SpeakerTalk

willem-57

In 1979 i upgrade my rr104 to rr104 AB. After few years i bought a kit CS7 , T33A-B110B-B139B, to build by myself and i first made them as in the original kef drawing. But later on i decided to rebuild them with the rr105 in mind. Of course i used very good and thicker materials with a lot of exta bracing to make them as good as possible with every speaker in his own housing. Result was a very heavy speaker witch sounded awesome! Open in the treble and mid with a deep bassnote.

The 104AB was somewhere put away on the addic. So i thought why not rebuild them to like the CS7? I did and the result was very good, here i put in a new hardwired filter with the Kef 104AB spec's, mutch better housing with the T27 on top, later i replaced it with the T33A, sound is very good, so good that a friend of mine who bought them from me, now 12 years ago, won't sell them back to me Sad

proffski

Excellent and very interesting article. Thank you for sharing!
_________________
I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a
man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
-Winston Churchill

willem-57 · Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2014 8:45 am Post subject:

You're welcome,
I forgot to mention that the space behind the tweeter was filled with sand.
Greetings.

proffski · Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2014 10:31 am Post subject:

willem-57 · Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2014 10:52 am Post subject:

The housing of the B110 is made from 18 mm MDF, 7 liters netto, and the damping is made from aucoustic foam and baf. It is completely dead.
The bass chamber for the B139 is made of 22 mm MDF, 70 liters netto, damping started with 6 mm thick bitume, then 8 cm thick acoustic foam and also a little baf in the middle. There are 4 bracing's in the baschamber, so also a very dead housing.
The meaning of building this way is to get the smallest baffle as possible, resulting in a very good imaging and holographic soundstage.
The speaker weight is about 80 - 90 pounds.

The older kef speakers are basically very good speakers, only a lot of the housing is to nowadays standards very simple, rebuiling them is worthwhile and result is a very good speaker indeed.

proffski · Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2014 7:53 pm Post subject:

Similar loading in the design here for the B110.
Feel free to browse...
Link: http://goo.gl/YxvD1r
_________________
I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a
man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
-Winston Churchill

willem-57 · Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2014 9:24 pm Post subject:

Aaaah...., what an enormous speaker, never seen it before Surprised

proffski · Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2014 11:40 pm Post subject:

willem-57 · Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2014 4:42 pm Post subject:

Very deep bas, i think?

proffski · Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2014 5:43 pm Post subject:

Yes, initially the bass was lumpy and with horrendous peaks and troughs.
We cured it after weeks of trial and error before gluing and screwing the enclosure permanently.
Although it did not go as loud as many would have liked the bass was eventually very deep, clean and uncoloured. The listening room then was huge, bits of it always wanted to join in when playing decent organ music and synthesised stuff like Kraftwerk etc.
It was interesting, unlike some boxes, if there was little no bass on the recording then the speakers would not boom like some tend to. Then we tried DBX records, that was a true revelation indeed!
_________________
I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a
man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
-Winston Churchill

willem-57 · Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2014 7:12 pm Post subject:

Here i found another site from the Netherlands, a shop which does a lot of service on old Kef design,s, they also make new crossovers and total new design f.i. RR 104: http://www.plsaudio.nl/index.php/Modificatie-KEF-104/Bekijk-alle-producten.html

proffski · Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2014 7:45 pm Post subject:

Wow! Some serious restoration going on there, we could do with something like this in a few cities in the UK!
_________________
I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a
man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
-Winston Churchill

willem-57 · Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2014 9:52 am Post subject:

I telefoned the man from the shop yesterday and he told me that the Kef speakers from the 70's & 80's where from a very good quality. Because of that many RR104, Cadenza's, Corelli's, Carllton 2 and 3's, etc. are being sold on the second hand market. So if you make a new housing, or place a new crossover they can be used for another 10 or 30 years. Especially the bextrene ones will last for a very long time. If you see my 105.4's, the speakers itself looking almost as new ones, but they are 30+ years old!

It's only a pity that Kef itself no longer supports there older design's. I think there would be a nice market for it, here in the Netherlands Kef was very good sold with type's as discriped above, and they need parts now, like a new tweeter.

SaSi · Senior Contributor 200+ Joined: 24 Aug 2008 Posts: 256

Well, the good news is that there's now a source for brand new B110 and T27s, along with refit kits for various crossovers.

willem-57 · Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2014 7:00 am Post subject:

OK, that's good. Where can you find it? Website?