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Dixie Bottlehead June Meeting Report - Impressions on FE206E

Posted by Triodeuser (A) on June 2, 2003 at 14:39:24

Hi All

The Dixie Bottleheads met Sunday , June 1, 2003 at Jack Roberts place in Clyde, N.C.

Rick Henthorne of _Lefty_ line stage fame dubbed this meeting, Double Horn Fun.

There were a number of Bottleheads and goodly bit of Equipment of there.

Among them were; Phil Seig, Jim Dowdy, Randy Carter, Steve Killian, Jim Griffin, Cody Ryan, Ken L, Rick Henthorne, Steve Blair and several other folks in addition to the woman's auxiliary headed up by Debra Henthorne.

We listened to several of what we have taken to calling the “surfer” (Azura??) horns with different drivers. I particularly wanted to know what the other Bottleheads thought about the Fostex FE206E drivers that I have been so pleased with. Those comments will be at the bottom of this post.

We listened to a couple of preamps. As usual our preference was for the “Lefty” line stage of Rick Henthorne which we used for most of our listening. Most of the listening was also done through Jack Roberts 300B amp.

Steve Killian brought a breadboarded S-5 push-pull tube amp, putting out about 8 watts. The amp had a beefed up power supply, and Solen PS caps, Kiwamie and Caddock Resistors, Angela tin foil caps in the signal path, and quite a list of hot rodded parts. It’s hard to believe the kind of sound someone like Steve can get for about $300 in parts.

Randy Carter brought the chassis he is currently working on for his latest 845 amp incarnation. You will rarely see this quality of construction outside of a production facility. Of course, it does help that much of Randy’s training and work is in Industrial Design and Randy has access to a machine shop. Regardless of the factors, it made me quite envious to look at his work. Josh Stippich, watch out.

Jim Griffin brought what I believe was a prototype of his Needles Line Array kit. I don’t know if it was a prototype or the first production model or what, but it looked killer and had a polished, finished production look. Among other things it used the ESG3 ribbon tweeter. Jim had obviously done a good bit of work to ensure that the sound was smooth and well integrated, including the sub he was using with the array.

Also on hand were a pair of beta Dana 8” full range drivers being brought ought by Don Carron and crew. The Bottleheads are going to be putting some beta pairs through their paces for Don. Alas, I was too late hitting send to get in on this. However, Rick will be using a pair with the surfer horns so hopefully he will be giving us some comparisons later on.

This is pretty much what I can remember of how the day went. I hope the other Bottleheads will add to this post those things I left out and/or things they differed in recollection or opinion about.

I also want to give a special thanks to Jack and Patty Roberts for having us and being such gracious hosts. Patty is a real sweetie and Jack didn’t even grumble very much as we basically tore up his setup moving things in and out of the room and in and out of the system.

FE206E comments

I particularly wanted to compare the FE206E’s to Jack’s Philco full-range drivers (alnico magnets), in addition to seeing what other comments the Bottleheads might have about the drivers. I think theFE206E’s are great. But don’t we all love whatever new toy we have, unless it turns out to be a real dog? When we got there, Jack’s horns sounded better to me than they had on the previous visit. Jack's horn/PhilcoDriver combo sounded to me like they were probably a good bit better in the upper-mids to highs – Jack did tell me that they had been sitting for probably thirty years and had been breaking in somewhat since our last visit, and that he had done some damping of the frame, etc. Also, it really brought home to me how much more I will benefit when I get my preamp and amp finished – things sure sounded great through the Lefty line stage and Jack’s 300B amp that was putting out about 8 watts.

I asked for comments that I would post about the FE206E, surfer horn combination and the responses I got were;

Jim Griffin– very nice, would benefit from a sub;
Steve Killian– vocals are enjoyable as is the huge sweet spot;
Randy Carter – Dynamic sound, but also a nice ambient field, entire room is filled without noticeable bad spots.
Cody Ryan - Told me he wanted to buy them if I ever decided to sell

The combination did sound really nice. Without question, if price has much weight in the decision to purchase a driver with these specs, the FE06E is a no-brainer.

To me (hearing impaired over 4K) the Fe206E has a great mid-range that is wide in bandwidth, and with these horns it just seems to give an ambience that is very nice and difficult to describe. My stepson said they sound like really good headphones but better.

Caveats

I am not sure that I would recommend this particular driver/horn combination in smallish rooms. In Jack’s room and in my listening room, I have noticed that they really sound the best when you’re about 12 feet or so back from the front of the horn. They sound really good closer in, but to me they’re not magical until you move further back.

At this time, to me, there is something lacking in this horn/driver combo in the highest frequencies I can hear, and there is something missing up there that I could hear with the Scan-Speak D2905 tweeters of my other set-up. However, I have not yet unsoldered my speaker wires from the Scan-Speak Solists that are in my old setup. Also, the drivers have about 70 hours on them and someone said that'll be another 200 hours or so before they have broken in all the way. Regardless, I am so enraptured with the presence, ambience and musicality of this particular horn/driver combination that I could live with it as is (with subs) if needed.

How do you spell Super tweeter?

YMMV

Later

Ken L

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