Bottlehead
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I've been meaning to write this update for a while, now, to give you my review of my new FRX2 drivers. I broke them in with my First Watt F3 JFET @ 15W into 8 Ohms. I listened at about 100 hours, and it sounded really good. Really pure vocals, great midrange. Then I switched to a 10W 300B amp that I bought from a local (Puget Sound) company, and the sound got better, but I still needed more on the low end. So I hooked up the 15" woofers in the Hawthorne Audio Rainiers that you see in the background of the picture. That filled out the low end, but I still couldn't get it to integrate top to bottom like I wanted. Then I remembered about the switch on the back of the drivers - and this is the carefully considered, highly professional part of this audio review - HOLY SHIT!! or as the guy in the movie "Cocoon" said, "If this is foreplay, I'm a dead man!". The vocals REALLY came through, especially the ones that were recorded well, like the early Elvis Sun Studios recordings, or Chris Issac's cds, or Pink Martini's "Hey Eugene" cd. And I'm finding that WAY more music sounds good with these drivers than I thought from Steve's description on the website. I do agree with his characterization that these are not "party speakers", and they may not be my first choice for some of the harder rock that I listen to, but I think that Steve might be underselling them. I don't know how many of these drivers that he is selling, but however many it is, it's not as many as it should be. I think that if more people heard how good these sound, and how many types of music they excel at, Steve wouldn't be able to make enough of them. They are dangerously close to what I call the Holy Grail of speakers - that is, I feel like I'm getting all the information that I need from the recordings at low to moderate levels, without the feeling that it would be so much better if only I turned it up just a little more. (It is true that this only applies to music that was well-recorded from the start, but I feel that if it's on the recording, these things will give it to me. In spades). What could make it better? Well, I think that the only limitation that I have now is in what I call command, what most people would call headroom. There's a fullness or weight to the sound that a few extra watts provide that low-watt amps just can't match. Which brings me to the upcoming monoblocks. I'll be following their development with interest. I think that these drivers with that amplification will be world beaters. And if I can't swing those, I'll be talking to Steve about a Junior with balanced inputs. In any case, I just want to say thanks again to Steve, for giving me another step up the ladder to audio nirvana.
Randy
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FRX2 Mock Up (Read 8070 times)
