L-Pads. Speakers Awful Without Them, New Ones Ordered


I removed the L-Pads, the tweeters are way too bright, screechy above mids. Disturbing. Played my best source: R2R, Sgt. Peppers. Normally magnificent. Unlistenable!

Using my Chase Remote Control to cut Treble temporarily, until new L-Pads arrive.

I ordered these 16 ohm pads:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/153892668925

mine don’t have the issues he discusses, my insulation is modern, crossovers are tar filled metal cans, not much heat in 6.3 cu ft; these and originals were large ceramic body.

Will put the tweeter ’Brilliance’ ones in first, listen. Then add ’Presence’, listen, decide: leave in, or out. IN more than likely. They (orig and 1 set of replacements) have been IN for 62 years.

My original bronze ones came from original Fisher console, they were a custom version, still labeled ’Brilliance’ and ’Presence’.
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Many of these old Electro-Voice designs had L-Pads (16 ohm used AT37 Attenuators; 8 ohm used AT38). 2 way have one. 3 way designs have two: ’Brilliance’ and ’Presence’.

You can balance the drivers to each other, and to each space, and as you age, ability to hear highs diminishes, you can creep the tweeters up speck by speck. Imbalance due to irregular spacing: adjust each individually

I’m not going to measure and install a fixed resistor, I want future adjustability.

’L-Pads: Terrible Idea’. Bullshite, everyone who ever heard them loves them!

And, let’s not forget, the originals, with L-Pads, first one mono speaker, later two for stereo, are the designs that made these companies successful.






elliottbnewcombjr
Erik,

Scoundrel Thou Art.

The other thread was about my 16 ohm speakers, my amp having 16 ohm taps, and sadly it’s bias adjustments only with the bottom off.

Maintenance, I found the wires of the original L-Pads fried when I blew the tweeters blasting In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. Replaced them, 16 ohm L-Pads were easy to find those days.

lewm made me remove them. As long as they are out, sounded terrible, thought I would find better ones to re-insert. 16 ohm no longer easy to find. Hooray for Crites, they seem to be high quality,

Lewm,

Did I forget the punch line: I’m lazy.

Seriously, I try to think long: For me, I prefer the ability to tame the tweeters now, and easily achieve progressive boost, speck by speck, as my ability to hear highs diminishes. I die, Donna, who loves them, might move in with her twin sister, then give them to my son Chris. Who knows who and where they will be in the future. That’s the beauty of Balance Controls of any kind.
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Making new speaker cables has led to a full ’long’ look at these speakers, what should I overhaul? Spares?. To keep going for the next generation, people who know nothing except they sound great.

Woofers: just replaced one 15W with dried out paper cone (near the hot-air wall vent) with my re-coned spare; bought a recently re-coned 15W; bought a cone kit for my dried out one, will have a spare pair.

Horn Mid: Original, 62 years old still sounding great, 1 spare downstairs

Horn Tweeters: T350’s, 16 ohms at least 50 years old, pair of spares downstairs. (not sure if 16 or 8 ohm versions).

And, a spare pair of the original tweeters from 1956: smaller T35b’s, 16 ohm (early smaller magnet than later T35’s) They were re-coned by E-V many years ago after Iron Butterfly blew them. That’s when I put the T350’s in (and cut their +3db higher efficiency/output with you know what).

How can the diaphragms of these 62 year old horns still sound great? E-V said: "virtually indestructible phenolic-impregnated linen".

I asked Bob Crite’s son, he said, yes, if working leave them alone, they can last forever.

Crossover: Original x336, tar filled can. Crites says leave them alone. I can easily revisit that later.

Given that I am leaving the crossover, horns, re-coned woofers, I don’t think lewm or many of you would qualify any part of these ’best’, and in context, I think real 16 ohm L-Pads fit right in with the other decisions.

yap yap yap, even I’m getting tired of this
Hey Erik,

Paul Klipsch must be one of those scoundrels because he routinely used autoformers for level matching and in keeping up with the scoundrels...I for one think all L-pads and resistive networks for attenuation should be binned in favor of a magnetic approach for attenuation. :-)

boy this has gotten way off topic... apologies to anyone who feels this thread has been an off topic use of analog bandwidth.

dave
I've done "nothing" to my speakers and they sound great...albeit, using a pea size dollop of blu-tac between stand and base at each corner. 
OH YEAH!

New 16 Ohm L-Pads installed, back to wonderful (more wonderful?).
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the whole story

1. Ruin a good thing:

L-Pads removed as advised. Actually, they were 8 ohm pots, I didn’t know better way back when I replaced the original 16 ohm L-Pads. The Pots worked as needed, but altered the resistance shown to crossover, whereas the original L-Pads maintained 16 ohms shown to the crossover.

Speakers without controls were very screechy, horrible. Used RLC-1 to cut treble, at least sounded listenable while looking for a solution.

2. Research:

The Fisher President II I inherited used all Electro-Voice drivers, L-Pads, Crossover. They are in my new enclosures.

The Vintage Fisher consoles, and Electro-voice speakers were designed with L-Pads: AT37 (16 ohm) or AT38 (8 ohm). Two way had 1; Three way had 2 (Brilliance and Presence, like mine).

Adjust from Normal for room and personal taste.

NORMAL Room: Center position: Half attenuated.
LIVE, BRIGHT Room: add attenuation progressively
DULL, DEAD Room, reduce attenuation progressively
EARS AGE: reduce tweeter attenuation as ability to hear highs progressively reduces.

Model EV-SIX had a unique 5 position step-type attenuation control using resistors. As they were not progressive, 5 frequency graphs were shown in the engineering bulletin.

3. Re-install new L-Pads:

Ordered High Quality Pots, thinking they were L-Pads, returned them.

Ordered 16 ohm L-Pads.

Installed L-PADS yesterday. RLC-1 tone control back to neutral.

OH YEAH!