Back in the late 80's I owned a pair of Spica TC-50 and they have been a source of soooooo many hours of musical listening pleasure. I had these mounted on 3 spikes on top of a wooden milk crate filled with LPs which was also mounted on 3 spikes on top of yet another wood milk crate that was also on 3 spikes. The listening room was about 12 x 20 and the Spica's never disappointed me with good recordings. Bang for my teen-budget bucks, they were Amazing & Musical. Good memories! :) PS Of course, this speaker arrangement was set at 2.5 feet from the back wall and I had a 3 deg toe in. Ceiling was at about 9.5ft and I had good carpet on top of hardwood floors. Me I was sitting at about 14 to 15 feet from the wall that was behind the Spica speakers. Amp was a 35 W-RMS per channel with good dynamic range and my source was my Thorens TD-126 Mk III with SME Tonearm & Nagaoka MP-11 Boron . Nice. :)
I did as well but unfortunately an amp malfunctioned and took out all 4 drivers. I also owned briefly the TC60 but thought the 50 had more magic, if less bass.
Absolutely I didn’t own a pair but listened (tc50s)at length twice in a dealer show room. They were excellent both times. This guy tilts his head, uses vocal inflections and talks about speakers so it sounds like it is being done wrong all the time. His world is measurement and assumptions. It has a thick grill so that’s no good, the felt applied to the baffle is not good……. He does it with every speaker he brings in. The take away is that he and he alone is the only human being capable of designing a speaker properly. Listening is every bit as important as measuring. Assumptions made without backing them up mean nothing. He never talks about listening after he’s done with the medicine show. Old saying “if it sounds good and measures bad you’re measuring the wrong thing”
@@josephfuller7008 He's just thinking about sound reproduction at a level most of us can't really comprehend or even care about. He may have a unique sense of hearing that allows him to instantly hear flaws that others don't. Ultimately he's just trying to help audiophiles reach for something better. I've been able to make big improvements in my existing speakers following just a few of his recommendations. I also built a pair for my son following Dannys basic rules. High quality parts, no magnetic metal in the signal path, and add proper damping. They sound great! Crystal clear, and powerful bass! You don't have to do or agree with everything he talks about in order to benefit from his advice. If he doesn't like our favorite old speakers that we think were awesome, so what....Who knows what that gear has been thru by the time it gets to him. You know those cheap caps dont age well.
Danny, I think it is worth mentioning in John Bau's defense that these models were produced after the company was sold to Parasound. John was a very smart designer and very measurement-centric. He did things no one else was doing as he came at speaker design from a different discipline than hi-end audio. He also knew quite well the difference between phase and time alignment. I am very sure he would earn your respect as a designer were you able to speak with him.
Danny probably measured on a different axis than intended by the designer. Design axis could have been top of the woofer and not inline with the tweeter.
@@somebodyx perhaps. It is well known that for the time, tc50s imaged like no others. They had to hand match the resistors to each other and to the individual drivers. Something I am not sure if Parasound was willing to commit to.
@@somebodyx Even if you measure on a more ideal axis doesn't change the fact that there are out of phase cancellation issues all over the vertical range. And the typical on axis is where the listen is most likely to have their ear. In more cases than not, it is on tweeter axis.
I heard the T-50's also back in the mid 80's and was very impressed with their imaging. They disappeared when the music started. I was wanting to buy them but had recently bought a Delcoid sat/sub setup that I dearly loved. I sold the Delcoids back in 1989 because the new wife didn't like they way I had them setup. Fortunately, I was able to buy them back 2 yrs ago. I'm also fortunate enough to be driving them with a GAS Ampzilla and matching GAS Thoebe preamp. No wife and I got my speakers. Sounds good to me all around !!
Like 8 years ago I started building speakers seriously as a hobby. I used 6.5" Woofers and either dome tweeters or tiny FR drivers as upper med/tweeters. I always found it difficult to get a good upper med voice sound. It always had a sourness and some notes sounded louder than others. Then one day I tried 4" FR drivers and a woofer for lower bass and the near whole signal put through the 4" driver. And the voice sound control was like ten times better, so good that I couldn't believe the difference! I now use 5" FR drivers and 6.5" woofers or 5" woofers in the same box without a partition with a really LARGE inductor on the woofer and a 100 mf cap on the 5" FR driver. The driver is semi open over a (wide) bass vent hole that is also a speaker hole for the driver. The driver is mounted 1-2 cm above the speaker hole. Bass from the woofer and sound from the rear of the cone escape through the gap between the driver and box. The most EVEN voice sound I have heard and EVEN instrument sound. Not one single sour note. They sound like panel speakers but without the 6 ft mouth. The semi open FR cone seems to add an "octave" to the top end. Sharp and metallic crisp top end (especially with my tiny tin foil mod). Cheers Big Ears!
There’s a lot of information available on upgrading the TC 50. For me, the TC 50 was a much better speaker than the 60. The TC 60 sounded flat to me but, I sold them to a man who loved them and wrote the letters, long ones, about finding the perfect placement being the key. I have two sets of the 50’s and I’m going to endeavor to improve them at some point. I think I can make a better cabinet since price is no longer an issue.
The upgrade I did for the owner of these speakers was night and day. They went from dull and muddy, to clean and exciting. When I brought them home I listened to about 3-4 reference tracks and there was just lots of missing clarity and detail, especially in layered tracks After I finished the upgrades, everything i was previously missing was back where it should be. Thought it was still missing a lot of the upper end extension im used to, it still offered a lot of added clarity, plus the imaging and soundstage were also greatly improved. They should be back in the customers hands tomorrow.
Would you happen to have a schematic? I have a set of NOS drivers for TC50...I think. Cant recall if they are 8 or 4 ohm version...but still...if u have the schematic it would be a time saver.
Those measurements up top look like a case of dried up Ferrofluid in the tweeter. That Vifa Tweeter was capable of much higher frequency extension when it was new.
I’d had TC 50s and love them. However, they don’t have any base response. I bought them at Digital Sound in Virginia Beach. The owner subsequently sold me some TC 60s because they had more bottom and they were supposed to be a better speaker. I never got used to the 60s. I do still use my 50s and I do still love them. Icouple of them with a Velodyne servo subwoofer. For me, it is a beautiful match. I was able to sell the TC 60s. and the customer wrote to me a couple of times, really long emails about having trouble getting the right imaging and so on. I expected him to say that he wanted to return them and then I got a really long email telling me that he had found the perfect setting and he couldn’t have been happier. So, some people really liked the 60s.
I put my TC 60s up for sale on eBay about 15 years ago. I actually got an email from Jon Bau, asking me for the drivers information. Apparently, he was putting some together for his son but he needed a driver match.
Nice. Would love to see you take a crack at a pair of Dyna A25s...talk about an iconic vintage speaker! Mine still sound surprisingly good, but they probably violate every current best practice in speaker building ;)
There's a modern Seas kit called the A26 that's the same design with better drivers, but still not a real crossover to speak of. I'm not sure if Danny would be impressed or offended.
since my teenage years I have always been interested how speakers work..I always learn something from your channel when you post a new topic I get more from watching your take on speakers and crossovers and cabinet design then reading a book on the topic... great show.... Merry Christmas 🎶🙏
I scored a pair of these today in excellent condition at a thrift store this very day for $14.99 👍 . I stopped by after work and seen these from about 50 feet away and ran to them before someone else snagged them up . They were literally put out about 2 minutes before I showed up and let's just say I've been lucky as last week I grabbed a Yamaha R9 receiver with the remote from the same store for $8.99 also in excellent condition as it even had the moveable cover on it as all I had to do was clean out the volume pot . It's been a great two weeks for sure 😉
When I heard the TC-50s back in the early 80's I was fairly impressed. I did find them veiled compared to my Acoustat Model 3s and knew I could not live with them. But still, they did impress me at the time with their basic sound and soundstaging.
Electrostats, for all their drawbacks, are..imho the most transparent of any technology (ribbons come close but for a limited range of frequency) Imho they will beat any cone speaker to the point of being an unfair contest. That said...TC 50s are a joy to listen to too.
The TC-60 Stereophile review from back in the day can be found online. Has detailed measurements and explanations. They deviate a lot from what shown in your video.
Read JGH negative review with the servo controlled subs. Treble graphs pretty much the same as Danny's samples. They start rolling up and suddenly drop off like a rock at 16k. We also have better measuring equipment nowadays.
@@spacejaime John Bau himself said don't bother trying to match it with any subwoofer, even their own, because it just loses the magic of the 2 ways. I've heard alot of good speakers but very few image as well as a pair of TC50s. Perfect - no, incl rolled off at top and bottom but they were only $250/pr!
@@playbackamusicloversjourne8620 By our standards the Spica's didn't image well at all. If you thought those speakers imaged well then you'd be blown away by every DIY kit we offer, because they are all in a different class in that regard.
