Vintage Speakers - Goodmans Drivers

[Radio Wrangler]

Originally Posted by mark_in_manc

or letting the pigeons know the time of the next train to Blackpool North!).

I don't think even pigeons could work out what railway PA announcements said.

The pub in our village has a function suite for wedding doos, etc. They have Bose 901 speakers let into the ceiling, so the flat faces are flush with the ceiling. The ramped faces are all pointing upward, into the loft space.

You'd have to know where all the drivers were in these specific speakers to get the joke. The column speaker on its side is an obvious hoot.

David

[rontech]

I have a Bose "SOLO" unit for TV sound on my large flat screen TV. The Bose sits on the shelf below. It gives very good sound from the TV (which has puny little speakers )'

There is no discernable stereo effect though. A am OK with that though.

[Cobaltblue]

Thread re-opened for possible identification

Cheers

Mike T

[thermalrunaway]

Hi everyone,
in spite of being a "noob" I have taken the bold step of asking to reopen this thread as I thought it might be interesting to reveal the identity of these handsome speakers.
They are Expert Mark II acoustic columns which were produced as a re-working of the mark I for the new stereo range of equipment. They were offered with Goodmans Audiom 60s and Wharfedale super 3 tweeters when new, although Expert being a true bespoke builder you could probably have whatever you wanted in them.
I am the proud owner of a single mark I from the fifties, which is fitted with the recommended Whiteley 10" dual concentric. It does not have the diffuser arrangement on top, and unlike the later marks the ports are front-firing, evidenced by the fact that the two book-matched veneers are on the port faces.
There was a mark III, produced up to the company's demise, offered with Wharfedale super 10 or Lowther PM6 or 7.

Cheers,

Rob.

[thermalrunaway]

Hi,
to follow on from my last post, and for anyone in the future wanting to identify one of these, here is my Expert (mark I) acoustic column from c.1955. Acoustic treatment inside consists of a potato sack tacked into the top of the cabinet like a bin-liner and filled with horse-hair or coconut fibre!

[Station X]

There was no picture attached to your post.

Use the preview button before hitting submit.

[thermalrunaway]

Oops! Did I mention I'm new here...

Mark I Expert acoustic column c.1955

[MelJon66]

Hi All,

Huge thanks to Rob (thermalrunaway) for the great reveal. Over the last 20+ years I have searched in vain to find out who made these speakers. Even now that Rob has named Expert as the manufacturer I can still find nothing about them online. Even on this forum a search for "Expert acoustic column" does not come up with this thread even though the phase is included in Rob's last post. There is a post from a few years back about their stereophonic system.

Thinking that they were home made cabinets I had decided to sell the Goodmans drivers and convert the cabinets into a pair of sub-woofers. Luckily, as I have so many other projects on the go they have escaped the jigsaw and are still in one piece. Even the potato sacks were still inside the last time I checked!

I will test the drivers and if they work I will sell them elsewhere. The drivers do not match so at least one of them is not original anyway and possibly both. Roger RojDW48 has expressed an interest in the cabinets and as he isn't far from me and is a vintage speaker enthusiast I am sure he will find a good home for them. They might sound good with those dual concentric drivers fitted Roger.

If anyone has anything to add to the "Expert" story I would love to hear more.

Cheers
Mel

[Station X]

Originally Posted by MelJon66

Even on this forum a search for "Expert acoustic column" does not come up with this thread even though the phase is included in Rob's last post.

Putting that phrase the forum's built in search engine finds this thread.

It doesn't work if you use the Google custom search box, presumably because Google hasn't spidered this page yet.

[RojDW48]

Originally Posted by MelJon66

Hi All,

Roger RojDW48 has expressed an interest in the cabinets and as he isn't far from me and is a vintage speaker enthusiast I am sure he will find a good home for them. They might sound good with those dual concentric drivers fitted Roger.

I have a variety of old drivers tucked away to try - my idea of fun! Send me a PM and we can try to get together.

[Edward Huggins]

In Post#28, the OP speaks of making "pair of sub-woofers". Assuming their use on the same system, this would be strange as two are not normally needed. If used they are liable to introduce phase and standing wave issues....

[MelJon66]

Thanks Graham,

You have educated me. Using the built in search box does indeed show up this thread. I assumed the "Search this website" search button at the top was the same thing.......but it clearly isn't. Lesson learned.

