the day.

Left EMI Benjamin 621 using the 650 that has a very level Frequency Response - so level and so accurate that few modern speakers will equal it.  These aren't for affordable Solid State but for expensive, Hi-Fi tube amplifiers with a Solid State rectifier.  In the The US, the British QUAD II with the rectifier diode conversion that was elite only wouldn't have been used but the REALISTIC 210 ... 

  ...with a KT77 Output Tube was available in 1962 and had a Solid State rectifier before most.   Right although all models of the EMI 69 are elite only, some are French Polished.  Left the EMI cored Benford folded horn was elite only and supplied to nearby London and Cambridge markets from an industrial unit in Kettering, Northampton, long a center of the woolen trades.  The main core is a 'black basket' 350 right.  'Black basket' cores were older vintage higher quality and suggest a consignment of surplus built in the style of the EMI 'Broadcast 45', a secret, high gloss, French Polished...
...BBC loudspeaker that for some reason, isn't shared on the internet to this day.  The squawker unit powers the small horn and the 'roll edge' of the 350 resemble Lowther.  The grey grille below covers the 319 tweeters but the white 69 version seen through the grille cloth above, is metal and in the Broadcast 45, has a white plastic tweeter extending to 30KHz, likely a Lorenz 3.5 inch electrostatic LPH85.

 Left exceptionally rare 20 watts 319 also appear in a 350 version.  The choke has been replaced to enable faster recovery from storage.  The bipolar choke used by EMI in its Mk.1 version has a longer run-in time than solid types.  Bipolar takes at least a week of constant running but solid also needs time to sound its best.

A version of the Lorenz LSH-85 is the likely 30KHz tweeter in the Broadcast 45, the 20KHz EMI cone, ceramic magnet, 319 coaxial tweeters left was initially as big, a 3.5 inch that later became 3.1 inches for wider dispersion and beyond belief in the 'sweet spot'.  Effects hang in the air and behind the listener.  Right 10 watt motor 350 with later tweeter is 92390EW.

 Left the EMI tweeter shown for sound, the main point that may be missed is high-quality output with very costly low power, under 200 mW.  Most modern tweeters are low efficiency needing more power and the high-efficiency piezoelectric type suffer poor quality only used above 20KHz in the inaudible frequencies.  The reason for using such Super-Tweeters is to ensure the sonic picture is complete but the room acoustics matter in best effects.

Right the connection board on 92390BP from 1970 shows the large red, solid capacitor fitted with an Mk.1 bipolar electrolytic.  This is the domed tweeter BP below.  Left early 15w motor EMI 350 Merciless Speaker, the Solid State rectifier version of the tube rectifier 319.  The photo in the link is not a 350 but an early, 1964 year broadcast core with its electrolytic choke.  But it's used in the brochure to suggest the mass market 350 is descended from it.  Note how the screw heads have been carefully painted black in the early 350 whereas in the later edition they're not.   The domed tweeter EMI 350 right, also in a 319 version, aims at the

very level high frequency of the elite EMI 'Club' tweeter in the 16 x 12.  Left the later 350 tweeters have a PVC surround and the voice coil wires are hidden.  The version also comes with a black support frame,
  the significance unclear.  Right rare 10 watt motor 350 with no wiring points in the tweeter cone. Chromed bars appear on other models.  1940s Bi-flex Altec was used in EMI 'White Elephant' studio monitors as similar to Hartley-Luth.  Small cabinet Dangerous speaker 3D sound field makes the actual source of listening immaterial whether one sits up there and the other nearer the floor,

 with eyes closed, the sound appears to come from everywhere in the room.  Left, the 15-watt EMI 650 type choke 92390DD 319 with a 15-watt magnet and late 1960s grey surround, originally black.  Tweeter also in the same year 319 92390BP rare always has faded looks. Right, final issue 350, 92390GK, and 2.5 inch ring-radiator tweeter.
Right the 1970 year, mass-market Altec-Lansing Spanish Flamenco, loud but serves here as a speaker stands for a 1960 year Scope EMI.  2nd Earl of Wilton.  Society toffs in 1920 had electric gramophones powered by reusable devices, before widespread electricity.  Informal wardrobe at Magdalen College, Oxford - one of the world's wealthiest, during a decline of empire shortly after the Great War.  Ralph Dutton seemed to prefer tight jackets.  The Uffizi society visited Florence, probably in yachts like the Valhalla of 1892.

