Review of Fritz Speakers

Speaker Asylum

General speaker questions for audio and home theater.

Iâ€™ve had a pair of Fritz â€œMTMâ€ Style speakers in my listening room for three weeks now and I thought Iâ€™d share my thoughts on them. Fritz Speakers are handmade by (you guessed it) a very nice gentlemen named Fritz. Iâ€™ve met Fritz twice and weâ€™ve had a couple of phone conversations, but he and I have absolutely no business connection and I am in no way involved with Fritz Speakers, other than he loaned me these to listen to for a few weeks.
The speakers are very nicely put together. These particular models have two Seas 6.5 inch mid-bass drivers and one Scanspeak 9500 tweeter per speaker. The cabinet material is MDF with real wood veneer. My particular speakers have a walnut veneer with â€œRose Walnutâ€ stain. They look really nice, but seem a bit dark by contemporary standards. Fritz uses other veneers including maple, oak, cherry and mahogany. Looking at his website he definitely has some lighter speakers that fit better into contemporary dÃ©cor. Fritz seems to be a really good woodworker. All cabinets are straight and true, holes are round, no nicks or chips appear anywhere. The finish was nicely stained on my model, but the finish was somewhat dull. So Iâ€™d like to see Fritz use a satin Varathane to spruce them up a bit. The Fritz speakers look very nice, but they donâ€™t quite have that â€œfine furnitureâ€ quality you see with Cain & Cain or Meadowlark, for example.
So how do they sound? Glad you asked! They sound really good for a $3,000 speaker. But they donâ€™t cost nearly that much. They cost $1,300 per pair, and they sound TERRIFIC for that price.
The Fritz speakers didnâ€™t like my tube amp very much to begin with, but we got that figured out and Iâ€™ll get to that story a bit later. Not liking the tubes, I put my â€œspare ampâ€ into the mix. The spare amp is a very inexpensive Rotel RB-970BX. This amp delivers something like 80 or 85 watts per channel and I paid less than $400 for it in 1997. My pre is a tube linestage that I built from a kit.
Well let me tell you, with the proper toe-in these speakers absolutely disappear and have a beautiful sound with no boxlike quality at all. They are articulate, dynamic, exceedingly fast, and very tuneful. I had to keep reminding myself that I was listening to a $400 amplifier. Iâ€™ve had this amp connected to Vandersteen 1B, Paradigm Atom, and JM Reynaud Trente loudspeakers, and it quite honestly has never sounded this good before. I was very surprised. The soundstage extended maybe 18 inches to the sides of the speakers and 18 inches above. Depth was very good. The various frequencies integrated well together and the whole presentation really had my toes tapping and head bobbing in time to the music. I played a lot of Mark Knopfler, Leo Kottke, The Band, Irish Folk music, some Jazz including Holly Cole and various other ballad oriented rock and folk. These speakers are really fun!
I think the best qualities of these speakers is their articulation and speed. They really show good pace and rhythm. This is actually an improvement over my regular system which is JM Reynaud Trente speakers and my Anthem Amp 1 tube amp.
So back to the tube amp. The speakers are a 4 ohm load and I had them connected to the 4 ohm taps on my Anthem amplifier. The speaker soundstage was quite a bit recessed, centering a good foot or so behind the speakers. Treble energy was not at all good. And turning down the volume or walking off-axis brought this huge suck-out in the treble. Not an enjoyable experience. A call to Fritz had him puzzling for a day, then he emailed me back with some frequency charts of the Scanspeak tweeters. Turns out their impedance is 6 ohms at the crossover point, so Fritz suggested I connect the speakers to the 8 ohm tap on my amp and give it a go. I did and the sound really improved. The soundstage moved forward, the dullness was absent and everything seemed to speed up. This was a really nice change for the better. So although my experience says that solid state amplification is better for these speakers, a fairly high powered tube amp should work fine as well. Fritz also stated that he could fit a Vifa tweeter into the speakers which would match up with a tube amp better than the Scanspeak.
So my time with these speakers was really enjoyable and they do the PRAT and speed better than my current system. My tube amp and Trente speakers do timbre and soundstage a bit better, but both systems are musically satisfying. Truthfully, I found my tube system to be a bit slow after getting used to the Rotel amp and Fritz speaker combination. I may have to rethink my priorities.
If youâ€™re in southern California, Fritz will come out to your home and set up a demo for you. He has speakers of various designs that range in price from $750 to about $3,300 approximately. I think they compete very favorably with some of the "name brands" I've heard and owned.

Fritz Speakers (Open in New Window)

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Parts Connexion

Topic - Review of Fritz Speakers - Grover 22:25:06 03/15/05 (6)

Nice review... - Jack Gribble 09:46:21 03/17/05 (0)

Re: Review of Fritz Speakers - Maxxc 18:10:16 03/16/05 (2)

Fritz v Tyler Acoustics - Ivanakutyurbalzoff 20:46:29 03/19/05 (1)

Re: Fritz v Tyler Acoustics - Grover 09:07:32 04/02/05 (0)

Nicely done, Grover! - bwkendall 09:42:01 03/16/05 (0)

Very nice, thourough review, thanks! - Audiopolous 08:59:23 03/16/05 (0)

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