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ESS and Heil air-motion tranformer - any thoughts?

These seem like interesting speakers, has anyone on this board had any experience with the ESS line of speakers?

A.M.T. description:

"The Heil diaphragm, made of soft, quiet mylar to reduce background noise, is bonded with conductive aluminum strips. It is equivalent in surface area to a conventional cone type eight inch midrange driver, but is accordion-folded down to a compact one-inch band for better point source dispersion. The low mass diaphragm is suspended in a massive magnet structure concentrating an intense magnetic field around the diaphragm.

When a signal passes through the aluminum strips, the bellows-like motion of the folded "pleats" squeezes air out five times faster then the air motion of a conventional cone driver. The virtual "instant acceleration" provides high definition, crisp transients, and overall spaciousness with superb dynamic range. This type of performance distinguishes the heil from all other transducers."

http://www.essspeakers.com/
dawgbyte

Showing 1 response by iseekheils

iseekheils
131 posts
 
I have been a stubborn fan of ESS speakers since I first heard, and then bought them, back in 1974. I have long felt, like others have mentioned, that the bass and low mids could be better, but I would not give up on the transients that the Heils can produce.
After a long search for a speaker builder, I was finally able to have my AMT 1 Towers rebuilt, earlier this year. We replaced the old paper drivers with new kevlar mid woofers, and he designed and built completely new crossovers. I also use a subwoofer and an external digital crossover to help extend the lows. Well, I now own the best sounding pair of speakers that I have ever heard. We will be teaming up again, this time to build a speaker system from scratch. We will be using the Heil as the tweeter, in a bi-amped system, with a powered sub(s). I could never find a speaker company that used the Heils to their full potential, so with these two projects, we are building our own.
Sonny
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