Longer speaker cables or interconnects

I went to The Cooper Union, I’m always making that mistake. Oops.

As for for the rest of your questions, they will have to wait until everything comes back out of their boxes.

That said, I have been running the Beard with the Futterman from either output with no discernible difference for 28 years. Specter returned the Beard to stock (except for the caps) two years ago, he did everything on the OTLs also and then tuned it all to the room.

The sub is a new addition to the system. I’ve used it only for a month or so before packing it up and haven’t really had a chance to fine tune things, but it sounded good though not great and made the Altec sound noticeably clearer. It went to output two.

all the caps were upgraded. Every one. 

OK. Given that, and pending any further info you might be able to provide after the equipment is unboxed, and given also that the 604c is specified as an 8 ohm driver, I suspect that with this particular equipment what would be best is:

-- Connect Output 1 to the amps via the shortest possible cable length. And preferably with cables having low capacitance, for example Blue Jeans LC-1 (12 pf/foot).

-- Connect Output 2 to the sub’s crossover/amplifier via whatever cable length is necessary. If the output impedance of Output 1 with the cap upgrade is anything remotely close to the original 100K spec it would not work well with the sub.

-- Connect the speakers to the amps via whatever cable length is necessary.

Generally speaking, low speaker impedance (which is not the case here) tends to increase the importance of minimizing speaker cable length. High output impedance of a component providing a line-level signal (which is certainly the case here) tends to increase the importance of minimizing interconnect length (although much less so in the case of a sub, for which cable effects on the treble region are unimportant). The use of unbalanced as opposed to balanced interconnections also tends to increase the importance of minimizing interconnect length.

Again generally speaking, my reading of the many previous threads in which the long speaker cable/short interconnect vs. short speaker cable/long interconnect subject has been discussed has been the same as yours, that "the preponderance of opinion is to put the amps near the speakers" (quoting from one of your earlier posts). However the specifics of your particular equipment appear to greatly overshadow any such generalities. Bill (Grannyring) had it right!


Good luck. Regards,
-- Al

Almarg,

stock 604B, C, and D were 16 ohms. They can be modified to 8. When I had them re-coned, I kept them at 16. Jon said the Futterman much prefer the 16.

E and up are at 8.

I will ask Jon about the output impedance of both taps. I’m sure he must have thought of it and never explained to me, figuring it’s tmi, but you never know.

Thanks for the advice. Looks like I have had it more or less right all along.

stock 604B, C, and D were 16 ohms. They can be modified to 8. When I had them re-coned, I kept them at 16. Jon said the Futterman much prefer the 16.

Even better! 

I had seen the 8 ohm number in the listing for the 604C near the middle of this page, but a further search confirms that 16 ohms is correct.  Thanks for pointing that out.

Regards,
-- Al 

@almarg Way back when, I saw The Blues Project many times at the Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village. Every year on a long Thanksgiving weekend, the Cafe hosted a blues festival called The Blues Bag - 24/7 for 4 straight days. It was some kind of wonderful - from what I can remember of it. ;-0

Al Kooper has been busy all these decades as a musician & music producer. As a goof, he produced for The Rock Bottom Remainders. Barbara Kingsolver wrote a hilarious short story about their endeavor in ’High Tide in Tucson.’ I love these quotes from their Wiki page.

"Roy actually coined the term for our genre of music; ’hard-listening music.’ " – Dave Barry

"Your band’s not too bad. It’s not too good either. Don’t let it get any better, otherwise you’ll just be another lousy band." - Bruce Springsteen

The Blues Project was started by Danny Kalb. I never expected to see this amazing basketball trick shot on a musician’s website. Fast forward to 30 secs in. Watch it in full screen.