A few questions for Green Mountain Europa owners

Hi Roy,

Thanks for the reply. I have debated responding to this, because I figure there is no point. Be that as it may;

"Lou- the parts we use are stated on our miniscule website, and as Tennis Junky said- an Aurasound woofer (not fancy looking- resembles an old ADS woofer), a Morel dome, a SonicCap capacitor for the tweeter and a Solen Litz-wire inductor for the woofer. There are a couple of high-voltage Solens in the drivers' voice-coil Zobel networks. That's it. And yes- resistors are high-power, non-inductive wirewounds in ceramic blocks."

I admit, I have not listened to every ceramic block encased ww resister made, but I have yet to find one I would allow to be in my signal path. I even swaped out the 1 ohm carbon resistors in the non-stasis portion of my stasis amp with .66 5 watt mills, and did a 1 ohm carbon for 1 ohm 5 watt mill swap in the stasis section, so I guess I am just anal.

"These parts produce the best sound for our purposes. We have tried all the other parts you mentioned and more. While excellent choices, they had sonic flavors I could not balance against the rest of the variables in the Europa."

Caps are one thing, but if, and I stress if here, those resistors are in the signal path, and the oem types sound better there, I'd be real worried, cause something HAS to be wrong, IME/O.

Other than that, I do thank you, I am sure your speakers are a great deal.

Best Regards,

Lou

I may be late to this thread, but here goes...

I've owned the Europas for over a year now. Remarkable speaker. I've used them with monoblock CJ MV-75s (mod'ed by their designer, Bill Thalmann), a CJ Prem 11A, and an Odyssey Stratos. All work just fine. I always like to have more power than too little but even the 70wpc of the single Prem 11A works fine. For the front end I use a CJ PV-12A with various tubes, an Audio Alchemy DDS Pro transport, various DACs and cabling.

The Europas always sound great no matter what I use, though I generally prefer tube gear. I had them set up in a room with initial placement calculated using Cardas's formulas. I listen nearfield in an equilateral triangle arrangement with the speakers nearly pointing directly at the listener. What I've found most important is getting the tweeters at or below ear level. Once your ears are above tweeter level game's over.

Again, remarkable speaker. The only thing I'd want is deeper bass extension.

- SJ

Thanks for the comments guys!

M2500tvr- contact me about your layout, or request a new copy via e-mail of the Europa manual. The speakers are too far apart, unless there is something about your room we should discuss (I know we've spoken). Try the "equal-legged Tee" layout (10% narrower than an equilateral triangle) discussed in the manual. Then listen to audience applause to hear the most time-coherent axis. It ranges from being at ~the dome tweeter's down to the woofer's center, depending on how close you sit. This is in the manual, and we are urging all owners to contact us for the latest manual, to make sure they have no typos in theirs for this listening height. But the audience-applause test is best (quickest), as applause is half woofer/half tweeter. When the two drivers come into minimum phase, you can easily hear fat hands, flat hands, small hands, cupped hands... Crosby, Stills, N, Y "Four-way Street", "Jazz at the Pawn Shop", Patricia Barber "Companion (?)- her live album". Close your eyes and remove eyeglasses to hear this the clearest.

I am getting much more low end, and more accurate low end, with some new interconnects that have finally reached 400 hours. Didn't think it would be possible to get substantially better bass from Europas, after trying more equipment and cables and sources and recordings than you care to count.

Keep in touch! Thanks again to everyone for their kind comments.

Best,
Roy Johnson
Green Mountain Audio

PS: Lou, we did try the best Mills resistors in place of the wirewounds we use, and the sound was just noticably less grainy, a little more precise- on any equipment.
However, the increased costs of inventory would have driven up the price of the limited number of Europas we can make each year. We need to stock more than 100 each in 40 values, to have enough every month to match into pairs. You'd have to hear the difference side-by-side to tell. It is not a jump up & down thing.

Lou, by "OEM resistors", do you mean the unbranded ones from overseas- ewww... no way. We know who makes ours, and for how long they have, and what their tolerances are year after year, and the materials used. They are quite good.

It's not surprising you've heard differences in resistors, and the amount of difference depends, as you'd expect, on where they are used (amp, speaker, etc) and how employed, as well as how they are made/who makes them.

Hopefully, we'll see more advances in low-noise, high-power audio resistors, in the same manner as capacitors have evolved. The ones in flat-packs requiring heatsinks are not worth the extra cost for our simple crossovers, but, cost be damned- I'll likely be working with them on our flagship unless I can eliminate the need for them.

Roy,
Is it true that you're rasing the prices of the Europas?......