Ohm Walsh F Hope of Resurrection

I may ask the Ohm factory about it. I'm grateful that the drivers appear to be in good shape to recondition. 

I feel like I've read in the past that the original Ohm F's were essentially sent from the factory "broken", that they leaked because of some design flaw and that what you're experiencing is actually normal for these speakers.  I'm certain a search on this subject will uncover this problem, perhaps Dale at HHR would know of this.

https://www.cnet.com/news/forty-years-ago-the-ohm-f-speaker-was-a-game-changer-it-still-is/

https://ohmspeaker.com/news/nasa-technology-comes-to-speakers-ferrofluid/

Could well be the ferro fluid as mentioned here.


Was it magnetic?

I do not have answers as to whether the goo was ferrofluid, but that is likely the best explanation. So, perhaps we'll see if when I use them it takes 300wpc to get them to wake up, and 301 wpc to blow them up! 

Well, good luck! Nothing to lose and who knows maybe they can still deliver something that is hard to find otherwise.

I can tell you that the Walsh CLS design can take pretty much anything you throw at it with very little compression or risk of damage, so John Strohbeen definitely knows what he is doing there. Lessons learned over the years it seems from that article, starting with attempts to salvage original Ohm Fs.

I’ve been running various models hard for almost 40 years now, never a problem. Seems like the mastered application of ferrofluid is a factor for that.

IT’s still always best to avoid clipping at all costs... reserve power and the ability to handle it is your insurance policy for that with most good quality speakers in good working order.

In the interest of getting the most possible out of my Ohm Walsh F5s, I’ve been running them with 500 w/ch (into 8ohm doubling to 1000 into 4) BEl Canto monoblocks for a number of years now with outstanding results. I bought them planning to throw the kitchen sink at the biggest Ohms in order to max out what they can do. Those amps can drive almost anything to their max and also work well with other smaller speakers I own or have owned with them like my smaller Ohm 2s, kef ls50s, Dynaudio Contour monitors and others, but the Ohms are champs at going loud and clear off however much power you want to throw at them. Meanwhile they do as well as most with lower power amps, but its when you throw the kitchen sink at them that they truly distinguish themselves from the competition and shine. Similar to mbl and GP in that regard as well from what I read.