KEF Blade 2

My friend had Kef Blade 2s and now is using brand new built Apogee Duetta speakers....that were built by someone in England.....they were about $15K delivered. There is only a few parts from an original pair in the build....new ribbons, new frame and new custom xover. I built my friend a new xover for his speaker.....you can see the pics on my site.....I will have updated pics showing all the latest mods soon. This Apogee speaker completely destroys the Kef Blade 2. I heard the Kefs in his room and I heard the Apogees there when I installed the new xovers.....Now, with the latest xover mods he says it is way better. You need some serious power to run the Apogees......even his 400 watts into 4 ohms amp is not enough......so he is considering getting the Parasound JC-1+ amps that can, for sure, drive his speakers to rock levels. I am sure the new Blade 2 meta will be an improvement......but they will never do what these planars do. I have never heard a better system than his. He now has updated the xover, did some serious grounding thangs and now added the new Eco-Flow inverter to power everything. I am going to drive to his house soon to hear this......goosebumps awaiting. This Ecoflow inverter can do 3500 watts and sounds way better than his Goal Zero inverter........You will he hearing things about this inverter system soon.....going to change how you all listen.....completely off the grid.....way better sound.

BTW, you can order the speakers without xover from the guy in England (might have to wait months and months) and I can build you the xover...since it is all figured out. If you are in Northern CA we can arrange a listening session at his house in Marin.......it will blow your mind.

I just thought of something cool. Kef has three levels of execution. If you look at the xover parts, wiring and jacks from the Kef LS50, the Kef Reference and the Blade series you will see three different levels of execution. This is why a stock reference will never sound as good as the blade.....and the LS50 cannot sound as good as the reference......but they all use the same or similar Meta driver. However, even the Blade series does not use as good of wire, xover parts and jacks as can be used......and they wire the coax driver using push on connectors.

So, what if you removed the entire xover from an LS50 Meta....and ran great wires directly out the back that are wired directly to the voice coil wires (never been done before, that I know of).....then you add a Ground Enhnacer right on the negative voice coil wire and you put a Bybee Quantum Clarifier (iQSEII) directly on the back of the meta material on the driver....OMG........then you have a hardwired external xover using parts way better than what Kef uses in the blades. You could have WBT binding posts on the xover or use my plastic clamping method that sounds even better (same as a hard solder) The wires from the speaker to xover could be clamped the same way.....so you can detach them whenever you like.

Such a speaker would be way more transparent than the Blade Meta from 450hz on up. If you added some serious subs.....WOW......however, there is more. If you rolled off the lows to the woofs (like in the blade and Reference) with a cap or a cap and coil....say at 200hz......then you could bring your subs up to that level (need 2 subs for best integration). This way you can play the speakers at seriously loud levels and with the mid driver relieved of some of its load....would be cleaner still.

The speakers cost $1600....stands $500.....Bybee Clarifiers..$200.....Ground Enhancers....$50......custom xovers mounted on super damped board....maybe $1700?.......so that is less than $4K......ad subs of your choice....Kef’s best small ones are $2K each (2 9 inch opposing woofs)......now you are at $8K......for a speaker that is better than a Blade ($28,000) in most ways....won’t look as cool......just sayin......many ways up the mountain of great sound.

You could also build your own woofs (2 10s?) in a box and use it as a stand underneath and use one of those active xover amps..($400) to power the woofs and equalize them.....way cheaper than buying expensive subs....of course, you would have to make them. If you have forward firing woofs then you could xover the main speaker even higher (Kef cosses the mids to woofs at 450hz) and achieve even more dynamic range.

There is a review by someone who had the Blade 2 and the Reference 5? He said the integration between the woofs and the mids was better on the reference...(more than likely due to the fact that you have side firing woofs on the Blade crossing over at 450hz). Personally, I would never want a speaker with side firing woofs.....it just cannot be time aligned properly.

It is a great joy to have an imagination. To dream....to know that we are never done...there is always more......but somethings, are more for less.

May you be filled with joy and love.....forever.

Your dealer is making things up if he says the Meta technology will make a speaker play lower and with more authority. The Meta thang is just a tweeter rear wave absorber that lowers the distortion of the tweeter......It has nothing to do with the mid driver or bass drivers.

You can mount a tweeter in the air and open its back......many people do this and also do this with compression drivers. Nothing new. I have been doing this to a Vifa tweeter for 22 years. The backwave cancellation/absorption on the Kef is for the tweeter....it has nothing to do with putting the speaker near a wall or not. There are lots of ways to terminate/absorb the rear of a driver. Open baffle gives you a oomplete boxless sound....and no back wave from the driver going back into it. Of course, with open baffle you need the speaker out from the back wall and maybe some treatment on the back wall.

From the above post from Alvincastro.....it is clear that listening to what a dealer has to say about the Kef speakers is not wise. All the meta drivers are 12th generation (stated by Kef) and I bet the ones in the Blade and Reference are identical and the LS50 just has a different surround and spider, etc. to allow it to handle frequencies down to 60 hz.......but other than that...I bet it is the same.

If you have any real info directly from Kef that says otherwise....please share it with us. Again, what dealers say....is not worthy of repeating. Go directly to the source.....not to someone who wants to upsell you something or sell you something they have in stock. As I stated, the Reference uses better wire, xover parts and jacks.....and of course, has a more solid cabinet than the LS50.......the Blade has even better wire....hard wired xover, better parts again and better jacks again.......and opposing woofs. These are the differences. The differences in the parts, wiring and jacks is shown in pictures on the web. This is truth. I might not be right about the drivers......but I doubt it. This is why you can take an LS50 meta and mod the sheet out of it (including Bybee Quantum Clarifiers and Ground Enhancer and wiring directly to the voice coil wires.....and using an incredible outboard xover)....and get much better sound from 450 hz on up than a stock Blade speaker.

Please read the review of the Bybee thangs....imagine one of them mounted right on the meta material.....OMG!

https://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/equipment/0620/Loudspeaker_Mega_Tweakfest_Review.htm

What do you mean by a lot of what I say? The parts differences are clearly seen in pictures on the web. It is all hearsay unless Kef themselves says it. Dealers get stuff wrong lots of times as did the KEF dealer that Alvincastro posted. Never trust one source.....unless it is the actual manufacturer. Second hand news is not reliable.....even from dealers.

Even if the drivers were slightly different.....what I described would still be true. The difference that all the tweaks would make would completely swamp any minor differences in the drivers. I just sent an email to Kef UK asking them about the drivers.....will post what they say.