Calling all Dunlavy Gurus

I wonder how many SC-4 owners have taken a good look inside and noticed the splayed wire/clips connections to the drivers. Hard to believe, considering all the intelligence and care John Dunlavy put into his very fine product. Would one attach bare, splayed strands of speaker cable in like fashion to their speakers' terminals? Getting rid of those clips, situating the strands together and soldering to the drivers improved the overall coherence of my SC-4s.

Rja,

Do you remember which version of the IVs you were comparing to? As I understand it, there were three versions using different drivers.

Opus88,

How hard is it to to get rid of those clips?

Americanflag,
I honestly don't know. Purchased the original SCIV when they first came out @ $3999. Replaced these later with SCIVA @ $8000 if memory serves.

Frankly I didn't know there was a third version. I'm not saying there was no third version, I just never heard of it. I do not, in any way, consider myself an expert on these speakers.

I do know that I much preferred the IVA over the IV for reasons expressed above. IMO: When Dunlavy tweeked the original design he made major improvements.

There were 2 versions of the Dunlavy 4 speakers.
The SC-4 and SC-IVA speakers.
One of the differences between the 2 speakers is the 1VA speakers use two 10 inch Scanspeak woofers and the SC-4 speakers use two 10 inch Vifa woofers.
I can remember when the SC-IVA came out, John Dunlavy talked how hard it was to integrate the 10 inch Scanspeak woofers in the crossovers. He mentioned at one point, he thought about going back to using the Vifa woofers again in the SC-IVA speakers.
But eventually Dunlavy got the Scanspeak woofers to blend in perfectly to the mids of the SC-IVA .
Here's a good review of the Dunlavy SC-1VA speakers, where Dunlavy talks about the difference between the SC-4 and SC-IVA speakers.
http://www.stereophile.com/content/dunlavy-audio-labs-sc-iva-loudspeaker

According to Dunlavy, the ScanSpeak woofer has a much more powerful magnetic structure than the Vifa, and costs about four times as much. To get the best in bass performance, there's no substitute for magnetic flux, and big magnets are expensive.

The ScanSpeak woofer apparently has great low-end extension, but it also has some nasty peaks at the top of its passband. John Dunlavy says that he almost abandoned using the woofer for this reason, but kept coming back to it as the best driver for providing the bass extension and power handling he wanted. His solution to the problem consisted of several resonant circuits in the crossover, providing electrical compensation for the peaks.