Eminent Technology LFT-8b in Harry's system

I've only heard the Maggies cum ribbon tweeter in audio salons or at hi-fi shows, but the improvement is obvious, for midrange and treble, in every way.  I think I subsequently owned the Tympani IIIs, with the huge woofer panels sitting in between two outboard midrange/treble panels.  But those preceded the incorporation of the ribbon tweeter.  They were way better than the 1U but not as good as the Martin Logan CLS with which I replaced the Tympanis, once and for all.  From then on, I was exclusively an ESL guy. To get back to the main topic, I have always been aware of the favorable reviews and opinions on the Eminent Technology speakers, but I am guessing that my earlier trauma with the 1Us might have kept me from giving them a try.  Moreover, I was not aware of their tube-friendly impedance character until reading this thread.  I would have thought they were like the Maggies, not at all well suited to tubes.

JGH had it right so far as I am concerned. HP had it wrong although he eventually pointed out the midrange deadness I think.

I owned Tympani 1Us, purchased right after they hit the market with rave reviews from HP and others. I set them up right next to my homebrew KEF/RTR speakers described here in 2017. It was no contest; my speakers blew away the Tympanis in every way. Not only were the 1s bass deficient but also the midrange was opaque and the treble was so lacking as to fail to reproduce primary tones in the hf range. Cymbals easily reproduced by the RTR ESL tweeters in my speakers were absent with the Tympani’s. I sold them within a week. This is no slur on modern magnepans with ribbon tweeters, just a comment on how far we’ve come.

bdp24, Sorry for the pedantic discourse on "OTL".  You would be surprised at the number of audiophiles who do not know the differences in meanings of the terms: OTL, balanced, push-pull, single-ended, and direct-drive.  My main point was, as you know, that your Atma-sphere amplifiers could not directly drive the screen of an ESL, but they are OTL.  However, once in a while, Ralph Karsten makes noises about building a direct-drive amplifier; I am sure he could do it.  I use a pair of MA240s to drive my Sound Lab speakers, in my "main" system.  Joe Curcio, I think, also claims to have a tube-based input circuit mod for the original Bev amplifiers.  The originals, like mine, use solid state input circuit, and yes yes yes, they are direct-drive.  (Bev speaker Models 1, 2, and 2SW are directly driven.)

First of all, what a coinkidink!  Back in around 1970, I was being paid very little as an intern in a hospital, and I craved a pair of IMF Monitor loudspeakers.  As a financial compromise, I bought a pair of IMF Studios, instead (from Lyric Hi-Fi in Manhattan).  The Monitor used a KEF B139 in a Bailey-type TL, a KEF B110 midrange, and a KEF tweeter.  Not entirely satisfied with the Studios, I eventually decided to try to build my own pair of Monitors from scratch.  I had a patient who agreed to let me use his table saw, and I acquired two 4X8 sheets of HDF, about 1.2 inches thick, and lots of clamps, glue, screws, etc. I bought the B139s and B110s easily enough, and then I found a guy in California willing to sell me RTR ESL tweeters (the blue rectangular ones), as many as I wanted, with a power supply to drive them.  I bought eight, with the intention of using four per speaker.  Thus I built a TL speaker with the B139s and B110s in entirely separate TLs. (The woofer cabinet is nearly a carbon copy of the Bailey design, a la the IMF Monitor.)  And the four RTR ESL tweeters were arranged in a linear array along one side of the woofer enclosure.  A few months later, I met an EE who helped me design the crossover and in fact wound me some inductors.  This was a darn good speaker that blew the pants off a pair of Magneplanar Tympani 1Us, when they came on the market.  I moved from this speaker to full range ESLs shortly thereafter ( 2 pairs of KLH 9s), and I sold the home-made speakers to my cousin, who used them for at least 20 years.  When he finally wanted to be rid of them, I bought them back, cut off the parts of the cabinets that supported the B110s and the tweeters, and stored the TL woofer cabinets in my basement for another 20 years.  Then I bought the Bev 2SWs and finally saw a use for the B139s in the TL. (I had kept a pair of NOS B139s, all that time.) I still use one of those B110s as a test load when I work on my amplifiers.  The B139 won't take much amplifier power, but I think that in a TL, it is one of the lowest distortion woofers ever made.

A tube amplifier with no output transformer is called an OTL.  OTLs can drive any speaker, other than an ESL, with a high enough input impedance.  What the Beveridge, the Modjeski, and other ESL "direct-drive" amplifiers do in addition is to drive an ESL with no step-up transformer at the ESL end of the chain.  So, no transformer in the signal path, at all. To do this, direct-drive amplifiers have to develop thousands of DC volts at their outputs; the audio signal rides on the high DC voltage, which simultaneously biases the ESL.  (The Bev speakers are a special case of an ESL where the diaphragm is low impedance; classic ESLs have a very high impedance on their diaphragms.) DD amps are OTL, but not all OTL amps can DD, is my point.

As I understand it, Roger Modjeski was definitely "around" Harold Beveridge, and if anything he may have had a hand in the design of the amplifiers or maybe just building them.  But Beveridge was the guiding genius behind the whole ensemble, and I do think his work merits the appellation, "genius".  Like the work of many other geniuses, his work had a few minor flaws, like a weak bass amplifier and under-specified woofers, for the 2SW model that I own.  His first loves were the models 1 and 2.  There apparently very few Model 1s ever made, and less than 200 pairs of Model 2s and 2SWs.  The 1s and 2s were full-range.  The 2SW goes down to 100 Hz, and below that you have to supply the woofer.  I use a pair of KEF B139 woofers in transmission lines that I built myself 40 years ago, externally powered by a Threshold 50W class A amp.  There were Models 3 and up, also, but all those speakers are conventional ESLs that require external amplification.

bdp24, Really 120 db at 0 Hz?  The sound of silence.

The LFTs are somewhat like my Beveridge panels in their principle of operation, except the Bevs work on high voltages provided by the Beveridge amplifier, rather than on electromagnetic forces. (Unlike a classic ESL, the Bev mylar diaphragm is low impedance because its coated with aluminum; the amp drives both stators and the mylar. There is no static bias voltage on the Bev diaphragm.)