 Left a 92390BP with Mk.1 crossover, shows the EMI 319 yellow fiberglass batting pattern and sound absorbent black baffle in the box style right above.  The later Benjamin 92 version uses the 92390CL below in the Model 921, an elite surplus folded horn core, using Lowther cabinet plans.  The CL has a visibly different cone.  Enthusiasts today continue to keep the cores with a view to possible future projects.  EMI 105 uses the cloth edge 14 x 9 in the 1966 year, then the 1050 use 92390CL.  Dutton 102 is twice the price of EMI DLS 529 using a special anti-resonant cabinet.

Above, a 1970 year style of Altec-Lansing.  Right a gramophone 'open baffle' speaker from posh London used a number of low Damping Factor tube amplifiers with speaker brands like Bakers' Selhurst and BTH.  Handles allowed carrying between two domestic servants and remained in service with original owners, being very loud for Single-Ended.  Square aperture has gold cloth, two other gold color metal speaker grilles were available, a large open mesh or striped closed mesh.

>>1970 year Baker Regent, lowest powered ferrous motor 12 inch, 45Hz low note resonance, motor size resembles the older Stalwart below.  3ft tall wooden cabinets have a square drone, stuffed with yellow fiber glass batting covering a TCC capacitor X-over with baffle coil and Eagle International CT-5 cone tweeter with alnico motor, suggesting a 1950s tube amplifier was hooked up.  The CT-5 is virtually extinct, no known internet survivors and hearkens back to old British Empire days, awesome speakers from a time when High Fidelity was virtually unknown in the lower society.  15 watts likely used a QUAD II, 3, 8 or 15 ohm models available.

Left BAKER - 1970s rebrand of the elite Baker's Selhurst, the Stalwart with a very small ceramic magnet and no Whizzer of rarer Deluxe Mk II.  45cps-13Kcps from a single cone mounted in a speaker like the above.  Carlson or Expert Gramophone styles wear more as horizontal mounting works against gravity or at an angle adds even more difficult forces.  15-watt rating for QUAD II amplifier, 13KHz for Lo-Fi FM stereo tuners.

Expert Electric Gramophones

Right, Baker's Selhurst in the heavily worked elite cabinet has found its way onto the lawn.  The name Stalwart above came from Schiller's ballad "The Fight With The Dragon".

Swift as the dauntless hounds advance,
Whirring skirrs my stalwart lance".

The advantage of a single cone like the Stalwart over whizzers or divider network speakers is an efficient use of very expensive tube amplifier power.  The 81dB/w/m mass-market LS3/5A was never a speaker of the middle or upper classes but fits well into small, temporary listening areas of lower market professionals.

Left 1938 year 8 inch Lo-Fi Telefunken field coil cores on blockboard (as used by EMI) open baffles from the 1950s.  Tube rectifier sets with PY500 supply clean power for the electromagnet whilst low Damping Factor music is fed from a modern receiver.  Below another elite, open baffle used in London with handles for tidying away by domestic servants.  All such elite items are strange.

Above in the 1950s with low Damping Factor tube amplifiers of the day, the sound from single cone speakers like the German Klangfilm might suggest the later smaller extra drivers in mass-market speakers is 'gilding the lily'.  But mass-market equipment was lower cost and widely available where elite options weren't.  Elite 'Lo-Fi' is puzzling for lower market viewers and best ignored, sounding awful unless bespoke dealers have them specially prepared for a customer of some social standing. 

Left 1938 year HMV 801 with three EMI 13 x 8 speakers.  

Left and below Audio Nirvana EL84 has a Damping Factor near 3 so needs a pleated-edge speaker.

