ESS speakers "Translinear" Transstatic

"Sound As Clear As Light" was their slogan. I own a numerically matched pair of Rosewood units purchased as floor models from a Tacoma, WA in 1972. dealer. I got them from a friend who originally purchased them from Paulsens, then sold them to me for $600/pr. He decided to go with K-horns, so I became a proud recipient of the ESS Transtatic Is. I have replaced 4 of the original RtR es wafers. They are glued and riveted making them difficult to repair - My stereo guy is giving it a try. I purchased 8 replacement units on Ebay for $250 (1 bad one) from Infinity 2000A speakers. I will pass these ESS down to my offspring because they are truly wonderful in sound quality and quantity, and they are pleasing to the eye. I also have the instruction manual and sales brochure.

I just registered for this site as I was trying to remember the name of the speakers I owned that had an oval KEF woofer and electrostatic elements. I believe I was using a Phase Linear 400 to drive them and blew a lot of the RTR elements. I seem to recall the woofers did a strange thing when overdriven. You must remember the era that these speakers were available. My memory is decidedly fuzzy and it's not all due to advanced age. My roommate at the time had a JBL Paragon that sat between the Transstatics. When he got tired of the Paragon, we both purchased a pair of Infinity Servo Statik I speakers and stacked the panels in our living room. Talk about blown RTRs. I now own Thiel CS3.5s but this forum brought back a lot of memories.

Sort of new here but I too have a pair of ESS.
Bought new in '79, AMT-1-Towers. Not the Translinear but rather the evolved legendary BIG Heils. Fabulous ESS sound from a 48"? Quarter Wave Transmission line Tower.
Recently re-foamed and new X-over parts. Better than ever.
Thanks for the small hijack.

Was ESS the same company as Sound Stream?

Wasn't Dr. Oscar Heil the inventor of the Heil talk box, used by guitar players like Joe Walsh and Peter Frampton?

I was a tech in R&D for ESS for 1.5 yrs. '77-'78. The company was long past the electrostatics by then. I hired on there so I could afford a pair($450 ea.) of what I believed were the best sounding speakers in the world. Don't have all the answers for your questions, forget the 'statics they were before my time and did not compare with the Heil AMT.
I helped with the proto-types of all of the systems at the time including one special one called the Transar (full range Heil AMT). I left the company with what may well have been the best pair of speakers to that date: 1978 AMT1B Bookshelf built in the lab by myself with hand tested