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Does anybody own a pair of Rectilinear III highboys? From the pictures I've seen, the front baffle is held in place with phillips head wood screws. Was wood glue used in addition to the screws?I see pairs popping up fairly often these days. If that front baffle board could be removed without mangling the rest of the cabinet, it could be easily repurposed for the Hartley 220MSG. The proportions and volume of the cabinet are very similar to the Hartley Holton.
I mean no insult to Rectilinear III owners – it is a very fine speaker. But I've wanted a pair of 220MSGs since hearing them for the first time in 1964 at the home of company owner Robert Schmetterer. Several recent arrangements to have cabinets made by local builders have come to nothing – assurances given, phone messages unanswered – you know the deal. I guess that's why they call it flake board.
Edits: 09/02/14 09/02/14 09/02/14 09/02/14Follow Ups:
Funny you should mention this. I bought my first pair of Highboys for $15 at a thrift store with the idea of using the cabinets for an 'Econowave' project (as detailed over at AK) but discovered I quite liked the way they sounded as they were. 4 years later, I still do.And yes, the baffles just unscrew, no glue. Very easy to mirror image them.
Edits: 09/06/14 09/06/14 09/06/14 09/06/14
$15????? Good grief, I had to pay $50 for mine in a local pawnshop.
I will say they ARE among a handful of the best speakers I've heard
during my 50+ year pursuit of this hobby.
My "highboys", the early version with only one level control,
have a fabric grill held on with velcro.
Looking at the references on the Wikipedia ling you will find
the Hirsch test reports.
Regards to all,
John
My understanding was if a product violated his sensitivities and there were quite a few, the unit was simply returned and the review killed. I guess not a bad approach; save the inches for items that meet a certain bar of acceptability. Then, if looking for a unit, it reviewed it was at least looking at. OTOH, the fact that there was no review had to be interpreted as not reviewed or not meeting the bar.
I do not remember the contested review or comment but it would seem odd he made such a statement of fact as to electrostatic speakers. The measured distortion of the III would all but impossible as an e'stat driven correctly will measure in the range of 0.5%, a level of a good amp.
In his very early reviews he seemed less directed at keeping a positive twist on the reviews. As time progressed, if you lay reviews side by side, he was more selective as to where he focused each unit's characters to emphasize the positive and either de-emphasize or not comment on the negatives.
He was okay for an average layperson looking for something better than a low end console or entry level bargain. As you go up the knowledge or experience ladder not so much leaving others to fill that niche.
As for the III, I found them pleasing and something a noncritical listener would likely easily fall in love with as they are just so easy to listen to at various sound levels.
Don Brian Levy, J.D.
Toronto ON Canada
I found the Stereo Review article by Julian Hirsch. Enjoy reading.
Ryan,
If you go back to the original review on the lowboy version, Julian's review stated that "it could not be distinguished" from an electrostatic. Readers objected vehemently to that statement. His comments in the later highboy review deny he said that and he back away from his first review's comments; but he definitely did. A case where his rhetoric caught him up.
Years and years ago, my friends and I caught on to the code behind Hirsch-Houk Labs rhetoric, and found that unless Julian was wildly enthusiastic about a product, it was just OK. The other part of the article, Gladden Houk's lab work, was well done, and it was worth wading through Julian's over heated rhetoric to get to.
Back in the 60's and 70's I subscribed to several of the news stand publications, including Stereo Review, High Fidelity and Audio. Audio was by far the best of the three, and I thought High Fidelity was the runner up, although all three did some good articles, many of which I still have. In that same period, I thought the British magazines were the best and I bought them when I could find them. I particularly like the approach of What Hi-Fi? and Hi-Fi Answers, as they focused mainly on matching components into systems; rather than the American mags focus on individual components by themselves, and then ranking them in some kind of absolute hierarchy.
Jerry
Minor point, but the first review was of the Highboys and the later one (with the back pedaling) is of the Lowboys.
Edits: 09/06/14
Hi Jerry,
For a long time electrostatic speakers, particularly QUAD ESL 63, have been the gold standard. I have heard Spica, my own Spendor BC-1's, and many oters compared to them. However, if a person claim that they are indistinguishable, I think it would reflect more on his hearing ability than on the quality of the speaker. I guess Julian just got overenthusiastic. I don't contend, as some do, that he was hearing impaired.
