Ohm Walsh Micro Talls: who's actually heard 'em?

It’s true aesthetics don’t matter and are out of sight and mind inside those cans. A nice design advantage for sure. Even hot glue can be used to good effect apparently since you don’t have to look at it. I suspect it might even have some useful damping qualities sonically but just a guess. French speaker maker Triangle uses paper for bass drivers in their speakers which are some of the fastest and most detailed around for the money but those are in plain sight and made to a higher aesthetic standard as well accordingly.

If the sound is not up to par for the money then that’s totally different.

I still run Ohm Ls with paper tweeter over other newer much fancier and expensive models from other brands. Ribbon tweeter would be nice there I’m sure. Paper ain’t fancy but can sound surprisingly good. Of course a lot of cheap bad sounding speakers have used paper and other tweeters over the years as well.


Did the the center channel speaker use paper tweeter also?

I’m a two channel only guy so can’t really vouch for anything when it comes to surround sound.

Did the surrounds all sound similar bad or were issues with just some?

You should ask JS why he uses paper tweeters in the surrounds other than for the fact they likely help keep manufacturing costs low.   I find it hard to believe he would use bad sounding parts in his speakers.  

im pretty sure he does not use ribbon tweets because ribbons tend to be highly directional which is not the Ohm Walsh thing.

Back again and I figure I would go over my equipment driving the Ohm's.

Amps: Two Emotiva XPA-1 Mono blocks and a Marantz MMA 8003
eight ch amp.
Pre-Amp: Marantz 8801
Sub Amp: Behringer EP 4000 2x2000 watts
Blu Ray player: BDP-93
Equalizer: Behringer Ultra Curve Pro for center ch
Power distribution: Silver Circle
Powerchords: Pangea Amp and low power units
PS Audio: outlet receptacles with independent (3) 15 amp curcuits
Projector: Epson 5020ub
Screen: Electric Elite 120"Wide, 1.0 gain 16:9 aspect ratio
Subs: Four 18" drivers in a Two custom cabinets vented in under my house (Infinite baffle).
Roku Ultra
And a Fios 150/150 internet connection 
Interconnects and speaker cables are a mix of God knows what
and I spent to much...
*********************************
When I originally decided on my 4/5k's I had gone through a period 
of extreme worry as I had been told I had kidney cancer, so I felt very nostalgic about my choice I.E. I wanted something cool reminding me of my youth. So I decided on the Ohm's after listening to some modern Maggie's. As a matter of fact I called JS on the way to my surgery to let him know what style of wood I wanted...lol

A looooooong time later the units arrived in boxes bigger than expected wow, I do have to say the packaging was amazing and
we'll conceived. But the plan is to keep the speakers until my ultimate demise so who needs big boxes.

As I got to know my 4/5k's I did have some reservations, mostly about the finishing , fit and finish and the CASTERS, as for the
CANS  I could only guess what was hiding inside the murky innards.
I used a bright flashlight, but it was very very hard to figure out.
At this point I decided to concentrate on the cabinet. 
The vener finish was very boring and just OK nothing special
so I called a friend who paints cars and before you know it the cabinets were painted in a charcoal metallic grey high gloss finish.
I made two concrete molds 3" thick for a heavy dense platform.
Next I had a frame made up to rest the speaker on and four CNC machined stainless steel posts....It does look freeking cool and with
painted cabinets it's looking like 2016 not the 70's. I rotated the can
independently from the cabinet, as it would look weird toed in.
At this point I had to bite the bullet and with that I opened them up
leaving the back half in place as all the switches need to stay as is.
Again WOW! It's like an Easter egg when you were a kid, it could be amazing.....or not.
Compare to the small units some care had been taken, but Damn
its 3rd world industrial design at best. At this point I knew there was no going back and forget any warranty...lol
The plan was simple "control the stuffing" dampen the platform everything was attached to, clean up the design, add silver wiring
extensions and solder in the new tweeter.

Here is a verbatim explanation.

HiVi RT1C-A Planar Isodynamic Tweeter
The vibrating element of a planer tweeter is almost weightless in comparison to a dome tweeter. The element consists of Kapton film with a pattern of aluminum conductors which is placed precisely between two Neodymium bar magnets. It provides an immediate and precise response to any transients in the original signal. These drivers are magnetically shielded and feature a linear phase response which provides time coherent reproduction resulting in accurate musical rhythm and imaging. Unlike other conventional tweeters and electrostatic speakers, the RT1C and RT2a have an extremely wide sound dispersion in the horizontal plane. At the same time, they have a well controlled sound dispersion in the vertical plane. This helps to avoid disturbing floor and ceiling reflections in a home environment thus enhancing clarity and imaging accuracy. The RT1C features a radiating area of 50 x 13mm and a round cast aluminum face plate. Although designed to be used with either the F5 or F6 bass/midrange drivers in a small 2-way system, it is also well suited for 3-way applications. Recommended second order crossover cut-off frequency - from 3kHz.

Got  to eat dinner " I'll be back"

Greetings.....