IMHO these are fabulous speakers for jazz, vocal and acoustic music. Not so great for rock. They will benefit from a sub at lower listening levels especially under 70 dB. I find the the timbre of cymbals to be some of the most realistic I have heard. I don't find them muddy but I certainly wouldn't say that they are overly analytical either. There is a sweet spot on these for sure and the difference between sitting snd standing can be a fairly different experience. I don't know about measurements but there is a reason why these speakers have remained in the consciousness of audiophiles, because they just sound great.
Very interesting video on a legendary speaker. Owning a pair of TC 60s for about 26 years, I tend to disagree with most of the comments. Note that not being familiar with the technical aspects, I cannot provide an opinion on that, just on how natural and musical the Spicas' performance is. I have paired them with tube electronics (Quicksilver preamp and monoblock power amps) and now with Rega components (Elicit amp, Planar 3, Apollo CD player) and Bluesound streamer plus Qutest DAC and they have always performed wonderfully and amazingly. My conclusion is these are still some of the most musical and natural sounding speakers I have ever heard regardless of the price (I owned the Angelus previously). I wonder how many modern speakers around the 1000/1500 dollars bar provide the sense of physical presence of the performers that the Spicas give. And note that except for a change of one of the woofers, I have not touched nor tweaked them in any way. And yes, they do sound glorious!
Nice 1 Me still rock my Pioneer HPM 100s 4 way bass reflex speaker #1 Rock n Roll speakers of all time 75 pounds each And $775.00 U.S in 1976 [3k in todays inflation} 'Bart lancathi' Created the the HPM 100s to out perform the JBL L-100 That Bart Engeenered in 1969 😆 'Food for thought'
I had a pair of TC 50 SEX's which had the external crossover wired with Kimber.. My house at that time had so many visitors just to listen to magic. They were powered by a Quad, all I could afford, but I'm telling you listening to Das Rheingold was the most being there moment I'd heard at that time. Just like the LS35A the imaging was electrostatic like however less pinpoint but more 3D if you can understand deeper. More real less hifi!!!
Would love for you to check out the new KLH model 5. My first exposure to hi-fi was in 1959, my grandfather had a pair of KLH model sixes driven by a Harmon Kardon Citation I & Citation II.
You mentioned experimenting with the crossover. What's your typical setup for trying out different crossover components and parameters? Breadboards, alligator clips, etc.? Thanks!
He runs wires out the port and connects components using alligator clips on a board behind/beside the speaker. So its easy to swap them out and make adjustments on the fly.
Spica speakers sell today for more than when they were new. The have the respect of huge swaths of the HiFi and professional recording markets. They were used by professional engineers to record award winning music. Modifications as above clearly do not understand the raison d'etre of the design and will make the speakers worthless. The binding post mount is definitely a cost cutter, but the posts are good quality. A simple dual binding post plate available for a few dollars online fixes the issue. When refurbing my speakers, I found no iron in the crossover. IIRC, the inductor cores are manganese/zinc ferrite. For the time, the bass driver was very good quality. Few two-way systems auditioned in over 35 years come anywhere close to properly set up Spicas in a good room with topflight source in presenting an accurate sound field. Properly refurbished with new capacitors and tweeter ferrofluid, the speakers STILL elicit comments like "Joe Pass is sitting right THERE!!!"
The original design for SC-50 was to reproduce square wave as much as possible with the available technology. That's why John us d slopped large baffle and asymmetric crossover. I know some guys are trying to get similar results in time domain, but flatter freq response by using DSP x-overs. I think John used BW4 and Bessel 2nd order but I'm not 100%. If get well behaved midbas drivers and good tweeters some day, maybe I try it.
Was waiting for Danny to get ahold of some Spicas! Maybe not relevant, but I think it be entertaining if he included some review commentary from when the product was first launched. Sort of analyze what he hears compared to what reviewers heard, I dunno.
Yes, got my spica tc 50 from '85.. modded 2x in '86 and '04.. now kept as back up.. I will not dump it.. loved my spica and had always hoped John Bau would rise from the ashes and revive his interest I doing speakers again...
Wow. The same exact binding posts as my JBL EC35's and JBL Studio 590's. I thought it would have spring clips, non bi-amped. When Danny rotated the speaker It was an awesome surprise that it was a wedge shape. I would try this speaker on the floor, maybe a little height boosted off the floor.
A quick question on Norez, which seems to improve every speaker you use it on: Does Norez add to the cubic volume of a box, like polyester fluff? Keep the same volume? Or actually decrease the volume? Hopefully your response is of interest to other subscribers as well. Thanks... Denny
@@JohnLee-db9zt I am sorry that you don't understand how it works. Let me explain it to you. When you add a layer of open cell foam, it slows down the air flow in the box and makes the woofer act as if it is a larger air space. The damping layer takes up some air space. So the foam layer counters the barrier layer and makes it volume neutral.
Danny, wish you would have looked at the TC-60s a couple years ago. Upgraded the crossover in mine, duplicating the John Bau design with higher quality parts. Did make quite a positive improvement. Look forward to your upgrade package pricing. Do wonder about changing the crossover point. The Vifa tweeter data sheet specifies a crossover of 3500 Hz. Your after measurements look great, but does making the tweeter play lower have a downside like increased distortion?
Of course they are not in phase at crossover, They are not supposed to be. This is how first order crossovers work The drivers are 90 degrees out of phase so that the summed response is flat and so is the power response and the summed response is phase lineari-- which was their main point. The design may or may not have been executed well but the logic was misunderstood here. You may like the different approach better but you will have ruined the phase linearity of the summed response-- which was what they were afterl
@@dannyrichie9743 If you made the crossovers higher order, how did you preserve phase linearity? I think that is impossible (except with DSP processing). What did you do ? How about showing before and after impulse and/or step responses?
I am talking about the phase linearity of the summed response, the response at the listening position. This is not the same thing as the drivers being in phase at crossover, Things like Linkwiitz Riley 4th order where the drivers are in phase at crossover do not give linear phase summed response. In tact there is a 360 degree excess phase rotation between the two drivers--they are in phase at crossover because each is 180 degrees rotated from the individual drivers so they are actually 360 degrees out of phase-- which as long as you look right around the crossover, looks like in phase. If you want to look at phase linearity look at the Dunlavy speakers--first order crossover, linear phase. Of course you have to sit in the right place! People have decided to trade off phase linear summed response at one point to get stability over an area. Maybe a worthwhile trade off, maybe not,. But it is surely not what Spica was aiming at and if you put in high order crossover you have redesigned the speaker to fit your own ideas--it is not fair to say you have fixed it, you just made it a different speaker.
@@robertgreene2684 The proof to whether or not an audible problem is no longer there is to listen to the speakers. There are trade offs for sure, but the cost of chasing something that theoretically will improve sound at with a result of poor sound isn't a good trade off.
Quick question(s), you mentioned there was a lot of cheesy parts in the crossover. Do you know, off the top of your head, today how much it would cost to replicate the cost of the original crossover parts? And how much more or less your better parts would have cost when they designed the speaker. I'm guessing they didn't save any money by using more and crappy parts.
20 cheese grade parts.. many of them pennies a piece, vs a few quality parts at dollars or tens of dollars a piece... Lots of cheap junk is probably cheaper than a few good parts.
Prior to when the spicas tc 50 were around the oniy speakers around that were competive with them that I know of were the rogers SLA-S & the (dahlquist Dq tens that suffered from phase aligment issues I know cause I had them at one time over modified for my taste, Still a great used pair of speakers lovely mids!..
That is with the same drivers?!!? Unreal change in the measurement from a much better designed cross-over. Would love to hear how the client finds them after break in.
I installed the upgrade for the customer, and the difference in tone and clarity was night and day. The original crossovers were a dull, muddy and unfocused mess, especially in more complex, layered tracks.. After installing the new crossovers they really came to life, lots of clarity and detail even in layered tracks, everything missing from the stock performance was back. You could still tell that the very top end was rolled off, but otherwise it turned out to be a pretty great speaker! Customer should be getting them back sometime today.
@@hoth2112 That's so cool! Do you have a favorite bookshelf speaker? I am pretty familiar with Spica speakrs, (I remember going to my step dads friends house who had these, and was amazed by them), and know that they were insanely coveted. They still are, like Danny mentioned. They were VERY distinct and had their own sound character that owners loved. It's so weird to imagine that one can find them incredible and like no other....but have such bad basic measurements!!! it's like, you don't even need to hear them, you can tell just from the measurements that they aren't "what they truly COULD be!". Right? The crossovers you all designed for my Epos 12 speakers were a 180º change of engineering for the speaker, that I really was afraid I would lose the "Epos" sound signature. But honestly, for 21 year old speakers, I can't tell you how amazing -I- think they sound now! I bet with these Spica with new Crossovers, they truly have some insane sonic character. I'm getting some new speakers made by Legacy Speakers (company in Illinois), and would love to have you all test them out and see what you think. Have a great Holiday Season and great work!!
great achievement as usual, i continue to be inspired, so much so that my project this Christmas is reading up on Crossover design, funtion and performance. What I'd really appreciate would be if you can say what order filters you have on both drivers and the net phase rotation and whether any driver polarity had to be reversed to bring back into phase and sum correctly, or whether you're able to maintain phase purely with the crossover design. (sorry a little bit of new information acquired in these last 2 days is maybe a dangerous thing!)
