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Sealed subwoofer for ESL-63

I am looking for owners who have successfully integrated their QUAD ESL 63s with a subwoofer.

I recently bought a used pair of QUAD ESL63 and had them rebuilt, panels and electronics, this is my third pair. I have had several monkey boxes in between - Aerial 10T, B&W, KEF, IMF, Tannoys, Proac, Goldmund, Falcon Acoustics kits, etc - but the 63s are very hard to live without when you know what they can do.

My problem is that I am particularly fond of large-scale symphonic works such as Wagner’s The Ring , Beethoven, Mahler, Strauss, etc. but the 63s are very special and very frustrating used full range, they have limited bass and dynamics.

I am retired now and have a fixed income so I cannot keep doing what I did for fifty years, buy, experiment, trade and sell.

I would like to keep the cost of the sub to $1K max for a good condition, one owner unit.

Best regards,
f456gt

Showing 2 responses by bdp24

bdp24's avatar
bdp24
10,096 posts
 
Not to be contrary georgehifi, but the Rythmik 8" sub is no faster than their 12" or 15". All the Rythmik subs are servo-feedback designs, with the behavior of the woofers controlled by the s-f circuit. They all sound very similar, the Rythmik designer/owner Brian Ding citing higher spl output from the larger models, but no less sound quality. There are numerous Maggie, QUAD, and other planar speaker owners using Rythmik subs with their speakers.
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
10,096 posts
 

There actually are dipole subwoofers---the OB/Dipole Gradient offered in the 1980’s for the QUAD 63, and the OB/Dipole now offered by Rythmik/GR Research. It consists of a pair of 12" OB-specific woofers mounted on an H- or W-frame---an open baffle, dipole sub with the Rythmik Servo-Feedback system, the only such sub in the world.

Ya’ll know Duke is a subwoofer expert, and his statement that dipole subs have smoother in-room bass than monopoles is, contrary to shadorne’s claim that "at these low frequencies they behave as an omnidirectional source"---an incorrect and mistaken notion, absolutely and incontrovertibly true.

A dipole sub has a null to either side (just like dipole speakers), propagating bass and bass-loading the room in one less dimension than an omni---not the width of the room. Consequently, fewer room modes are excited---less bass boom. That is an advantage inherent in dipole subs, and dipole speakers as well.

An OB-type dipole sub has one additional benefit---no sealed or ported enclosure to itself be a source of resonance or boom. As I described above, an OB sub has it's woofers are mounted on an open baffle, not in an enclosure. Lean, clean, and pristine!

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