Greenie512

Okay, so Doug and I are trying to rise a few bodies interested in speaker building in the Brisbane area. Afraid not to many turned up out of those who initially veined interest (you know who you are)

Thanks to Mike and Rob for making the effort worth while and here’s whatcha missed ...

From left to right ...

• Dennis Murphy’s CAOW1 - two ways
• Cyburgs Needle
• Small Thors, on top of which is ...
• John Blue 3’s **
• OMS 2020 Line Array
• FE167e Fostex official cabs - the red devils
• My electonics
• Peerless 10” XLS + Rad active sub
• Find the hidden Cerberus?

The John Blue 3’s and the Ming Da MC368-B90 integrate tube amp plus ..

Original A8S CD player plus a very cute and impressive Trends Audio TA-10.1

Were kindly lent to use for the day by John at COEM Audio

Doug’s rather good open baffle speakers with Peak 8CX50 (oem Coral 8CX501’s) coaxial drivers.

Just too much to listen to in one session.

Perhaps Mike or Rob might write a review??

As most of the speakers are my own I can not comment but I’d like to firstly thank John for use of his demo gear. Now I’’ve never owned a valve amp so can not claim any experience with these guys but the Ming proved a revelation with 70 watts and those huge transformers this amp coped effortlessly with anything we threw at it. You could just tell it had total control of what ever it was driving. But it wasn’t just brute strength it brought out more detail and space to the music that my MF could. 

By the way the build quality of the Ming is great, I nearly crippled myself picking it up. I can not find the weight on the box but it feels a good 50+ lbs

I believe the little Trend digital amp has received some great reviews and rightly so what a great little amp for 210 bucks - it coped well with the line arrays.

The John Blues 3 played well for such small speakers and the small full range driver is good. However I think the Needles took the price between the two but we are talking a box 3-4 time its size.

Now the disappointment was the Original CD player, if weight and apparent build quality was a measure of sound quality then this would be a good un. This unit didn’t stack up against my secondhand Denon CD player and at 800 bucks I’d call this slightly more than an entry level CD. Now you could not complain about the remote - wow - if feels like it’s cast from a solid block of aluminum and has a lovely satin brushed finish. If you dropped this thing on your foot you’d know about it. Perhaps we shouldn’t have been playing this with such a high achieving tube amp, I have a feeling it would get a better review within its own price bracket.

More to come ... perhaps! ....