Right, Rogers EL84 amplifiers of 1960 with Damping Factor 20 suited to EMI 630 cores shown.  Audio Nirvana above is not in the same league and the company makes its own speakers for the best from their tube amplifiers.  They're lower market and available to all whereas matching old pairs of Rogers and EMI aren't going to be found quickly.  The other amplifier right is a Heathkit and Dynaco are worth getting if using vintage Japanese or American speakers.  Audio Innovations Series 500.  Left Audio Innovations Series 700 run with an unpopular JBL 4365 speaker and may well have been custom-tailored...

  ...to suit.  Built similar to Audio Nirvana, the Damping Factor figure is not something to be shared too widely, 5.2 is Lo-Fi.  The pots get improved being low quality and scratchy with an annoying mains transformer mechanical noise that leads some owners to sell but won't be heard in the video left, just during quiet breaks in the program.  An economy Grant Lumley G60S style design, (tubes position indexed). 

Right, low Damping Factor amplifier Richard Allan enhance the sound but the 1950s and 60s Damping Factor increased as progress in design.  Audio Nirvana and Audio Innovation 700 use musical instrument amplifier spare part transformers to make a low-cost design and don't need a high Damping Factor as lower cost 'novelty' offers to punters using trial and error with internet auction site bargains.  These chaps are unlikely to ever buy the highly priced vintage Hi-Fi tube amplifiers.

 Left, the Lo-Fi Emerson shows a low Damping Factor pleated edge usual in musical instrument amplifiers and the small diameter voice coil of low power and loud output.  Some of these are 'Class A' and can't cope with the varying degrees of 'Class B' (biased for Class A) or class AB crossover distortion, so there are 'Class B' speakers better able to reproduce with Double Ended equipment below, usually slightly higher in power.  Below Leak, TL12 of the year 1948, Damping Factor 20.

Peter J. Walker produced the QUAD II in 1952 with Damping Factor 11 and distortion of 0.02% that makes it today's choice albeit that it needs speakers designed for the lower Damping Factor.  The British elite prefers the Leak TL12 for its higher Damping Factor and older vintage.  The 1960s Rogers Cadet had Damping Factor 20 and Chinese Breeze Audio amplifiers today offer a Damping Factor of 3000.

 Left 92390CT is seen in an 8-ohm version of the EMI DLS529 selling at twice the price of what most enthusiasts know as the 4-ohm 92390G version.  The amplifier Damping Factor suited to 8-ohm 92390CT is a matter of experiment and elite buyers spend hours comparing one version with another on a few amplifiers they can't part with.  The actual EMI 550 model has two cube alnico tweeters with a pleated edge 92390CR and in California had a 5-ohm impedance that marked it as suiting a certain vintage.  In England, the 550 is a 4-ohm but these speakers are among the rarest around today.  The Rogers Cadet II loudspeaker used a cube magnet EMI 550 tweeter.

Right, American QUAD II Concordant (no tube rectifier, a conversion to semiconductor Low-Frequency quality) and medical grade 'red tip' EF86, selling four times the price of an ordinary tube.  GE, General Electric KT66 tubes are seen for the Merciless EMI speakers of the 350 series, dating to around 1964 in vintage but elite only until 1967.

 

Left, unique photo of the very rare German Isophon speaker cabinet.  Important to followers of Bernie Appel's 1970s RadioShack hobbyist speakers.  The Shack hobbyist had access to some items not listed in the catalogs and not seen in internet auctions.  Wiring is point-to-point soldered and network-free.  Isophon appears to have been the loudspeaker brand that RadioShack used to test their receivers, EMI also worth trying.  It is certainly a custom made 8-ohm version of the German market 4-ohm, that Bernie Appel considered best.

 

 Right and above, Metal Rectifiers from 1960s audio amplifiers aren't powered up as a fire hazard with noxious gases produced upon combustion.  Replace with a single diode 1N4007 and powerful cement wire-wound, 5 watt, +/-100 ohm, tested to suit or two diodes in a dropper resistive full wave.  Click on image for full scale view.