Could the 700Hz stored energy be from the stamped woofer frame? When you tapped it with your fingertips, it seems that the frame resonates in that lower midrange region. Perhaps a no-rez treatment might fix the frame buzz.
We should have saved those measurements. It was very close to the same in that regard. I also did that when I designed an upgrade for the TC-50 years ago and got similar results. I did save the measurements on the step response on that one.
A friend brought this video to my attention. It is full of disinformation and misrepresentation. The presenter took a 26-year-old speaker which needs normal maintenance (replace electrolytic capacitor in xover and ferrofluid in tweeter), measured it on the wrong axis, and portrayed this performance as if it represented what the designer intended and the factory originally delivered when new. This is highly unprofessional and misleading. It should be made clear that the mods suggested in this video destroy the linear-phase characteristic which is a hallmark of the original design.
Fear not, Mr. Bau, your legacy is intact and your designs are all works of genius that will stand the test of time. (We’ve corresponded online several times.) I should know. I own all of them: SC-50, TC-50, Angelus, SC-30, and TC-60. I have all sorts of speakers around the house, from Snells to Spendors to Quads to Sonus F to Ref 3A’s….Spica’s are still my favorite speaker marque of all time, driven with everything from Class A SS monsters to SE triodes, and everything in between.
Hi John Bau, nice to hear you here. Yes i currently have tc60. Please advise me what i should maintain or replace to make the TC sound as at least original specification. Thanks
have you ever re worked a pair of M&K S1B satellites ?? They were fairly well regarded in the eighty's. If so, was the multi selectable cross over abilities still there. in other words would you just upgrade existing cross over instead of replacing.
I am and continue to be a big fan of this channel. This video caught me little meh. This speaker or at least the 50s are STILL iconic and sought after. +30yr old design and were affordable in their day. Maybe a little acknowledgment to John and his innovative work here. Listening to him talk you would think these sound like sparkomatics. They don't. There is a reason ppl still hoard them like Cal Ripken rookie cards. Little homage due here IMHO.
I am wondering,If the original crossovers were remade with new modern parts,How would they perform? The reason why I am wondering is,With how old the parts in the crossovers are ,That will totally change the way the speaker performs and sounds....
Geese so all the audio publications of the day were wrong when these were new?? I don't think so. I never heard the TC60s but the TC50s were magic and imaged like nothing else.
Seems i got my answer on the Mission 770 seems they are in preproduction right now for a rerelease come this January,some fella named Peter something who had alot to do with original is doing interviews on YT
Nice to see Some old ones. Vifa and peerless is quite nice elements to diy. It’s look nearly as diy. And like the Carlsson oa50 I upgraded they seems to like some damping stuff outside the speakers to damp some reflections! But the filter always seem cheesy back then. Had they even good parts then,or was they not invented? Ty again and merry Christmas 2 u
Brilliant...I was actually wondering yesterday if sticking damping on a big baffle speaker was a good idea...now I know. Fancy trying to tweak some mission 769i book shelves? I might send you a pair to play with as they're quite a popular old box in the UK. Merry new Xmas!
I'd look at the crossover parts first. I was into hifi in the UK in the 90's and Mission were a respectable brand. I doubt they used hi end crossover parts. I watched a B&W factory tour video recently and the lengths they go to to get the cabinets spot on is incredible. They then connect the crossover parts with steel connectors, potentially degrading the sound quality. I would love for someone to review Danny's speakers against new high end production speakers.
Danny, the first thing you should have done is replace the tweeters. After more than 30 years of playing music they probably lost more than half of their energy in the high frequencies.
C O O L ! ! ! I AM excited about this work... have owned my TC-60s for about 10 years, accepting them for their fundamental limits. J. A. Stereophile review / appraisal and Danny's [both] are spot on. *I AM IN ON THIS UPDATE* [as an owner] very curious about what could "be done" to these speakers. My Spica's "play in rotation" with Silverline SR-17S and Harbeth 30.2, indeed have / share remarkable qualities of even more lofty $$$$ designs, as they sit, yet it is really easy to imagine areas of noteworthy improvements.
I actually took some measurements after I finished the installation and got the norez laid onto the face, with and without the grill. It really smoothed out the response with the grill on vs without norez, removing a few peaks and dips that the grill caused. Though the upgrades were done about a week after this video was filmed. I'll probably make a post on AudioCircle about it in the next day or two. Im really impressed with how much better they sounded after the upgrade. I'm excited to hear the customers thoughts as well.
Not phase linear anymore, not time aligned anymore ,no more controlled off axis. Thats the trade-off. The step and impulse response will tell the story. The baffle is not just slanted for time alignment but also to compensate for the 90 degree out of phase for the first order crossover. 15 degree tilt compensates for that. The felt is there to control off axis making it uniform , matching the woofers off axis at crossover point........this is why they image so well. There is but a handful of loudspeaker manufacturers that will tackle a proper linear phase first order network and Spica was one of them, Vandersteen , older Thiel, Dunlavy, Duntech to name a few others.
The step response barely moved. They were not acoustically in phase well at all to begin with. Now they are. The felt did not control the off axis response. It made it irregular. We replaced the felt with some carefully place No Rez. Now the off axis response looks really good. In stock form the imaging was poor. Now it has been transformed.
what he did seems so obvious. what were they thinking w first order filters in the first place? did they not have measuring eqpmnt? i had the meadowlark kestral 2's w a sloped baffle and first order... they were awesome so it can be done.
There are several designers who use first order crossovers* because of the degree to which they preserve the phase of signals in the passband (that is, filters affect both what they pass and what they don't pass). The down side is that there's a lot of overlap between the drivers resulting in off-axis weirdness. *Vandersteen is another such company.
I have two pairs of TC-50s and a pair of Angeluses. I like the stock TC-50 better than the Angelus. Tracking first hand the trajectory of audio over the last almost 50 years, I've long lost much of the nostalgia thing and I'm pretty much ready to move on completely. Audio today is better than it's ever been in just about every way. I seem to recall back in the day that the TC-60 wasn't received as well as the TC-50. I've chatted with John Bau about this on a couple of occasions. He is keen that the TC-60 is the better speaker.
@@stevenjackson8226 Hi Steve, do you think with John's design practices, that he was convinced the TC-60 was better because it was designed, modelled, and measured as better?! :) +\[poiuytrew3q2
Actually our designs have won pretty much every industry award there is. And our exhibit rooms won show awards pretty much every time we exhibited. What else would you like?
First off, I want to say that I enjoy this channel a lot. However, the issue with vintage speaker crossover redesign is that each driver is going to age in a different way. The crossover DR designed will no doubt work great for the speaker he has in his shop, but there is no way you can be guaranteed the same results for another Spica 60. IMO, it would have been much better to replace the drivers with new equivalents that perform in a consistent manner and fit the existing cutouts (after all, the original Spicas used off the shelf components as well.) Then you could provide the schematics and parts for the newly designed crossover using the new drivers. Yes, you may alter it to the point where it sounds very different and it will be more expensive, but honestly you will end up with a superior speaker (with possibly the flavor and definitely the appearance of the old speaker) and a design that you can use on any example of that model. Just my 2¢.
If you need to do all that to an existing speaker, you might as well just build a new speaker from scratch, the only thing that you would be keeping are the boxes and they aren't all that special, at least not special enough that you could not build something that would be better for a reasonable cost. I think most people that own this speaker are not going to upgrade it but I could be wrong, some get use to the way a speaker sounds and they don't want it messed with, even if the end results measure better and perhaps sounds better.
We don't see any additional drift in drivers response over time than the standard variance between drivers to begin with. So that is really not an issue.
@@dannyrichie9743 Really? I'm very surprised by that. Maybe the woofers are fine and they can often be rebuilt if the problems are minor, but even the 25 year old *cloth* dome tweeters show no effect due to age? Obviously you are measuring them so you would know, but I wish that were the case for my 40 year old speakers with 1" cloth Audax tweeters that have certainly and asymmetrically degraded with time. Many thanks for the reply!
@@The_Story_Channel Possibly, but if someone really liked their TC-60s, they could find close replacements for the Vifa D27TG-45 and Peerless WR180 used in the TC60 and have a speaker that sound close to the original (albeit upgraded... I think the voicecoil on the Vifa might even be replaceable with a modern ScanSpeak 600058.) Sure "close" sounding would be subjective, especially with a complete rework of the crossover, but to me it makes more sense for Danny to spec an upgrade kit for a repair that would last for years to come. That he's finding these drivers to be performing within variance surprises me, although for how long will they remain like that? Appreciate the reply.
