the saga finding enough working survivor Allison acoustics speakers ! for 11.2 HT system


gee i just can鈥檛 win ! i am always looking for a good deal on some Allison speakers and i had found a guy selling some allison LC110 speakers on CL i ask for photos. gosh they look perfect ! he only wants $50 ! i agree of course i offer to pay for packing them up i ask him if he wants extra $ to pack them he says nothing so i just send him $50

he gets totally PO and tells me "what happened to packing $ "?says "returning your $ and parting them out on e bay! "

have not seen the $ refused returned yet ,

i apologize for the misunderstanding in messages txt try to leave voice message and send an additional $50 "for packing "and free shipping label i hear ....................................................................... nothing ! 馃ゲ

well i鈥檓 safe pay pal for goods and services though it can take 30 days to get $ back!

just could not believe he would get so bent out of shape over such a little thing !

UPDATE

HEARD FR HIM I SENT MO $ APARENTLY HE NEEDED / WANTED mo $ TO GET MORE PACKING MATERIALS ? SO FAR IT IS $50 FOR SPEAKERS AND $75 FOR the packing materials ! 馃檪

Well, good news they are on the way should arrive tues eve, ! apparently he is fanatical about packing doing it right ! i always try to obey USPS regs padding, doubled boxed , padding between boxes .

sad even tho well packed one of the tweeters got damaged in shipping 馃ゲ sucks ! 馃ゲ

he had the grille against a piece of foam and it pushed on the grille and the grille pushed in the allison convex dome now the irreplaceable tweeter is junk ! should have supported the speaker around the sides !

i cut a u shape out of the foam to show him what MIGHT have worked to protect the tweeter cone the ALLISON convex cone tweeters and mids are VERY easy to damage and unobtainium !

Many models had metal protective grilles on them the grilles on these area very stiff screen material but it damaged the cone. it cannot be repaired ,

did not help聽 UPS driver聽 dropped the box a foot onto the porch ! jerks!
( what can you expect for the $100K per year drivers get ! YES really ! )聽

I will get my $ back for speakers $54 packing $75 and shipping $35
lesson is try to discern what you might have done or said that annoyed someone ( nothing in this case apparently ! ) noneless, we apologised ,were humble and we finished the buisiness we initiated ! sad the tweeter was damaged beyond repair tho !sadMay be an image of record player and speakerMay be an image of speaker and saddle-stitched leatherMay be an image of textMay be an image of textMay be an image of speakerMay be an image of speaker

128x128quickjack1234

路聽nroSopdetsc11r58m9h97h9hi87e1ag085uOc2ut8mml8c聽a0o741fbf7a20聽聽路聽

score ! got a pair of Allison AL 105 speakers for $35 ! a bit rough on outside but should clean up w/ some TLC

woofers were even professionally re-foamed YES w/ foam NOT rubber! ( rubber screws up the sound ) and there is longer lasting , more chemically stable foam surrounds now 馃檪 馃檪

AL105 the baby of the AL range !May be an image of speaker, television and textMay be a graphic of blueprint, floor plan and text

nroSopdetsc11r58m9h97h9hi87e1ag085uOc2ut8mml3c聽a0o741fbf7a20聽聽路聽

well, pretty excited !

found a chap selling some of the RA speakers! a center channel, 2 mini monitors and TWO of the RARE mythical Allison 8' push -pull subs! have not seen any for sale for years!

WOWO ! OK so made an offer and now will have to figure out a way to get them shipped fr NJ ! to AZ !

anyone live near Cliffwood , NJ 07721 ?

worse case scenario will hire a guy fr CL to pick them up, box them and ship them U haul has great boxes and padding for speakers for reasonable prices.

so no excuses for not shipping !

I send a free UPS label via e mail they can drop them off @ a UPS location or just call for a pick up ! 馃檪

sure would be nice to swap those tweeters for some better AL series convex ones! theses will make great ATmos speakers in the 11.1 all Allison HT system!

now the DIY is theses are old school UNPOWERED! no built in plate amps so what do i do to amp them ? what/ how do i drive them ?

Jack Dale

Author

Top contributor

PS yes we hired a earnest eager young Muslim man a refugee who fled fr horrible violence fr a craigs list ad $5 we placed and he did a great job packing them so they arrived w/ NO damage !

always nice to see blind faith in someone you do not know and聽have never met is rewarded as they were honest and did the job well .

we paid him $100 in advance to go pick up the speakers , buy boxes fr lowes , packing material prepare them and drop them off @ UPS聽馃檪

Jack Dale

Author

Top contributor

well the deal has changed he says he has apparently got rid of the mini monitors so we are looking @ the two subwoofers and 2 center channels for $350 seems bit high but i want them .

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+2

the pair of vintage Allison top of line AL130 i bought recently ! , the boxes good for shipping. ( u haul )

PIA sellers who will not ship ! "local pick up only " have had to hire a guy on CL nearby seller to go pay him ,get them. box them up ! i e mail him a prepaid shipping label!

to find working survivors you have to look all over USA !

