Past or current Green Mountain C-3 owners


I own a pair of Green Mountain C-3 with the HX upgrade. I am currently driving them with a Coda N0.8 amp and a Lumin A1 directly using the Leedh volume control. I also have a pair of Seaton Submersive subs that I bring in under the C-3s that are running full range. I am quite happy with this system, but given the passing of Roy Johnson and the replacement tweeter becoming unobtanium I want to be thinking about where I might have to go next in the future. The C-3s just totally disappear in the room and I attribute a lot of that to Roy's design objectives of maximizing phase and time coherence as well as minimal diffraction enclosures for the tweeter and mids. I have other speakers I can rotate into this system in a pair of Martin Logan Summits and a pair of modded Klipsch Chorus IIs (fun speaker). Neither of these could replace the C-3s.

   My question to past or current C-3 owners is what speaker have you moved to that gave you equal or better performance to what you got with the C-3s? Thanks for your insights

tellefsen

Hi I owned a pair several years ago. Please this is only my opinion and you know what the saying is about opinions. I was not happy but the designer is deceased so he is not here to defend his speaker(seemed a nice guy). The adjustment thing I spent hours tweaking. The threads for the adjustment screws just go into the concrete and once you move the screws in that concrete mixture they are gone(had to put in plastic inserts). The speaker cones are basically non removable as they thread from the inside another poor design. Then the 50.00 Pioneer woofers with stamped baskets he had me putting plumbers putty on them to dampen the ringing. And do not look at the 20.00 xover and cheap wiring plus the pieces of insulation had fallen down inside the cabinet I had to reglue them into place.. I know these sold for 10 grand but please mdf and concrete were not that expensive 10 years ago. Just my take and they sounded o.k. I just got fed up with them and their looks. Best wishes and I never mentioned this before now. You may love them. I am just stating my experience and not here to deride them as most other speakers are built just as cheap and cost just as much. Just watch some of the GR Research videos to see the truth. 

Batman. Thanks for the input. I did do the HX crossover upgrade myself. Roy sent me the new crossover with very detailed instructions to install with a new Marigo wring harness.  Seemed to make a significant  improvement, so what speakers. I did the plumbers putty thing on the woofer as well.  So what speakers did you move to?

I've been a huge fan of Green Mountain audio speakers up until about two years ago and had various models including the Europas, Callistos, EOS HX and Continuum 1.5s.  I've heard the C2s (very similar/same as C3s) on many occasions as well but actually preferred the 1.5s as the bass was tighter but the C2/C3s much more efficient.  I thought the C2-C3 were excellent from 90 hzs on up but the bass a was a little loose below that in my listening sessions at my friends house with a few different amps.  It always felt like there was a bit of a hole or discontinuity in the upper bass range where the 12 inch woofer handed off to the five inch mid but that was just my impression.  I didn't hear the HX crossover upgrade.

I do agree the screws would stop inserting in the stone and I also had to apply putty to the underside of the baskets in the monitors to stop the ringing and it did work to prevent that but was odd that Roy did not add putty or correct that when assembling them.

Anyway what I admired about those speakers was the open immersive sound all The Green mountains projected and lack of boxiness so was a big fan for about 20 years.  They truly disappeared and were very revealing of any component changes.  You had to be careful in the amplification/DAC, etc. used as the sound could become a little harsh but when you had the right amp/DAC they were phenomena.  Still to this day the C-2s/C1.5s are one of my favorite speakers I've ever heard.

 

I've moved onto the Spatial audio X5's open baffle speakers and they are just better in pretty much every way.  The Spatials have that same open three dimensional midrange and excellent depth but the treble is even more satisfying and the biggest change is the bass to upper bass region where there is absolutely no contest.  Dynamics and bass instruments are much much better and clearer.  Obviously having no box gives that very open sound as well that even the Green Mountains cannot match.

This was the one speaker I heard that I finally said it is better than the Green Mountain Audios.  I still have a pair of the Callistos in my home theater setup.