Instead of the chunk of felt they could have had a tapered box narrower at the top and made the box with similar internal volume by tweaking the dimensions. The grill would still have the same problem (probably even worse) but you can take the grills off when critical listening. That would have saved the price of the felt and the boxes would be a nightmare to build by hand but maybe easier with a factory build.
Crossover point should be up 6db? If in phase...output with both drivers working...at crossover point...is 3 db above each individual driver at the crossover frequency. Why do you say 6 db?
Speaker drivers are voltage controlled devices so SPL adds by 6dB from correlated signal sources. On the other hand their total radiated power adds by 3dB.
@@somebodyx looking at the seperated response curves summing at xover frequency....measuring SPL...how many db down is woofer tweeter intersection from combined response. Im on a smartphone...but it doesnt look like 6db.
That’s cool what you able to do with these. I remember hearing the TC50 in a high end audio shop in the early 80’s. They were corner loaded and the dealer had the loudness button on. They still had little bass. I remember them having paper French Audax woofers, a rectangular Audax silk dome tweeter and possibly no port. They were highly regarded but I can’t say I liked them at the time.
Hello folks: I also believe they use Audax drivers in both models. after the demo I went up to local speaker shop and bought those drivers. I will say I can understand why the baffle is slope the woofer has a large peak at the upper end it was the only way to tame it down. Just remember to do the B&W 801 thing for the tweeter aim it coming right at yea. I did find it was still a little soft or light at the very top end, I always remove the cooling liquid and have Back-up diagrams the woofer was rated for 35 watts maybe 50. Then again Audax drivers was known for that. Like there Pro line great sounding mid and high end, bass drivers I won't sell unless they was they took four per side and still don't come crying to me. At that price go ATC for the bass drivers, because they can re-cone it themselves on the spot just remove the bolts.
Hi, with all due respect for the technique you have demonstrated with graphs in hand, I fully agree with Bau's answer! his work as a great designer (with the means available at the time) cannot and must not be questioned, a careful review of the electrolytic capacitors will bring new life to a great loudspeaker that plays music and not graphics, I am part of the oldest and most prestigious Italian hiend magazine I hope that in the future there may still be designers with an ear (Marten Design is a rare exception currently) and not just big buzzers! L.V. p.s stop if possible to make everything in graphs and listen to music that is better !!!
If you listen to other vids, Danny DOES A LOT of listening in speaker development and always during work... I have built speakers for over 40 years and Danny's knowledge and expertise has solidified and greatly expanded my knowledge of speaker design and listening techniques... Thanks Danny
You should really give us viewers a brief before and after description of the sound of the your speaker crossover modifications. We're all audiophile out here and would like to hear your opinion 🙄
OK, sounds good.I looked up an old Stereophile review on the TC- 50 and TC-60 out of curiosity. The frequency graph seems similar to yours, but maybe the caps have aged and effected the response of your sample. Yes they are low grade caps and inductors. That is quite a roll off in the upper treble zone too. I think your customer would benefit of your nice affordable Tweeter replacements, but I guess your employee would have to tweak the crossover resistors again. In for a penny, In for a pound ? 😀 They were about their wonderful imaging . That sloped baffle influenced David Wilson with the Tiny Tot I suspect.
Danny, I love your channel and I watch as often as I can. What you demonstrate clearly is that, for baffling reasons, speaker manufacturers don't seem to hire engineers who know what they're doing! And most mfrs care more about profit than sound quality--which is supposed to be their business--and that makes it that much more weird!
Danny, I wonder if there's a way to get tweeter response up from say 13K hz as most of the speakers show dramatic roll offs there until 20Khz and past it , our hearing also drops there so shouldn't the tweeter be brought up to at least flat or maybe even slight bump over say 12-15K hz to compensate for our hearing loss curve?
@@dannyrichie9743 when comparing Studio to Otica or Xtreme. Is Studio because of it's open top of the cabinet with no further baffle and other mid drivers above that tweeter , is Studio more open and more spacious in presentation due to free air above the tweeter vs Xtreme or Xotica?
What a waste of time and effort trying to improve these. There are “ better” affordable new speakers today. And if one has these speakers and loves them you love them watts and all presumably. So why would you try to radically mod them? Refurb for age, replace worn out parts and loose connections and age related cabinet and dampening material issues (if any). Done. This is like taking a 1983 Honda prelude And replacing the engine and suspension with those from a different car but keeping the transmission and exhaust system the same.
you should have a cheese chart and start high with Wisconsin cheese and end with government cheese for the worst. This is a kraft singles cheese crossover:)
@@djzoloft I did use my ears when I installed the upgrade into these for the customer. I listened to them before and after. Stock they were dull and muddy sounding. Clarity, detail, and texture were all greatly improved after the upgrade, as were soundstage and imagining..
Back in the late 80's I owned a pair of Spica TC-50 and they have been a source of soooooo many hours of musical listening pleasure.
I had these mounted on 3 spikes on top of a wooden milk crate filled with LPs which was also mounted on 3 spikes on top of yet another wood milk crate that was also on 3 spikes.
The listening room was about 12 x 20 and the Spica's never disappointed me with good recordings.
Bang for my teen-budget bucks, they were Amazing & Musical. Good memories! :)
PS Of course, this speaker arrangement was set at 2.5 feet from the back wall and I had a 3 deg toe in. Ceiling was at about 9.5ft and I had good carpet on top of hardwood floors. Me I was sitting at about 14 to 15 feet from the wall that was behind the Spica speakers.
Amp was a 35 W-RMS per channel with good dynamic range and my source was my Thorens TD-126 Mk III with SME Tonearm & Nagaoka MP-11 Boron . Nice. :)
Say what you want, I had a pair of TC 50's and they were extremely musical and satisfying. I loved them from the very first time i used them.
I did as well but unfortunately an amp malfunctioned and took out all 4 drivers. I also owned briefly the TC60 but thought the 50 had more magic, if less bass.
Absolutely I didn’t own a pair but listened (tc50s)at length twice in a dealer show room. They were excellent both times. This guy tilts his head, uses vocal inflections and talks about speakers so it sounds like it is being done wrong all the time. His world is measurement and assumptions. It has a thick grill so that’s no good, the felt applied to the baffle is not good……. He does it with every speaker he brings in. The take away is that he and he alone is the only human being capable of designing a speaker properly. Listening is every bit as important as measuring. Assumptions made without backing them up mean nothing. He never talks about listening after he’s done with the medicine show. Old saying “if it sounds good and measures bad you’re measuring the wrong thing”
@@josephfuller7008 He's just thinking about sound reproduction at a level most of us can't really comprehend or even care about. He may have a unique sense of hearing that allows him to instantly hear flaws that others don't. Ultimately he's just trying to help audiophiles reach for something better. I've been able to make big improvements in my existing speakers following just a few of his recommendations. I also built a pair for my son following Dannys basic rules. High quality parts, no magnetic metal in the signal path, and add proper damping. They sound great! Crystal clear, and powerful bass! You don't have to do or agree with everything he talks about in order to benefit from his advice. If he doesn't like our favorite old speakers that we think were awesome, so what....Who knows what that gear has been thru by the time it gets to him. You know those cheap caps dont age well.
Definition of musical o all mid range
Danny, I think it is worth mentioning in John Bau's defense that these models were produced after the company was sold to Parasound. John was a very smart designer and very measurement-centric. He did things no one else was doing as he came at speaker design from a different discipline than hi-end audio.
He also knew quite well the difference between phase and time alignment. I am very sure he would earn your respect as a designer were you able to speak with him.
Danny probably measured on a different axis than intended by the designer. Design axis could have been top of the woofer and not inline with the tweeter.
@@somebodyx perhaps. It is well known that for the time, tc50s imaged like no others. They had to hand match the resistors to each other and to the individual drivers. Something I am not sure if Parasound was willing to commit to.
He clearly was thinking in ways that others weren't. The design reminds me a lot of the Dunlavy designs of that same time period.
@@somebodyx Even if you measure on a more ideal axis doesn't change the fact that there are out of phase cancellation issues all over the vertical range. And the typical on axis is where the listen is most likely to have their ear. In more cases than not, it is on tweeter axis.
@@dannyrichie9743 This one had a specific recommendation for 26'' stands I think
I heard the T-50's also back in the mid 80's and was very impressed with their imaging. They disappeared when the music started. I was wanting to buy them but had recently bought a Delcoid sat/sub setup that I dearly loved. I sold the Delcoids back in 1989 because the new wife didn't like they way I had them setup. Fortunately, I was able to buy them back 2 yrs ago. I'm also fortunate enough to be driving them with a GAS Ampzilla and matching GAS Thoebe preamp. No wife and I got my speakers. Sounds good to me all around !!
@+❶ ❸３１７１❼３➃❼❹viaWhatsApp Cool. I didn't know I was in the running for anything !