Jack Dale

Author

Top contributor

this why the Allisons were / are magic !

SCORE !

found some bucket list Alllison Al130 speakers ! they were top of the Alllison line !

Back in the day , these speakers were a phenom smoking most other speakers in reviews !

even Consumers Reports scientists and engineers said it was the best speaker they had ever heard and made it a "best buy " ! LOL聽馃ぃ

need some OEM midrange as someone put in some lame AR midrange when the original mid-drivers failed in the 1980s'! ( and the tweeters got damaged in shipping聽馃ゲ) sourced these fr the 2nd owner , orig owner recently replaced the woofers w/ orig NOS woofers!

sadly NO current speaker maker has the knowledge ,expertise, skills or ability to make the patented Allison Convex tweeters and midranges !

( they were notoriously difficult to make! )

sad that, as they were one of the MOST innovative and effective innovations EVER in speaker design.

even now, 50 years on nothing is superior or equal .

Roy allison said :

And re the push =pull woofers ,

( a classic VINTAGE design ! )

Allison said : "The Push-Pull Design used in the IC10 Speakers is used to reduce second harmonic distortion. The results are typically a 10dB -20dB reduction of distortion in the second harmonic."

they are electrically OUT of phase but acoustically IN phase !

some reviewer said

" Because of the system鈥檚 unusual woofer configuration, we were especially interested to check the low-frequency distortion. With a constant drive level of 2.25 volts (equivalent to a 90-dB SPL at 1 meter), the distortion was only 8 percent at 20 Hz, 2.5 percent at 40 Hz, and between 0.5 and 0.7 percent from 60 to 130 Hz. This is exceptional performance for a pair of 6-inch drivers and seems to confirm the merit of the push-pull design."

( they were testing the AL125 the AL 130 have 8 " woofers )

As for the rest of the speakers

AL series :here is ol' Roy himself explaining WHY the conVEX cones work

Lander: "You also designed the midranges and tweeters that your speakers used."

Allison: "Developing midrange and tweeter systems that were high enough in quality to complement the woofer we anticipated making was much more difficult. I worked out a configuration that I thought would produce extremely wide dispersion, which I deemed essential. I always wanted maximum dispersion of energy at all frequencies, and preferably the SAME amount of energy at all frequencies, and I set about to get it. That resulted in what was then a UNIQUE DESIGN for a tweeter-and-midrange configuration: what is essentially half a pulsating sphere. When you make it flexible鈥攆rom paper鈥攁nd clamp the outer edge to the mounting plate, then drive it at the midway point, the surface of this driver is going to be forced to change its radius of curvature so that there's a relatively large component of motion at right angles to the voice-coil as well as in line with the voice-coil motion."

Lander: "And this gave you the dispersion you were after. Do you still favor paper cones?"

Allison: " Yes, I do. Not for a woofer, where the material doesn't matter very much as long as it works like a piston.

At the other end of the spectrum, I don't want it to work like a piston, because even a small tweeter, if it's big enough to produce any reasonable amount of energy, is going to become DIRECTIONAL at very high frequencies.

So I have to use a very flexible material, and paper has a nice ratio of stiffness to sound-energy absorption when it flexes.

With the right configuration and density and stiffness, paper can behave in a UNIQUE way. It's aided in my design by the material used to clamp the outer edge to the mounting plate鈥攁 very thin layer of foam, which is pretty effective in absorbing any energy that wants to reflect back from the edge and cause nonuniform response.

I had emphasized dispersion in order to re-create as best I could the performance-hall ambience.

I don't want to put up with a sweet spot, and I'd rather have less dramatically precise imaging but a close simulation of what you hear in a concert hall in terms of envelopment. For that, you need reverberant energy broadcast at very wide angles from the loudspeakers, so the bulk of the energy has a chance to do multiple reflections before it reaches your ear. I think pinpoint imaging has to do with synthetically generated music, not acoustic music鈥攅xcept perhaps for a solo instrument or a solo voice, where you might want fairly sharp localization. For envelopment, you need widespread energy generation."

Lander: That could explain why your Allison Acoustics speakers met with what you admit was a mixed response. You've also speculated that their appearance, which I've always liked, put some people off.

Allison: "They looked unusual. People didn't expect speakers to look like that, and unconventional things can create suspicion."
Photo another pair of AL130 i bought sadly the former owner replaced the blown allison聽 midrange w/ some bogus AR mid !聽

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note that MOST modern speakers due to the severe limitations of concave cones and design have a NARROW sweet spot ! which makes placement and alignment critical they get more energy directed at a listener so can skate w/ lousy efficiency and low-powered receivers but the system only really sounds good in a limited seating area . but that is the current fashion ( or is it poor design ? cheaping out on materials , hardware ? )


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