More accurate and flatter than what?
More accurate and flatter than regular floor standing speakers with forward radiating drivers.
The essence of that Allison mid range has always been the same.
Thanks for the tip!
Actually, no. The replacement drivers looked exactly like the originals. The improvement was internal, and mostly with the glue! This is the complete story, that I was hoping to avoid telling.
When moving into my first house, in '88, I had carefully boxed up the Allison 3's in their original cartons. The movers must have been less than gentle with handling them, however, as I discovered later. After I was able to hook up the stereo, one of the speakers sounded very wrong. Removing the grill, which wasn't damaged, I saw the paper of the mid-range driver had separated from the magnet! That was when I visited Allison Acoustics, conveniently located not far from where I worked. I explained to Roy what happened, who said some early production runs had a glue problem, and that he was using a different process, along with other refinements he had made. He suggested that a new mid-range wouldn't be a perfect sonic match for the 10-year-old driver in my other speaker, so I bought two replacement units from the same production run. Replacing just the failed unit at first, I could hear immediately that Roy was right about the difference in sound. The then-new drivers sounded a bit more forward, especially with vocals.
Stumbling over the timeline actually… The difference i’m referring to came in 1994 with the redesigned mid range that has the metal screen and the plastic bezel in 1988 the mid range still have the wooden bezel with no protective screenActually, no. The replacement drivers looked exactly like the originals. The improvement was internal, and mostly with the glue! This is the complete story, that I was hoping to avoid telling.
Neither am I. I'm currently restoring the pair that @mhardy6647 showed earlier. Woofer surrounds were shot. One midrange was dented. And I'm prophylactically replacing the crossover electrolytics. I'm greatly looking forward to hearing these once the restoration is done. Biggest challenge is finding a spot for them in the house; they may end up getting taken over to my cooking/drinking partner's place where there's more room.
Absolutely. If I end up with them at my buddy's place, it will be CLIO since that's portable. At my place, full-on AP. I wish I could afford a Klippel, but my skill in picking lottery numbers seems to be inadequate.
By reputation, they do better on long walls, which makes things a bit complicated for my usual listening room. My current speakers (Quads and NHTs) are on the short wall, and the long walls are filled with bookcases (which double as acoustic treatment
).I had a blast with my original pair of A1 from 1977.
As an aside, that Allison MR driver in particular is a rather beefy piece of hardware.
My Allison ones lived with adjacent wall placement for 13 years in my first house, which was a small high ranch with a finished basement…… Beggars can’t be choosers. The basement is where they resided, although it was finished and had a fireplace down there so some of those music sessions were quite nice, my sweet spot was a couch facing into the corner of those adjacent walls.I think kept out of corners and against or fairly near walls, they'll do fine.
This said, I have listened to them out in the room and thought they sounded fine like that, too. Probably give up some deeper LF, but I have never really been a basshead.
I did not know one of the MRs was dented -- sorry about that! I doubt that there is much acoustic damage done by a dent, but of course it's still unfortunate. The treble and MR driver design (topology) Allison used was/is both interesting and (I would opine) effective.
I am also still not entirely convinced that there's not one more spare MR and tweeter lurking in the shadows here someplace... but we may have to wait until the Loudspeaker Rapture before having a definitive answer to that mystery!