Like 8 years ago I started building speakers seriously as a hobby. I used 6.5" Woofers and either dome tweeters or tiny FR drivers as upper med/tweeters. I always found it difficult to get a good upper med voice sound. It always had a sourness and some notes sounded louder than others. Then one day I tried 4" FR drivers and a woofer for lower bass and the near whole signal put through the 4" driver. And the voice sound control was like ten times better, so good that I couldn't believe the difference! I now use 5" FR drivers and 6.5" woofers or 5" woofers in the same box without a partition with a really LARGE inductor on the woofer and a 100 mf cap on the 5" FR driver. The driver is semi open over a (wide) bass vent hole that is also a speaker hole for the driver. The driver is mounted 1-2 cm above the speaker hole. Bass from the woofer and sound from the rear of the cone escape through the gap between the driver and box. The most EVEN voice sound I have heard and EVEN instrument sound. Not one single sour note. They sound like panel speakers but without the 6 ft mouth. The semi open FR cone seems to add an "octave" to the top end. Sharp and metallic crisp top end (especially with my tiny tin foil mod). Cheers Big Ears!
Any pictures? Sounds interesting.
There was a guy in L.A. who modified TC50s crossovers in the 90s and the improvement in mine was pretty spectacular
There’s a lot of information available on upgrading the TC 50. For me, the TC 50 was a much better speaker than the 60. The TC 60 sounded flat to me but, I sold them to a man who loved them and wrote the letters, long ones, about finding the perfect placement being the key. I have two sets of the 50’s and I’m going to endeavor to improve them at some point. I think I can make a better cabinet since price is no longer an issue.
The upgrade I did for the owner of these speakers was night and day. They went from dull and muddy, to clean and exciting.
When I brought them home I listened to about 3-4 reference tracks and there was just lots of missing clarity and detail, especially in layered tracks
After I finished the upgrades, everything i was previously missing was back where it should be. Thought it was still missing a lot of the upper end extension im used to, it still offered a lot of added clarity, plus the imaging and soundstage were also greatly improved.
They should be back in the customers hands tomorrow.
Would you happen to have a schematic? I have a set of NOS drivers for TC50...I think. Cant recall if they are 8 or 4 ohm version...but still...if u have the schematic it would be a time saver.
@@johnmcbarron7282 Do you mean the SC-50? The model before the TC-60?
Those measurements up top look like a case of dried up Ferrofluid in the tweeter. That Vifa Tweeter was capable of much higher frequency extension when it was new.
I’d had TC 50s and love them. However, they don’t have any base response. I bought them at Digital Sound in Virginia Beach. The owner subsequently sold me some TC 60s because they had more bottom and they were supposed to be a better speaker. I never got used to the 60s. I do still use my 50s and I do still love them. Icouple of them with a Velodyne servo subwoofer. For me, it is a beautiful match.
I was able to sell the TC 60s. and the customer wrote to me a couple of times, really long emails about having trouble getting the right imaging and so on. I expected him to say that he wanted to return them and then I got a really long email telling me that he had found the perfect setting and he couldn’t have been happier. So, some people really liked the 60s.
I put my TC 60s up for sale on eBay about 15 years ago. I actually got an email from Jon Bau, asking me for the drivers information. Apparently, he was putting some together for his son but he needed a driver match.
Holly cow Danny, I still have my TC 50's that I bought back in the 80's. Now that/s a trip down memory lane.
What a trip into the past! To think I loved the sound back then....
Nice. Would love to see you take a crack at a pair of Dyna A25s...talk about an iconic vintage speaker! Mine still sound surprisingly good, but they probably violate every current best practice in speaker building ;)
There's a modern Seas kit called the A26 that's the same design with better drivers, but still not a real crossover to speak of. I'm not sure if Danny would be impressed or offended.
The Dynaco speakers were great back in the day and the A25 had a cult following.
@@twoften Yes, I have seen but not heard it. Several builders (Omega and Annandale Acoustics) offer built versions from time to time...
Nothing makes HiFi sound better than nostalgia. Great video.
since my teenage years I have always been interested how speakers work..I always learn something from your channel when you post a new topic I get more from watching your take on speakers and crossovers and cabinet design then reading a book on the topic... great show.... Merry Christmas 🎶🙏
I scored a pair of these today in excellent condition at a thrift store this very day for $14.99 👍 . I stopped by after work and seen these from about 50 feet away and ran to them before someone else snagged them up . They were literally put out about 2 minutes before I showed up and let's just say I've been lucky as last week I grabbed a Yamaha R9 receiver with the remote from the same store for $8.99 also in excellent condition as it even had the moveable cover on it as all I had to do was clean out the volume pot . It's been a great two weeks for sure 😉
When I heard the TC-50s back in the early 80's I was fairly impressed. I did find them veiled compared to my Acoustat Model 3s and knew I could not live with them. But still, they did impress me at the time with their basic sound and soundstaging.
Electrostats, for all their drawbacks, are..imho the most transparent of any technology (ribbons come close but for a limited range of frequency)
Imho they will beat any cone speaker to the point of being an unfair contest.
That said...TC 50s are a joy to listen to too.
The TC-60 Stereophile review from back in the day can be found online. Has detailed measurements and explanations. They deviate a lot from what shown in your video.
Read JGH negative review with the servo controlled subs. Treble graphs pretty much the same as Danny's samples. They start rolling up and suddenly drop off like a rock at 16k. We also have better measuring equipment nowadays.
@@spacejaime John Bau himself said don't bother trying to match it with any subwoofer, even their own, because it just loses the magic of the 2 ways. I've heard alot of good speakers but very few image as well as a pair of TC50s. Perfect - no, incl rolled off at top and bottom but they were only $250/pr!
@@playbackamusicloversjourne8620 - thanks for that info. They truly were sweet. I miss never having been able to audition the Angelus.
@@playbackamusicloversjourne8620 By our standards the Spica's didn't image well at all. If you thought those speakers imaged well then you'd be blown away by every DIY kit we offer, because they are all in a different class in that regard.
IMHO these are fabulous speakers for jazz, vocal and acoustic music. Not so great for rock. They will benefit from a sub at lower listening levels especially under 70 dB. I find the the timbre of cymbals to be some of the most realistic I have heard. I don't find them muddy but I certainly wouldn't say that they are overly analytical either. There is a sweet spot on these for sure and the difference between sitting snd standing can be a fairly different experience. I don't know about measurements but there is a reason why these speakers have remained in the consciousness of audiophiles, because they just sound great.
Very interesting video on a legendary speaker. Owning a pair of TC 60s for about 26 years, I tend to disagree with most of the comments. Note that not being familiar with the technical aspects, I cannot provide an opinion on that, just on how natural and musical the Spicas' performance is. I have paired them with tube electronics (Quicksilver preamp and monoblock power amps) and now with Rega components (Elicit amp, Planar 3, Apollo CD player) and Bluesound streamer plus Qutest DAC and they have always performed wonderfully and amazingly. My conclusion is these are still some of the most musical and natural sounding speakers I have ever heard regardless of the price (I owned the Angelus previously). I wonder how many modern speakers around the 1000/1500 dollars bar provide the sense of physical presence of the performers that the Spicas give. And note that except for a change of one of the woofers, I have not touched nor tweaked them in any way. And yes, they do sound glorious!
Nice 1 Me still rock my Pioneer HPM 100s
4 way bass reflex speaker
#1 Rock n Roll speakers of all time
75 pounds each And $775.00 U.S
in 1976 [3k in todays inflation}
'Bart lancathi' Created the the HPM 100s to out perform the JBL L-100
That Bart Engeenered in 1969 😆
'Food for thought'
I had a pair of TC 50 SEX's which had the external crossover wired with Kimber.. My house at that time had so many visitors just to listen to magic. They were powered by a Quad, all I could afford, but I'm telling you listening to Das Rheingold was the most being there moment I'd heard at that time. Just like the LS35A the imaging was electrostatic like however less pinpoint but more 3D if you can understand deeper. More real less hifi!!!
I g
Have a pair of TC 50s. Would love for them to be resurrected.
so would I... had hoped that John Bau had a change in heart and wanted to resurrect Spica
When I get a few bucks, I really want to send you my IMF TLS 50s to see what you can do with them. Lol. I believe each cabinet is 100lbs.
Would love for you to check out the new KLH model 5. My first exposure to hi-fi was in 1959, my grandfather had a pair of KLH model sixes driven by a Harmon Kardon Citation I & Citation II.
If someone wants to send us one we'll definitely take a look at it!
Great video , some old stuff is sweet , some not quite as sweet.
Hello Danny. Would be nice if you could upgrade the Spica TC-50 speakers as they were more popular. Thanks
Anthony
You mentioned experimenting with the crossover. What's your typical setup for trying out different crossover components and parameters? Breadboards, alligator clips, etc.? Thanks!
He runs wires out the port and connects components using alligator clips on a board behind/beside the speaker. So its easy to swap them out and make adjustments on the fly.