I agree with you 100% about understanding Julian's code. I know people like to villainies him, but as villains go, he is pretty mild. I have personally met much worse. If you think Julian is a villain, you need to get out more, but be carful! Villains do a lot worse that convincing you to buy mediocre stereo equipment!
Dave
You have to keep things in perspective. Julian Hirsch was a founder of the New York Audio League back in the 50's. Their goal, as I recall, was to select "reference" equipment, and evaluate other gear as compared to the reference. That eventually lead to writing the articles for Stereo Review. At that time, there really was nothing else around that gave good advice to consumers. Stereophile came along later with its no-nonsense approach. In fact, Stereo Review predates stereo, so it had an earlier name that I don't recall. Hirsch-Houk also wrote reviews for one of the electronics magazines (maybe Electronics World or Popular Electronics, I can't recall which)and it was interesting to compare the two articles for the same components. Same test data; but often presented differently, and the text in the articles was different as the magazines had a different orientation.
I once came across a JBL engineer at a group presentation. Someone in the audience asked if Julian was on the take. His response was that he was honest, he just couldn't hear. From my standpoint, Julian suffered from an over-heated typewriter. I listened to a lot of the speakers he reviewed, and in many cases did not agree with his views.
A commonly used phrase was: "This is among a handful of the finest equipment we have auditioned". All I can say is that he must have had very large hands.
Jerry
LOL! Well, nobody is perfect. Still, he was an important pioneer in our hobby!
Dave
Jerry,
I'm posting this strictly from memory without doing any research, just FYI -
Before it became Stereo Review the magazine was named HiFi/Stereo Review and before that (IIRC) it's name was HiFi and Music Review.
Cheers,
Al
You have a good memory, that's spot on. After I posted, I looked up Julian Hirsch on Wikipedia. Along with his history, they noted he was a graduate electrical engineer. They started out with the Audio league, and published a subscriber supported newsletter. Similar to JGH's Stereophile; but much earlier. Interesting reading.
Jerry
.....a villain, but I'd sure call him a hack!
Cheers,
Al
I was a teenager back then who purchased, subscribed and devoured Stereo Review, High Fidelity, Audio and Audio Scene Canada. In addition, I used to fill-out the "reader service cards" and received many pieces of audio brochures. And I agree that the British audio magazines were better in content and ads.
I was never critical of Julian Hirsch's test reports but I did learn about the basic fundamentals of audio specifications, consumer electronic products and marketing. Lower is better. Coloured vs Transparent. Price vs Performance.Ryan T
Edits: 09/04/14 09/04/14 09/04/14
Thanks for the link! First, that has to be the youngest picture of Julian Hirsch I have ever seen! By the time I started reading Stereo Review, he was much older. I remember when he was sent a box of Q-tips marked L and R for his comments about the sound of(or lack thereof)cables.
The Rectilinear III's design is very interesting to me. It uses a 5" full-range from 500Hz to 3000Hz augmented by a woofer an a tweeter. This is a method that is still popular with DIY'ers, although many cross the the tweeters higher and the woofers lower. They probably could have also done this with the III's, but they would have sacrificed dynamic range and has more cone breakup with the whizzer.
The designers of the III's also have taken great care to give even dispersion throughout its operating range. The whizzer cone seems to be employed more for even dispersion as opposed to extended response. It should be very effective in this regard. I think that this is important for real, in room performance.
The III's appear to be a very good balance of dynamic range, extended/flat frequency response, and uniform dispersion. Unfortunately, I have only heard them in environments that were too compromised to assess their actual sound quality. However I sill find them a very interesting design that I hope to hear some day.
Dave
Thanks for the good news, Crestwood23. Anybody have a cosmetically clean pair to unload within a 100 miles of NYC? The condition of the drivers and crossovers are inconsequential for my purpose.
Taking swipes at Julian Hirsch, without whom this thing of ours would be much the poorer, seems to have become as mindlessly reflexive on this Forum as Bose bashing. Julian worked for a commercial institution, one that depended on advertising revenues for its continued existence.