Thanks
Mel

[Nickthedentist]

Originally Posted by MelJon66

Hi All,

Huge thanks to Rob (thermalrunaway) for the great reveal. Over the last 20+ years I have searched in vain to find out who made these speakers. Even now that Rob has named Expert as the manufacturer I can still find nothing about them online.

You may have more luck searching the internet for "EMG" or "Davey".

Their equipment does crop up sometimes but is seriously rare as it was pretty-much made to order at very high prices; the kind of thing you'd find in big country houses owned by affluent music lovers.

See for example:

https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/...d.php?t=104839

and

https://vintage-radio.net/forum/showthread.php?p=632800

[RojDW48]

Very interesting, Nick. I picked up an old Columbia bakelite turntable from a member in Nether Stowey some years ago. He had an EMG gramophone with a massive horn, which sounded spectacularly good!

[MelJon66]

Replying to Edward in Post #31,

I think the practice of summing two stereo channels into one mono sub is just a cost and space saving exercise. I have a pair of 80's era Celestion SL600's which are wonderful speakers but they produce very little bass. Celestion offered a matching pair of sub-woofers as an option but they were hideously expensive back in the day. These days I can only hear the high frequencies with hearing aids but I can hear the bass clearly so investing in making the most of the bottom octaves seems to make sense.

Summing two channels into mono can lead to cancellation of the sound at bass frequencies due to phase differences between the channels. This may not be of interest in home theatre applications but is more important in hi-fi stereo systems. Also, having two subs enables each sub to operate at half the volume to achieve the same sound pressure level in room so the distortion is halved.

I suspect that the improved stereo separation will only really be heard on top quality classical recordings, which is not what I normally listen to, but with two nice cabinets available and sub amps being relatively cheap I was going to find some big drivers and put a pair of subs together. But, I would rather see the cabinets used as they were intended so I will be happy to make cabinets from scratch rather than spoil a pair of vintage speakers that someone can get pleasure from.

I hope I get treated so thoughtfully when I am a vintage classic. Hang on.....I am a vintage classic.

Cheers
Mel

[GrimJosef]

Originally Posted by Radio Wrangler

... I have the same doubts about dipole speakers. It would seem that they only make sense if you live and listen in the middle of a large, open field. You don't want walls near them. This fits with the standard advice that Quad electrostatics only work in large rooms, spaced far from walls. The same must go for Linkwitz' designs ...

Sorry for the very slow (and slightly OT ?) response, but I've only just seen this. It's true that dipole speakers can struggle if they are placed with their backs to a wall. But, pretty much by definition really, a dipole radiation pattern doesn't involve much sound going out sideways. So they work at least as well as sealed box speakers if they're close to side walls. The Quad ESLs (developed originally for mono) were a bit notorious for having quite a tight high-frequency 'beaming' and therefore a small stereo 'sweet spot'. The lucky person whose head happened to be in it wasn't troubled by side-wall reflections nearly as much as with more dispersive speakers. But he/she quickly lost their audio friends ...

Cheers,

GJ

[thermalrunaway]

Originally Posted by Nickthedentist

You may have more luck searching the internet for "EMG" or "Davey".

Their equipment does crop up sometimes but is seriously rare as it was pretty-much made to order at very high prices; the kind of thing you'd find in big country houses owned by affluent music lovers.

See for example:

https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/...d.php?t=104839


and

https://vintage-radio.net/forum/showthread.php?p=632800

I bought the speaker from an old boy in West London a few years ago, along with the expert gramophone. It had sat in the same corner of the living room of his childhood home for 60 years, since his concert-pianist father had traded in his EMG for it!

[Nickthedentist]

Lovely! What motor unit is fitted?

[thermalrunaway]

Sadly just a garrard SP25. Expert advertised these upgrades in the 60s as the original mono deck was not up to the stereo era. According to the original paperwork it seems to have been a garrard 78rpm radiogram motor (perhaps an AC6) and the Expert pickup which can be found in early hifi yearbooks.
There is another like this out there with an expert tuner and a retro-fitted Goldring-Lenco deck.

Rob.

[RojDW48]

Mel dropped the cabs off today. I'm very excited about getting them going! A little googling revealed this page - http://www.gramophonemuseum.com/expert-speakers.html