Spica speakers sell today for more than when they were new. The have the respect of huge swaths of the HiFi and professional recording markets. They were used by professional engineers to record award winning music. Modifications as above clearly do not understand the raison d'etre of the design and will make the speakers worthless. The binding post mount is definitely a cost cutter, but the posts are good quality. A simple dual binding post plate available for a few dollars online fixes the issue. When refurbing my speakers, I found no iron in the crossover. IIRC, the inductor cores are manganese/zinc ferrite. For the time, the bass driver was very good quality. Few two-way systems auditioned in over 35 years come anywhere close to properly set up Spicas in a good room with topflight source in presenting an accurate sound field. Properly refurbished with new capacitors and tweeter ferrofluid, the speakers STILL elicit comments like "Joe Pass is sitting right THERE!!!"
The original design for SC-50 was to reproduce square wave as much as possible with the available technology. That's why John us d slopped large baffle and asymmetric crossover. I know some guys are trying to get similar results in time domain, but flatter freq response by using DSP x-overs. I think John used BW4 and Bessel 2nd order but I'm not 100%. If get well behaved midbas drivers and good tweeters some day, maybe I try it.
Was waiting for Danny to get ahold of some Spicas! Maybe not relevant, but I think it be entertaining if he included some review commentary from when the product was first launched. Sort of analyze what he hears compared to what reviewers heard, I dunno.
Yes, got my spica tc 50 from '85.. modded 2x in '86 and '04.. now kept as back up.. I will not dump it.. loved my spica and had always hoped John Bau would rise from the ashes and revive his interest I doing speakers again...
Wow. The same exact binding posts as my JBL EC35's and JBL Studio 590's. I thought it would have spring clips, non bi-amped. When Danny rotated the speaker It was an awesome surprise that it was a wedge shape. I would try this speaker on the floor, maybe a little height boosted off the floor.
A quick question on Norez, which seems to improve every speaker you use it on: Does Norez add to the cubic volume of a box, like polyester fluff? Keep the same volume? Or actually decrease the volume? Hopefully your response is of interest to other subscribers as well. Thanks... Denny
It is volume neutral.
@@JohnLee-db9zt I am sorry that you don't understand how it works. Let me explain it to you. When you add a layer of open cell foam, it slows down the air flow in the box and makes the woofer act as if it is a larger air space. The damping layer takes up some air space. So the foam layer counters the barrier layer and makes it volume neutral.
@@JohnLee-db9zt As far as what the woofer sees (what matters), it really does.
Danny, wish you would have looked at the TC-60s a couple years ago. Upgraded the crossover in mine, duplicating the John Bau design with higher quality parts. Did make quite a positive improvement. Look forward to your upgrade package pricing. Do wonder about changing the crossover point. The Vifa tweeter data sheet specifies a crossover of 3500 Hz. Your after measurements look great, but does making the tweeter play lower have a downside like increased distortion?
I don't recall ever coming across this speaker anywhere, even online
Danny i wish someone would send in a set of Mission 770s i have fond memories of that and these speakers were iconic in its day
Of course they are not in phase at crossover, They are not supposed to be. This is how first order crossovers work The drivers are 90 degrees out of phase so that the summed response is flat and so is the power response and the summed response is phase lineari-- which was their main point. The design may or may not have been executed well but the logic was misunderstood here. You may like the different approach better but you will have ruined the phase linearity of the summed response-- which was what they were afterl
I know exactly what they were shooting for. Phase linearity has hardly changed and the speakers have been improved in all areas.
@@dannyrichie9743 If you made the crossovers higher order, how did you preserve phase linearity? I think that is impossible (except with DSP processing). What did you do ? How about showing before and after impulse and/or step responses?
I am talking about the phase linearity of the summed response, the response at the listening position. This is not the same thing as the drivers being in phase at crossover, Things like Linkwiitz Riley 4th order where the drivers are in phase at crossover do not give linear phase summed response. In tact there is a 360 degree excess phase rotation between the two drivers--they are in phase at crossover because each is 180 degrees rotated from the individual drivers so they are actually 360 degrees out of phase-- which as long as you look right around the crossover, looks like in phase. If you want to look at phase linearity look at the Dunlavy speakers--first order crossover, linear phase. Of course you have to sit in the right place! People have decided to trade off phase linear summed response at one point to get stability over an area. Maybe a worthwhile trade off, maybe not,. But it is surely not what Spica was aiming at and if you put in high order crossover you have redesigned the speaker to fit your own ideas--it is not fair to say you have fixed it, you just made it a different speaker.
@@robertgreene2684 Slopes can be altered without changing the order.
@@robertgreene2684 The proof to whether or not an audible problem is no longer there is to listen to the speakers. There are trade offs for sure, but the cost of chasing something that theoretically will improve sound at with a result of poor sound isn't a good trade off.
It's seeing your 6.5" Peerless woofer that got me ranting. I started building speakers with 6.5" two ways.
I remember they basically had no high end. Bought Magnapan MG1 s the next day!
Quick question(s), you mentioned there was a lot of cheesy parts in the crossover. Do you know, off the top of your head, today how much it would cost to replicate the cost of the original crossover parts? And how much more or less your better parts would have cost when they designed the speaker. I'm guessing they didn't save any money by using more and crappy parts.
I did not map out the original crossovers, but the parts count was higher in the original, so out upgrade kit is likely going to cost less.
20 cheese grade parts.. many of them pennies a piece, vs a few quality parts at dollars or tens of dollars a piece... Lots of cheap junk is probably cheaper than a few good parts.
probably was simply more limited by parts access / cost at the time... got to hit a price point for the market...
Great job as usual Danny. Keep up the good work!
Well there goes the time and phase coherence. 😂
Hi Dani. Wont this affect the room reponse, or garage response. If the listener had this for many years tuned to his ears...great stuff.
Yes, the overall response or room response will now be balanced.
Prior to when the spicas tc 50 were around the oniy speakers around that were competive with them that I know of were the rogers SLA-S & the (dahlquist Dq tens that suffered from phase aligment issues I know cause I had them at one time over modified for my taste, Still a great used pair of speakers lovely mids!..
@+❶ ❸３１７１❼３➃❼❹viaWhatsApp ?
That is with the same drivers?!!? Unreal change in the measurement from a much better designed cross-over. Would love to hear how the client finds them after break in.
I installed the upgrade for the customer, and the difference in tone and clarity was night and day. The original crossovers were a dull, muddy and unfocused mess, especially in more complex, layered tracks..
After installing the new crossovers they really came to life, lots of clarity and detail even in layered tracks, everything missing from the stock performance was back.
You could still tell that the very top end was rolled off, but otherwise it turned out to be a pretty great speaker!
Customer should be getting them back sometime today.
@@hoth2112 That's so cool! Do you have a favorite bookshelf speaker?
I am pretty familiar with Spica speakrs, (I remember going to my step dads friends house who had these, and was amazed by them), and know that they were insanely coveted. They still are, like Danny mentioned. They were VERY distinct and had their own sound character that owners loved. It's so weird to imagine that one can find them incredible and like no other....but have such bad basic measurements!!! it's like, you don't even need to hear them, you can tell just from the measurements that they aren't "what they truly COULD be!". Right? The crossovers you all designed for my Epos 12 speakers were a 180º change of engineering for the speaker, that I really was afraid I would lose the "Epos" sound signature. But honestly, for 21 year old speakers, I can't tell you how amazing -I- think they sound now! I bet with these Spica with new Crossovers, they truly have some insane sonic character.
I'm getting some new speakers made by Legacy Speakers (company in Illinois), and would love to have you all test them out and see what you think. Have a great Holiday Season and great work!!
In the early 80s I barely remember Spica making a speaker called the Angelus. Do you recall that speaker.
more like the late 80s...not the early..
great achievement as usual, i continue to be inspired, so much so that my project this Christmas is reading up on Crossover design, funtion and performance. What I'd really appreciate would be if you can say what order filters you have on both drivers and the net phase rotation and whether any driver polarity had to be reversed to bring back into phase and sum correctly, or whether you're able to maintain phase purely with the crossover design. (sorry a little bit of new information acquired in these last 2 days is maybe a dangerous thing!)
The tweeter was a 3rd order filter and the woofer was 2nd order. Polarity did not need to be reversed.
Hey Danny, mine lacked treble. Could your upgrade resolve this?
Could the 700Hz stored energy be from the stamped woofer frame? When you tapped it with your fingertips, it seems that the frame resonates in that lower midrange region. Perhaps a no-rez treatment might fix the frame buzz.
The ringing frame was not the problem.
You should have shown the time domain (step) response before and after your mod, given that this was the original designer's main target goal.
We should have saved those measurements. It was very close to the same in that regard. I also did that when I designed an upgrade for the TC-50 years ago and got similar results. I did save the measurements on the step response on that one.
