History on ohm A's and F's.

Mapman,
I heard them at a customer's house with a pair of Pass XA60.5 amps.

I can't give you an honest comparison for 2 reasons. First, I haven't heard a pair of properly driven F's for almost 20 years and it wasn't in the same room as the 5-S3 which is critical. Second, and more importantly, our "sonic memory" is quite poor. Any comparsion based on what was heard 20 years ago is not worth talking about now IMO.

Sorry.

Audiofeil,

What did you think of the 5-S3's?

It's a nice speaker; good value for the money.

I had heard the Fs in the '70s, and was very impressed by the power, scale and coherence of the sound. Years later, in the early 90s, I bought a pair of mint Fs to compare to the Walsh 5s I had so I could compare them directly.
To me it was not close. The F sounded heavy and slow in the bottom registers by comparison, and recessed on the top. The Walsh 5 was much better balanced and open sounding.
The decision as to which was a keeper was very easy for me, even though at the time the Walsh 5 was worth 4 or 5 times as much as the Fs on the resale market.
I had a very beefy amp (over 600 wpc into 2 ohms), so I had more than enough drive for either speaker.
From that, and later descriptions of the S3, I would say that it is very safe to assume the S3 is much better yet.
YMMV.

Hello Gentlemen, Ladies,

May I interject on the conversation? If you have not seen our new site please vist it. Love to have some feedback.

www.hhr-exoticspeakers.com

Also, Regarding the Apogees and newer versions being made by Graz, prices start at $50K and go up to $120K. As for MBL's they start at $55K and go to over $200K on the extremes. (If my memory serves from our last conversations. I do keep in touch with Apogee, MBL and German Physiks)

Oh, BTW, the German Physiks unit is a truncated Walsh cone with a 2" VC and about a 6" nominal diameter, crossed over at 240 Hz to a 10" woofer. The Old F was a 3" vc and a nominal 12" diameter.

Referencing the slow sound and lack of highs on the F's you heard I can relate. If the wrong voice coil, spider and surround are used in a recone as well as not replacing the damping foams and putties, the unit will suffer terribly. No highs, no transient response, muffeled sound, etc. will result. This is what I have been fighting so diligently.

I truly wish you all could feel and hear the magic these speakers are capable of producing. Funny, most women that come to my home/showroom are emotionally impressed, but to my suprise it has been the men that are most affected. Several have actually had tears run down their face and hair stand up from the experience. To me there can be no greater testament of their musical prowess and of shear musical enjoyment.

As always, I humbley wish you all the greatest musical experiences.

Dale Harder