In the 'seventies and 'eighties, I reviewed restaurants for several newspapers, none of them The New York Times. Realistically, if restaurant food manages to rise to the level of mediocrity, it's considerably better than average. But I understood early on that my job was to accent the positive, so my employers could keep selling enough newspapers to stay in business. So I learned to write with enough subtlety so that my readers, at least the more intelligent ones, could glean all the information they needed by reading between the lines. When it came to the art of damning with faint praise, Julian was a master.
There is no doubt that Julian's admiration for the Rectilinear III was genuine. And why not? The Rec IIIs were, and remain, excellent speakers.
Dull? Not enough jump? A chacon son gout. Over the course the the Company's twenty-two year run, its engineering department included Jim Bongiorno; Marty Gersten; John Dahlquist; and Dick Shaninian. The contributions that these men went on to make in the field of reproduced sound are far too numerous to list.
Many older Forum members will recall Rectilinear's full page ads with great affection. They ran in both hobbyist and general interest magazines, and were intelligent, witty, and illustrated by Rick Meyerwitz, one of the best political caricaturists of the Nixon and post-Nixon eras. Rick must himself have been an audiophile, because in the backgrounds of his drawings for these ads were brilliantly hilarious caricatures of Quads, Ohm Fs, Heil AMTs, etc. Anybody remember?
My subscription to Stereo Review began in 1972. Even then as a hi-fi rookie, I became bored with the reviews that Julian wrote. After a couple of years I dropped the subscription and started reading Audio. All that I missed were the record reviews from Steve Simels... A buddy did have a set of III's (along with a Crown DC150 and matching Crown Pre) and that was an impressive system back then.
Interesting. Never heard them. Hell, never even SEEN them.
"...Jim Bongiorno; Marty Gersten; John Dahlquist; and Dick Shaninian..."
That is quite a list!
Dave
Hey Chief,
"mindlessly reflexive"?
People take "swipes" at Hirsch because he was either tone deaf or a sellout. The man never reviewed anything he didn't lavish with praise. He was in a position of trust and violated it, either because he suffered from poor hearing or he sold himself for a paycheck.
So get off your high horse and quit looking at the past through your rosy colored glasses. Just because you choose to gloss over Hirsch's ineptitude or dishonesty doesn't give you the right to castigate anyone here if he chooses drop the truth bomb.
You have to give Hirsch the credit for something positive however -
he was probably the main reason that JGH and HP began publishing their "little" magazines! After all, somebody had to counter Hirsch's bullshit with fact.
Al
The front baffle is just screwed on, no glue. Very high quality cabinets!
And so are many BBC and BBC style speakers like the LS3/5a.
As an owner and of Spendor BC-1, this has puzzled me to no end, but I can't argue with the sound, which I love.
Dave
I remember them as sounding rather dull and lacking "jump"
But, but....... Julian Hirsch loved them ;-)
Cheers,
Al
I owned a pair of rectilinear speakers. They look like crap but sound nice. As I remember the grills are nailed on. Not very friendly but still nice.
But, I never had any problem at all discrning Julian Hirsch's true feelings about a speaker. In fact, the ones he really liked were on a very short list. He tended to favor the east coast not west coast sound, which explains his differences with the JBL engineer, but that was my bias as well.
His list of favorites included
Large and Small Advent
AR3a and possibly 5
Design Acousics D6 which he actually liked better than the D12
interestingly, the epi minitowers with the four 6 1/2 inch woofers, not the giant ones.
The Rectilinear III were in there somewhere in this group tho maybe not quite the equal of the others.
He sorta liked a few others, but even if I were to include them it would not be a long list. For example, I think he rather liked the Bose 501.
Most of the rest were merely OK. I never saw it at all that he loved nearly any speaker whose company was advertizing in Stereo Review. There were subtle degrees of love.
Every time I got my new issue I always read Julian's speaker reviews first!
[Of course, the world momentarily stopped spinning on its axis the day it was written in High Fidelity that they thought that in most normal room environments the AR5 was better balanced top to bottom and sounded better than the AR3a. AR had viewed their business much like General Motors: Owners kept trading up to speakers with bigger woofer over time, and an AR7 was merely the Chevrolet in the lineup. there were the 4x, the 2ax, the 5, and finally the 3a, and still later, the LST.]
David
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