Left, the Damping Factor of 5 or less, EMI 92390FY with twin tweeters and 8 watt Magnadure II ceramic magnet motor for high output with germanium Solid State devices like Mullard AD149 above.  These particular EMI speakers minimize switching distortion more severe in germanium amplifiers but aren't cheap in auctions today.  The black basket denotes early 1960s DANGEROUS LOUDSPEAKERS, as opposed to less loud and later MERCILESS SPEAKERS designed to force later 1960s Solid State amplifiers into higher power output where their quality was sweeter.  Note high quality low power amplifiers are best matched with the DANGEROUS LOUDSPEAKERS.

Right, curious carefully worked and dated looking, rear baffle mount Isophon speaker resembles US Harvard University community's Fried Model Q Tranmission Line of 1978, may be a rectangular port as not stuffed with foam, ports increase sensitivity whereas Transmission Lines get rid of back waves reducing sensitivity, not something desired with tube watts that work out relatively expensive compared with recent Solid State.  Vintage Solid State also needs low powered 'loudspeakers' that keep the heating down, particularly the germanium types with their thermal runaway that fail without warning.

Left, SONY TA-1130 from the late 1960s as partnered with B&W DM.3 speakers have an EMI glass fiber coned 13 x 8 of powerful 150 motor magnet.  We see the signal cables for RCA phono plugs screened within metal flexible tubes to max out dynamic range as the amplifiers used only the best of sources.  They were mass-market but middle-class and used by many factory owners and affluent communities.

Right, the B&W DM3 x-over has an EMI styled ferrous cored inductor similar to the 14A/770N series and probably free from the feared unpleasant harmonics.  There's a Rank-Wharfedale equivalent and we see air gap coils, the brown capacitors age badly and get replaced.

Left, the OCL SONY TA-1130 came later than the OTL 1120 (with a QUAD 303 sound), speaker connectors were fashioned after the 1959 year U.S. Dodge Coronet as the mass-market buyer SONY would furnish the house of a DM.3 buyer above, a home gardener, trellises to grow flowers, a hose gives water and modest garden table resembles the small yacht below.  Woofer is a 750 version of the 13 x 8 and gloss vinyl hide finish surprising, as being painted, would defeat the intended purpose.  1120 was a wide-band, (10-50) and so unlike the 303 seen as nearer the QUAD II.

>>The small table of a community yacht, where locals gather for a chin wag.  The Working Boat Yacht built from old commercial sailing craft, gives a much more generous space for social occasions and the Anglo-Saxon independent school community have always been attracted to the idea ever since the demise of 1930s sail boats.

>>1st Baron (Bulwer-)Lytton [nobility] inherited Knebworth House, a country manor still standing, and was later buried at Westminster Abbey as an important writer and politician in British elite circles.  "Vril" has been adopted by theosophists and occultists since the 1870s and became closely associated with the ideas of an esoteric neo-Nazism after 1945.^[40]   The writers of theosophy Annie Besant and especially Helena Blavatsky incorporated his thoughts and ideas, particularly from The Last Days of Pompeii, Vril, the Power of the Coming Race and Zanoni in her own books.^[45][46]  EMI  High Fidelity tape recorders and loudspeakers came from the Nazi regime of 1932-45.

<<Adherents of the Clan Lindsay Society cling to their Piper (peasantry) also of the Piobeareachd Society whose patron is King Charles III (royalty).  Their presence is announced by blasts of screeching notes coming from the direction of the Clan Crawford Mausoleum located on private land, during an event held to raise funds for the R.N.L.I. (as recognized by the R.Y.S. at Cowes in England).

>>A couple of punters head for an unknown plant growing by a greenhouse area nearby the Clan Crawford Mausoleum.  It hadn't been obvious what was there that they had been so enthusiastic about, these Manor House gardens undoubtedly occupying the minds of more than just their owners.  Such access seldom permitted usually incurs a fee, making their activity somewhat puzzling as clearly based on a previous knowledge of the gardens, that exist in their present form by the lifelong attentions of the late Countess of Crawford and her husband, the late 29th Earl Of Crawford.  The event took place early in summer, visitors disappointed the full burst of colors would be missed.  Donald Fothergill, (middle-class) new owner of Kinross House plans a centenary event gardens Open Day sometime soon.