Yeah, it is fashionable to bad mouth Lowthers... I get it... measure one straight on in an open baffle and it is rough... but what if I presented it a different way? how could you make the best sound with these? Can you admire what they do well (and those things are phenomenal) and live with what is not perfect? That mindset just might lead to happiness for a lot of people....
so let's look at that weird name associated with Lowther and see if we can learn anything... what did he build?
yeah, a front horn! smart man... I bet this thing sounds fabulous... (I heard teh Voigt museum does not have one of these... I found it in Hope, AR!)
look at those smooth horn curves ending in ninety degrees... even a small roundover on the very edge.. diffraction, be gone! tractrix flare... nice.....
so what else did he build? well, a corner horn.. with reflectors to get the highs out... a very well thought out cabinet... I bet one of these in the corner sounded pretty darn good...
highs were bumped out by using a small deflector.. check it out...
and the drivers from that era....
Modern Lowthers are very different than the old models. Gone is the heavy lacquered cone.. the whizzer now has a roll on it.. the light bulb phase plug has been lost... so do not believe people when they say Lowther has not changed with the times - they have... there is even an outfit making new field coils.. designed with finite element computer modeling... (very tongue in cheek)...
the newer cones are better for all of these direct radiating cabinets and back loaded horns.. the rolled whizzer helps control what the horn's air load used to... put them in an appropriate room... set them up with care.. get toe-in just right.. turn off the lights.. and you can get visiting musicians to your room.. how do I know this? well, once upon a time when I was too young to know any better, Jon Ver Halen talked me into bringing a single ended, no feedback amplifier to a Stereophile show to pair with, gulp, Lowther Medallions... we set them up by ear... and then Wally came in... took teh best seat.. wouldn't leave.. kept spinning record after record... so then he came back teh next day with measurement gear... we were +/- 3dB from 20 to 20k by cheating with a sub below 45Hz... pretty amazing for a single voice coil...
and I guess that is why I defend Lowther to the end... pretty tough to get that performance from a single voice coil of any sort.. especially at high SPL on a five watt single ended amp...
Peace,
Me
Posts
hahhahahhahahh! it's okay, i'm not gonna start anything... but you KNOW what i think!
ReplyDeletepeace and love,
jc
by the way, both of those gadgets, the tractrix front horn and the corner horn were the best of their time.
ReplyDeleteit's just that this time is a different time...
jc
I'g give my left nut for the white Voigt tractrix horn.
ReplyDeleteThen I hope you're planning to go mono with the hifi as well...
ReplyDeleteDo you need two testicles for stereo?
ReplyDeleteWell, that was implicit in your original bid :-)
ReplyDeleteJJ/Dave, that is truly lustworthy machining.
A far cry from what I could possibly have pictured when I rocked up Dave's place in NYC with beers and the Permendur Paperweights... Bravo!