I woke up the other morning and heard a faint whisper from my guest bedroom. I poked my head in, and heard it again. “Don’t forget about us” faintly. In the corner, it was the Betsy Twins. A little embarrassed, I said, “Don’t worry, I haven’t”.  I knew I was way overdue to put them back in the lineup.

I picked one of them up, and walked into the living room. Behind me, I immediately heard the Crystal twins. Snickering, they said, “What are you doing with those little things?”  I said, “Never you mind”.  I disconnected the Crystals, and moved them into the other room. As I was walking out, they said, “We won’t be in here long. You’ll miss us pretty fast!”  I said to myself, “as great as they sound, that’s probably right”.

I got back into the living room and got the Betsys hooked back up and in position. Starting the music, I sat down to have a listen. To start, the sound was a little slight. After a few songs, I remembered that the Betsys are a little less efficient than the Crystals. I turned the volume up a little to compensate. After a short time, still not that special. Then it hit me. They are teasing me for neglecting them for so long. I said, “I’m sorry girls. C’mon now”. Gradually over the next 30 minutes or so, it started sounding like I remembered.

It is easy to hear the difference in scale between the larger Crystal baffles and the smaller baffles. But what the smaller driver/baffles lack in sound scale, they make up for in detail. No doubt in my mind that the Betsy’s (mine are Alnico’s) are better than anything I’ve heard in the detail department. Truly amazing. I can’t help but wonder if it would be worth it to put the Betsys in a bigger, thicker baffle to see if the scale would increase without losing the detail. I doubt that’ll ever happen. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it!

My ears definitely needed an adjustment period to go from the large scale of the bigger drivers and baffles. But once that happened, there was the magic again. All of this with two 12” bass baffles added for supplemental bass. I use them for the Crystals too.

The bottom line is that, once I settled back into the Betsys, it was easy to see, and remember that it was the fabulous sound of these little beauties that started the whole Decware open baffle craze in the first place. Looks like they will be in the listening room for quite some time

Hi Randy. The main thing that worries me about a bigger baffle is the location of the driver from the floor. It works so well at its present height, I wonder if you’d lose some of the magic with it higher. Remember that we are dealing with Randy’s alien engineering  ;)

What did you end up doing with the phase plugs in yours? Seems like I remember the tubes were vibrating out.

Hey Geno and Randy,

Thanks for your contributions on the topic. I have been wondering if we couldn't make small movable platforms that we could place in front of the Betsys while playing to simulate bringing the driver closer to the floor (effectively bringing the floor closer to the driver),  and then remove when not playing so that they aren't so odd looking as they are with the driver permanently mounted below center in the baffle. I don't think that I could ever get used to seeing the driver below center, now that I'm used to it being above. Maybe cover the platform in carpet or sound-absorbing material (like Steve was using on the back of his bases) to break up the floor-reflected sound? And I think that the platform would have to widen out at its leading edge (closer to the listening position). Anyway, another experiment - if I ever get all my tools and materials in one place. Hell, it  would be an improvement just to have them all in the same state.

Geno, I finally got fed up with my tube phase plug experiment. Could never get it stabilized, so I went back to my metal plugs, and got my beautiful sound back. I moved them off center, as Steve suggested, but I haven't experimented with the rubber o-rings that he talked about. I'll get around to that, I'm sure, and I may even return to the tube phase plug, if I can figure a more stable way to fix it to the magnet. What a surprising and delightful hobby this is. Endless experiments, endless possibilities. Thanks to all for sharing the results of your personal experiments.

Randy