Thanks Andrew. If your late friend’s Loth-X Troubadours speakers have the original version of the Stamm driver, with the whizzer, they are worth every effort, smoke stink and all, to get them across the Ocean. The original Stefan Stamm drivers are the real deal, a true apex predator driver that outperforms the competition and deliver at the highest level. In this hobby where most correlate cost with performance, the Stamm drivers quickly slay any misleading or preconceived expectations. The Stamm drivers are real gems!
Unfortunately they are local pick up only in Melbourne. I'm in Hobart. Bass Strait is in the middle. And unfortunately my friend who died didn't keep the packaging.
Sorry to say my health isn't up to more than having a shower and walking out to the lounge at the moment. Let alone organizing a freight company to go pick them up, pack them and get them to me. And then hoping they arrive undamaged.
In any event - these photo's were from the Estate sale: the seller hasn't posted any recent photos. You will be able to tell me if they are original Stamm's. They have the whizzer, so I expect they are.
The key to Open Baffles with single full-range drivers is to make sure that the back wave of the driver does not attenuate the forward bass output. The JE Labs OB design gives guidance on how wide versus low frequency cutoff the baffles needs to be to mitigate the reduction of bass output due to cancellation from the rear wave energy created by the driver excursion. With the JE Labs design style baffles there is no “figure 8 thing” that goes on.
As I embark on my next audio exploration into the field-coil/electro-dynamic drivers faction of the hobby I will once again go with Open Baffles but ones of different design concept.
Re Open Baffles
Ahhh - that all makes sense. The ones I had in 2008 were a pair of the now defunct Hawthorne Audio 15 inch coaxial sterling drivers with bass 15 inches drivers, in tall not very wide baffles, and then in 2009 single drivers (by memory some form of Lowthers) in much the same.
The OB's I came up with sounded not bad - especially with certain music - but not in the same league as the Troubadours, or ESL's or a good box speaker - at least for classical which is what I listen to. Fun experiments though. I am quite sure what you are making would sound sublime.
I shall follow your adventures with much interest! A great pity I cannot snap my fingers and come over for a listen. Your type of systems interest me. Something away from the usual.
Speaking of Single Drivers - the Eclipse TD 712.
This was a speaker I owned in 2015/2016 that was very special. It is a single driver sealed unit. I would own another pair of those is a jiffy - they were my wife's favourite speakers - high WAF. That said - SETS need not apply - well they would work with 8 watts of 300B, but you wouldn't want to. I found them monsterously difficult to partner well. The better you feed them the better they sounded.
Thank you again for posting.