Saturday, June 27, 2009

New (to me) loudspeakers


The latest refinement to my Quality Amplifier is a pair of loudspeakers designed for use with valve amplifiers. I've been looking for something suitable on Ebay for some time. This week I managed to pick up a pair of original Leak Sandwich speakers for £32 locally. Large heavy items often don't make high prices here in the UK because shipping is very expensive - it would have been over £30.

So what are they like? Well at first they sounded great, then after a day one started to sound rough. I did a bit of Googling, took a close look at the sandwich driver and decided that gravity had probably got the better of the cone and surround. Though the cones and surrounds all looked to be in great condition there was a slight tilt downwards. This is apparently a known problem. So I tried standing the speaker upside down - it sounded fine again. So all the was required was to remove the driver and turn it through 180 degrees!



History of the Leak Sandwich here http://44bx.com/leak/sandwich.html

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Since I bought these I've seen a few other pairs listed on Ebay. I reckon a great many of these were made and folks have kept them - suggesting that they bring some pleasure to those who own them. I'm still enjoying mine.

It's odd what some folks put in Ebay ads though - I saw one pair listed as needing a lot of power to drive them. That certainly shouldn't be the case, but as they have 15 ohm impedance driving them from an 8 ohm source would do this. It takes twice the voltage so you're amp would have the volume turned up to a level that would normally give 4 times the power you actually get!