A friend brought this video to my attention. It is full of disinformation and misrepresentation. The presenter took a 26-year-old speaker which needs normal maintenance (replace electrolytic capacitor in xover and ferrofluid in tweeter), measured it on the wrong axis, and portrayed this performance as if it represented what the designer intended and the factory originally delivered when new. This is highly unprofessional and misleading. It should be made clear that the mods suggested in this video destroy the linear-phase characteristic which is a hallmark of the original design.
This is the designer of the Spicas!
👆
Fear not, Mr. Bau, your legacy is intact and your designs are all works of genius that will stand the test of time. (We’ve corresponded online several times.) I should know. I own all of them: SC-50, TC-50, Angelus, SC-30, and TC-60. I have all sorts of speakers around the house, from Snells to Spendors to Quads to Sonus F to Ref 3A’s….Spica’s are still my favorite speaker marque of all time, driven with everything from Class A SS monsters to SE triodes, and everything in between.
Hi John Bau, nice to hear you here. Yes i currently have tc60. Please advise me what i should maintain or replace to make the TC sound as at least original specification.
Thanks
@@Anh-Áo-Nâu As stated above, replace electrolytic capacitors (with film types), and replace ferrofluid in tweeters.
Danny, I recall that some time ago you looked at the TC-50 and developed an upgrade for it.
I did, but that one had a dead tweeters and our redesign included new GR-T2 (long gone model now) tweeters.
have you ever re worked a pair of M&K S1B satellites ?? They were fairly well regarded in the eighty's. If so, was the multi selectable cross over abilities still there. in other words would you just upgrade existing cross over instead of replacing.
You took on a difficult challenge, and you got positive outcome. Gratz. I'm really curious about the customer's feedback!
I am and continue to be a big fan of this channel. This video caught me little meh. This speaker or at least the 50s are STILL iconic and sought after. +30yr old design and were affordable in their day. Maybe a little acknowledgment to John and his innovative work here. Listening to him talk you would think these sound like sparkomatics. They don't. There is a reason ppl still hoard them like Cal Ripken rookie cards. Little homage due here IMHO.
I am wondering,If the original crossovers were remade with new modern parts,How would they perform?
The reason why I am wondering is,With how old the parts in the crossovers are ,That will totally change the way the speaker performs and sounds....
It would improve how they sound, but many of the problems would still be there.
Geese so all the audio publications of the day were wrong when these were new?? I don't think so. I never heard the TC60s but the TC50s were magic and imaged like nothing else.
They were not bad for their time, but by today's standards they are nothing special. Every DIY kit we offer beets these up in every category.
Seems i got my answer on the Mission 770 seems they are in preproduction right now for a rerelease come this January,some fella named Peter something who had alot to do with original is doing interviews on YT
And to think this was a "holy grail" of many of the hi-fi reviewrs back then...lol
I remember a period when every manuacturer used staggered drivers which led to some very strange looking speakers.
@+❶ ❸３１７１❼３➃❼❹viaWhatsApp You are so annoying.... Go do something useful
Have you also looked at the TC50?
I have.
Nice to see Some old ones. Vifa and peerless is quite nice elements to diy. It’s look nearly as diy. And like the Carlsson oa50 I upgraded they seems to like some damping stuff outside the speakers to damp some reflections! But the filter always seem cheesy back then. Had they even good parts then,or was they not invented? Ty again and merry Christmas 2 u
Brilliant...I was actually wondering yesterday if sticking damping on a big baffle speaker was a good idea...now I know.
Fancy trying to tweak some mission 769i book shelves? I might send you a pair to play with as they're quite a popular old box in the UK.
Merry new Xmas!
I'd look at the crossover parts first. I was into hifi in the UK in the 90's and Mission were a respectable brand. I doubt they used hi end crossover parts. I watched a B&W factory tour video recently and the lengths they go to to get the cabinets spot on is incredible. They then connect the crossover parts with steel connectors, potentially degrading the sound quality. I would love for someone to review Danny's speakers against new high end production speakers.
Danny, the first thing you should have done is replace the tweeters. After more than 30 years of playing music they probably lost more than half of their energy in the high frequencies.
They still measured just fine.
Hi Danny, have you done a video on Walsh Ohm speakers ? Curious what will be discovered.
I have not.
@@dannyrichie9743 yes, I wish you'd do one ... I have the Microwalsh Tall speakers (their smallest floor standing speakers).
C O O L ! ! ! I AM excited about this work... have owned my TC-60s for about 10 years, accepting them for their fundamental limits. J. A. Stereophile review / appraisal and Danny's [both] are spot on.
*I AM IN ON THIS UPDATE* [as an owner] very curious about what could "be done" to these speakers. My Spica's "play in rotation" with Silverline SR-17S and Harbeth 30.2, indeed have / share remarkable qualities of even more lofty $$$$ designs, as they sit, yet it is really easy to imagine areas of noteworthy improvements.
Please look at yamaha ns 1000 m there are lots of them waiting for an upgrade thanks
Send one in.
I would love to but I live in spain lol shipping would be a bit dear
Would have loved to see some measurements with the no rez applied as mentioned. Interesting speaker, thanks for taking the time to show us
I actually took some measurements after I finished the installation and got the norez laid onto the face, with and without the grill. It really smoothed out the response with the grill on vs without norez, removing a few peaks and dips that the grill caused. Though the upgrades were done about a week after this video was filmed. I'll probably make a post on AudioCircle about it in the next day or two.
Im really impressed with how much better they sounded after the upgrade. I'm excited to hear the customers thoughts as well.
Not phase linear anymore, not time aligned anymore ,no more controlled off axis. Thats the trade-off. The step and impulse response will tell the story.
The baffle is not just slanted for time alignment but also to compensate for the 90 degree out of phase for the first order crossover. 15 degree tilt compensates for that.
The felt is there to control off axis making it uniform , matching the woofers off axis at crossover point........this is why they image so well.
There is but a handful of loudspeaker manufacturers that will tackle a proper linear phase first order network and Spica was one of them, Vandersteen , older Thiel, Dunlavy, Duntech to name a few others.
The step response barely moved. They were not acoustically in phase well at all to begin with. Now they are. The felt did not control the off axis response. It made it irregular. We replaced the felt with some carefully place No Rez. Now the off axis response looks really good. In stock form the imaging was poor. Now it has been transformed.
@@JohnLee-db9zt Nope, we are the real deal. We have designed upgrades for hundreds of speakers.
what he did seems so obvious. what were they thinking w first order filters in the first place? did they not have measuring eqpmnt? i had the meadowlark kestral 2's w a sloped baffle and first order... they were awesome so it can be done.
There are several designers who use first order crossovers* because of the degree to which they preserve the phase of signals in the passband (that is, filters affect both what they pass and what they don't pass). The down side is that there's a lot of overlap between the drivers resulting in off-axis weirdness. *Vandersteen is another such company.
The TC 50 was a much better design.
I have two pairs of TC-50s and a pair of Angeluses. I like the stock TC-50 better than the Angelus. Tracking first hand the trajectory of audio over the last almost 50 years, I've long lost much of the nostalgia thing and I'm pretty much ready to move on completely. Audio today is better than it's ever been in just about every way.
I seem to recall back in the day that the TC-60 wasn't received as well as the TC-50. I've chatted with John Bau about this on a couple of occasions. He is keen that the TC-60 is the better speaker.
@@stevenjackson8226 Hi Steve, do you think with John's design practices, that he was convinced the TC-60 was better because it was designed, modelled, and measured as better?! :)
+\[poiuytrew3q2
Have there been any “legendary” GR Research speakers? …Yeah, I didn’t think so, either.
Actually our designs have won pretty much every industry award there is. And our exhibit rooms won show awards pretty much every time we exhibited. What else would you like?
Hey Danny, loving my Pedest'ale Tower speakers. Dig your vids. MERRY CHRISTMAS
First off, I want to say that I enjoy this channel a lot. However, the issue with vintage speaker crossover redesign is that each driver is going to age in a different way. The crossover DR designed will no doubt work great for the speaker he has in his shop, but there is no way you can be guaranteed the same results for another Spica 60. IMO, it would have been much better to replace the drivers with new equivalents that perform in a consistent manner and fit the existing cutouts (after all, the original Spicas used off the shelf components as well.) Then you could provide the schematics and parts for the newly designed crossover using the new drivers. Yes, you may alter it to the point where it sounds very different and it will be more expensive, but honestly you will end up with a superior speaker (with possibly the flavor and definitely the appearance of the old speaker) and a design that you can use on any example of that model. Just my 2¢.
If you need to do all that to an existing speaker, you might as well just build a new speaker from scratch, the only thing that you would be keeping are the boxes and they aren't all that special, at least not special enough that you could not build something that would be better for a reasonable cost.
I think most people that own this speaker are not going to upgrade it but I could be wrong, some get use to the way a speaker sounds and they don't want it messed with, even if the end results measure better and perhaps sounds better.
That's fine, but at that point, all you're really salvaging is the box.