Never  got got back to you last night as we decided to watch something fun, so the last Jason Bourne movie it was. It's amazing what a little bit of speed, Transparancy and tweeter extension will do for the whole experience. Gun shots are so crisp and dynamic, voices are clear and intelligible, all the micro dynamics of surround effects gives the experience a much higher feeling of being there.
As for the movie....my wife and son, said good night half way through the plot...😵

Back to the speaker (4/5k's) after removal I took some time to look over the construction around the drivers, the filling/wadding looks out of control so I sheared some of and gave it a better look.
Could I hear a difference.....NO

The actual platform that the crossover and tweeter assembly is resting on is made from some simple 1/4" plywood, tapping on the forward edge gives out hollow woddy ring that can't be good as vibrations will either ring away when played, or vibrate the tweeter
in multiple axis.
I have to say that the crossover was very well thought out and looked very tidy indeed. 

So the idea was to dampen the platform, but there's only so much room vertically and room was a big issue as most tweeters
in the style I was looking for was in the 5"-8" height and I needed something in the 4" range.

Digging  out the tweeter was easier said en done, as everything was
hot-melt glued or potted in some black semi hard epoxy. 
The black "stuff" prevented me from seeing the wiring, but with
my incredible perseverance they were finally relieved of their gooey
prison. I do think JS personally made the crossover and possibly assembled the unit as he signed the plywood.

Finally I have the tweeter in my hands and I can run a proper impedance test on the unit, 4ohm's give or take so with that I knew
what to look for.

The problem...
The tweeter I wanted was 5 ohm not four, so what to do?
I first bought one unit, soldered it on to the center ch to see if anything would  blow up, implode or possibly burn down my house. Nothing of the sort happened, but what I heard was everything previously missing, not perfect but as I previously said it had to do with the size of the Walsh driver not the tweeter.

So 5 ohm works like a charm, but I'm lucky that the main cans have 
options and adjustability for different presentations and room sizes.

More to come soon....

Here's some more changes and ideas to make the Ohm's really, really amazing...


One thing I've been realizing is that the higher I cross over the main speakers the better they sound, my theory is that the Walsh driver
likes to be un-loaded a bit as bass could possibly swamp the midrange and some tweeting signals.
 I will continue to look in to that aspect of the sound. It could also be the reason the smaller speakers sound as good in the upper range.

In the next few days I will try an open cell foam plugg in the vent port to see if it changes the quality of the bass. This is of course a guessing exercise and who knows I might hate it.

I have also wondered why there's no tweeting in the back, so I'm planing to take the original tweeters, build a simple crossover loaded directly from the speaker wire posts, that way I don't have to hack the original crossover. If this works and I don't see why not, as I had some Von Sweikerts VR4's which used a back firing tweeter to great effect, and I did love those speakers a lot. To control the tweeter I will use a volume control in the circuit....

Back to the tweeter platform build on the 4/5k's....
After considering the options to dampen the (circular) plywood
part I decided to use 1/16" thick (3" wide) basswood in three layers with dampening material on the first layer and semi rigid glue between the slats to dampen any further vibrations. All this was glued to the edge of the platform and clamped.
So when you look at the platform it now looks like a birthday cake 
made from plywood covering all the dampening material. After the edge was cleaned up I covered the whole thing with dark grey felt,
contact cement made the whole affair super easy and very clean looking :) Sudenly no vibrations just a thud when I tap it.

The original set up had a pice of white cardboard glued (hot melt)
to the tweeter, in the shape and size of half the platform, the bottom front edged hot glued in on the bottom and then folded backwards in a soft arc to a standoff in the middle of the crossover.  As I changed the tweeter I wanted to cancel as much of a possible back wave so the the felt got folded in towards the back, semi mimicking 
the original folded cardboard. Any protruding edge got a open cell
foam edge to cancel unwanted reflections...

The speaker cover is the old style so called black fabric, but to me it looks like faded black anodized aluminum, kind of a purplish color that needs to go, so I found some black, real black stuff that should go a long way to modernize the look.

That will do it for now, and I look forward to share the rest of the project very soon...🇸🇪

Peter whatever the outcome yours is a very unique and interesting DIY endeavor. You are starting out in a very good place sound wise compared to many in my humble estimation. Your findings poking around inside the OHMs is also very interesting for me.

I have an older pair of OHM Ls that I bought for a couple hundred dollars new back in 1978 that I have endeavored to upgrade and maintain myself.   I use these currently in a smaller room where my main gear resides.  

I have these sounding  very competitive with much more expensive modern alternatives, better than ever these days.   I replaced 8" bass drivers with Morel units that cost as much as the speakers pretty much originally.   I also added sub-bass activation circuit JS uses in most of his newer units to help keep bass extended and managed.

These still use original paper tweeter and super tweeters and high end sounds very good once properly balanced.   I've considered upgrading the high end drivers as well but have not felt compelled to do it quite yet.   I need to investigate some more but would definitely like to consider trying a folded ribbon tweeter in those just for fun.