This post has came about tonight as a result of a thread where I responded to of AA Member, mhardy6647 today.
I took the time to mass load a Fulton P-12 Premiere set of loudspeakers, one of my all time favorite models form the genius designer, Robert W. Fulton. It is a 7 way system, that is plus or minus 1 dB from 12 HZ to 110 KHZ, measured.
I started with NO mass added, but the amp was cold, and it sounded poor. My program material was solo Piano, from some hack named Sir Arthur Brendel, playing some slipshod music from a guy named Ludwig Beethoven. It was a Piano Sonata No 21. " Waldstein ".
As soon as I put two red patio pavers on each side, the piano got better. Then I went to three ( 16 pounds, each unit ), four, five, six, and listened happily with six. As soon as I would remove ONE, I could readily sense the degrade. I added a seventh, there was plenty of room to do so, and I sat and RELAXED and listed to Sir Arthur play.
So, what are some of the things I experiendced and heard?? Well, it played LOUDER with each unit added, It played " out of the box" more-so, and the drivers sounded more integrated, and I LOST the sense of a speaker, and the sense of a PIANO was starting to take place, in the room. Distortion in the midrange was lower, and I could RELAX and listen to the piano more-so.
Dynamics were noticeably better. No folks, a Fulton can NEVER beat my well-set-up ALTEC VOTT A7-800, but the mass loading certainly helped the P-12 speaker, as it will ALL speakers, to a LOVELY degree.
I had to disassemble the added mass, and as I did so, one 16 pound unit at a time, and carried each 20 feet to the back of this listening room, the speaker sounded more like a speaker, and less like when I heard seven 16 pound units per side. Seven is a good number, Mr. Fulton would have liked that, he was with me in spirit in the session, he often is. My personal choice, as of one listening experiment, is to ONLY hear P-12s with seven units added...for SURE !!! Sir Arthur was retired till I put him on my ALTEC rig.
Have fun, I do !
HOPE this encourages some to get those red concrete blocks, truly, an audio / music-listener's NO BRAINER.
Jeff Medwin