We don't see any additional drift in drivers response over time than the standard variance between drivers to begin with. So that is really not an issue.
@@dannyrichie9743 Really? I'm very surprised by that. Maybe the woofers are fine and they can often be rebuilt if the problems are minor, but even the 25 year old *cloth* dome tweeters show no effect due to age? Obviously you are measuring them so you would know, but I wish that were the case for my 40 year old speakers with 1" cloth Audax tweeters that have certainly and asymmetrically degraded with time. Many thanks for the reply!
@@The_Story_Channel Possibly, but if someone really liked their TC-60s, they could find close replacements for the Vifa D27TG-45 and Peerless WR180 used in the TC60 and have a speaker that sound close to the original (albeit upgraded... I think the voicecoil on the Vifa might even be replaceable with a modern ScanSpeak 600058.) Sure "close" sounding would be subjective, especially with a complete rework of the crossover, but to me it makes more sense for Danny to spec an upgrade kit for a repair that would last for years to come. That he's finding these drivers to be performing within variance surprises me, although for how long will they remain like that? Appreciate the reply.
Instead of the chunk of felt they could have had a tapered box narrower at the top and made the box with similar internal volume by tweaking the dimensions. The grill would still have the same problem (probably even worse) but you can take the grills off when critical listening. That would have saved the price of the felt and the boxes would be a nightmare to build by hand but maybe easier with a factory build.
Someone has to be local with a epi 100… let Danny work his magic.
Crossover point should be up 6db?
If in phase...output with both drivers working...at crossover point...is 3 db above each individual driver at the crossover frequency.
Why do you say 6 db?
Speaker drivers are voltage controlled devices so SPL adds by 6dB from correlated signal sources. On the other hand their total radiated power adds by 3dB.
@@somebodyx looking at the seperated response curves summing at xover frequency....measuring SPL...how many db down is woofer tweeter intersection from combined response.
Im on a smartphone...but it doesnt look like 6db.
@@think2023 When doing that non anechoic better go near field to each one so to see better what they do in isolation. Like less than an inch away.
@@somebodyx ok..but not on topic.
@@think2023 -6dB down on each leg where they meet when in phase and properly measured would be the general answer.
That’s cool what you able to do with these. I remember hearing the TC50 in a high end audio shop in the early 80’s. They were corner loaded and the dealer had the loudness button on. They still had little bass. I remember them having paper French Audax woofers, a rectangular Audax silk dome tweeter and possibly no port. They were highly regarded but I can’t say I liked them at the time.
I have only seen them with the Audax TWO25A0 1” though the “tweaked” TC-50i edition used a different one As well as a different crossover.
Hello folks:
I also believe they use Audax drivers in both models. after the demo I went up to local speaker shop and bought those drivers.
I will say I can understand why the baffle is slope the woofer has a large peak at the upper end it was the only way to tame it down.
Just remember to do the B&W 801 thing for the tweeter aim it coming right at yea. I did find it was still a little soft or light at the very top end, I always remove the cooling liquid and have Back-up diagrams the woofer was rated for 35 watts maybe 50. Then again Audax drivers was known for that. Like there Pro line great sounding mid and high end, bass drivers I won't sell unless they was they took four per side and still don't come crying to me. At that price go ATC for the bass drivers, because they can re-cone it themselves on the spot just remove the bolts.
The TC-50 were designed to reproduce square wave as much as possible with the available technology back then. That's why the slopes are asymmetric.
100%
Great job on a tough project.
Interesting how far the TC-60 was taken from its stock performance, and by making it simpler. The measurements of the revised design look really good.
tis 2023,, woofer has no more surround... wish to only replace woofers... what can we get now, that is closest ...in sound...no other changes..
Any interest at taking a crack at my vintage Thiel 1.5s?
If you pay for shipping both ways I’m sure he would, not sure if he charges for his time on top of that.
Of course Danny can improve a legendary speaker. Danny can improve anything, except current Danny.
Hi, with all due respect for the technique you have demonstrated with graphs in hand, I fully agree with Bau's answer!
his work as a great designer (with the means available at the time) cannot and must not be questioned, a careful review of the electrolytic capacitors will bring new life to a great loudspeaker that plays music and not graphics, I am part of the oldest and most prestigious Italian hiend magazine I hope that in the future there may still be designers with an ear (Marten Design is a rare exception currently) and not just big buzzers!
L.V.
p.s stop if possible to make everything in graphs and listen to music that is better !!!
If you listen to other vids, Danny DOES A LOT of listening in speaker development and always during work... I have built speakers for over 40 years and Danny's knowledge and expertise has solidified and greatly expanded my knowledge of speaker design and listening techniques...
Thanks Danny
Two kinds of people: Those who buy speakers based on brand name and reputation and those who actually care about quality sound.
You should really give us viewers a brief before and after description of the sound of the your speaker crossover modifications. We're all audiophile out here and would like to hear your opinion 🙄
One of my employees did a complete before and after listen to the pair. He may be able to chime in with feedback.
OK, sounds good.I looked up an old Stereophile review on the TC- 50 and TC-60 out of curiosity. The frequency graph seems similar to yours, but maybe the caps have aged and effected the response of your sample. Yes they are low grade caps and inductors. That is quite a roll off in the upper treble zone too. I think your customer would benefit of your nice affordable Tweeter replacements, but I guess your employee would have to tweak the crossover resistors again. In for a penny, In for a pound ? 😀 They were about their wonderful imaging . That sloped baffle influenced David Wilson with the Tiny Tot I suspect.
Another great video!
Danny if you keep doing different classic speakers I still have the Polk Monitor 10As.
Christmas week video? Wow! Thanks, Sensei! (Hold the 'cheese' on my audio burger!!)
Some feedback on the upgrade is posted here at the Audio Circle: www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=179694.0
I've searched a bit and can't find anything, but have you fixed any Magico or Focal speakers?
I've upgrade quite a few of the Focal and JM Lab models. We also used to e a distributor for the Focal drivers.
Danny, I love your channel and I watch as often as I can. What you demonstrate clearly is that, for baffling reasons, speaker manufacturers don't seem to hire engineers who know what they're doing! And most mfrs care more about profit than sound quality--which is supposed to be their business--and that makes it that much more weird!
Danny, I wonder if there's a way to get tweeter response up from say 13K hz as most of the speakers show dramatic roll offs there until 20Khz and past it , our hearing also drops there so shouldn't the tweeter be brought up to at least flat or maybe even slight bump over say 12-15K hz to compensate for our hearing loss curve?
Our GR Neo 3's play out to 40kHz.
@@dannyrichie9743 I would love to get into those one day... What is your least expensive model to have these drivers ?
@@kdomster9141 The NX-Studio Monitor.
@@dannyrichie9743 when comparing Studio to Otica or Xtreme. Is Studio because of it's open top of the cabinet with no further baffle and other mid drivers above that tweeter , is Studio more open and more spacious in presentation due to free air above the tweeter vs Xtreme or Xotica?
@@kdomster9141 That same tweeter in the NX-Otica and NX-Treme are completely open baffle. So they are even more open and spacious sounding.
Danny Your comment section is infested with scammer bots. They are like the cheesy components of a crossover that need to be removed.
I know. I have reported them and deleted about 30 of them.
What a waste of time and effort trying to improve these. There are “ better” affordable new speakers today. And if one has these speakers and loves them you love them watts and all presumably. So why would you try to radically mod them? Refurb for age, replace worn out parts and loose connections and age related cabinet and dampening material issues (if any). Done.
This is like taking a 1983 Honda prelude And replacing the engine and suspension with those from a different car but keeping the transmission and exhaust system the same.
Some people like restoring and improving something that is nostalgic to them.
You’re a magician Danny
Someone responded to my comment that looks and smells like scam. Thought you should know.
A lot of "Bla, bla, bla" didn't show the audio differences, before and after!
Audible differences are not shown, they are heard, but you can read about them here: www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=179694.msg1905877#msg1905877
you should have a cheese chart and start high with Wisconsin cheese and end with government cheese for the worst. This is a kraft singles cheese crossover:)
It looks like Danny Richie doesn´t like any speakers that he didn´t design himself.... it seems everything is crap except for GR-Research products.
You must have missed the ones that I found that I thought were really good. I give plenty of praise when it is due.
Difficult to argue with the improvement in the frequency response with his new crossover, matey !
@Haraldo - Wrong. Wrong. Wrong, Dannie is objective.
@@djzoloft I did use my ears when I installed the upgrade into these for the customer. I listened to them before and after. Stock they were dull and muddy sounding.
Clarity, detail, and texture were all greatly improved after the upgrade, as were soundstage and imagining..
@@hoth2112 What do you mean by ' Texture' never heard that phrase before?
I never want to see tube connectors. The idea behind them is cheesy.
Actually they are the highest quality connector in the industry right now.
This crossover is so cheesy that the speaker should have been called the Spica 'Quattro Formaggi'