Steve Guttenberg finally reviews the Eminent Technology LFT-8b loudspeaker.

Eminent Technology LFT-8b speakers with modified bracing of the Sound Anchor stands.  Yes I went ahead an did it with extremely positive results.  

After reading about the Mye stands for the LFT-8b speakers I took a look at the Mye website.  He does some very nice bracing on the Magnepan’s.  The description of adding bracing sounded like it would be an excellent idea and addition to the Sound Anchor stands.  I didn’t want to spend another $800 or $900 on all new stands. Then the idea to just get my trusty mug welder out and add some bracing.  The idea is nice for the C-clamp but I felt adding the bracing right to the front metal plates would be much more stable and provide better damping.  Also I didn’t  like the look.  I would need to lengthen the four front hex screws in order to bolt the braces to it.  

After cycling through a few ideas I came up with an idea I liked that would be rock stable and also be easy.  I bought four 3/4” weld steel square tubes and a short piece of 3/4” flat weld steel.  After welding (I’m just adequate at it), grinding and painting I filled the tubes with about 2/3 lead shot and 1/3 fine sand.  Mostly because it’s all the lead shot I had and it’s gotten very expensive!

I used #10 -24 bolts and washers to attach the braces to the rear of the Sound Anchor legs which I painted.  I had to be very careful at tapping the holes there as the leg metal of the Sound Anchor is not super thick.  Figured if it stripped I can put nuts inside and put a little spot weld to hold them in place inside the legs but all is good.  Ordered 1-1/4” long black button hex head screws to attach the braces to the panels.  These replaced the four existing ones. 

Definitely added some extra weight. About 2-3 pounds.  Worked out great.  Could feel right off the panels were way more rigid.  They would flex a bit before when you moved the panel back and forth with your hands.  Now they’re rock solid!

So now to the sound improvements.  Well it was huge!   I know what you’re thinking.  He built something and made a change so he has to hear something.  Well right off I was amazed.  Seriously!  The entire sound is so much more solid and drums are tighter.  The image just has this solidity to it.  That was the word I kept thinking.  Much more stable image and better sound stage.  The highs even actually sound cleaner.  Now that surprised me actually and wasn’t expecting that.  I’ve always felt the tweeter could be improved on the LFT-8b’s and this made a great leap forward in just sounding smoother.  Cymbals come through much cleaner than before.  Everything just appears in space better. 

I remember when I added the Sound Anchor stands and thought Wow!   Nice improvement.  Adding the braces was more like a double Wow!  Really.  One of the biggest improvements I’ve made in a long time.  And I’ve made a lot!  I had upgraded the crossover parts a while back and that was spectacular.  Maybe that’s part of the reason why I noticed so much of an improvement with the bracing. 

It’s really improved my listening enjoyment to a whole new level.  I highly recommend upgrading your stands to something with a brace like this.  It’s literally  hard to stop listening!  

I’ll try to post some pictures here soon.  
 

Yes ricevs, hardwiring even is always the best way to go.  Although it can also be inconvenient for moving, cleaning, upgrading, selling equipment.  I’ve thought of doing it many times to the speakers but haven’t.  Not real hard to do there.  I have hard wired from a couple sources in the past.  That at least gets rid of the connections on one end. 

The Apogee’s have to be fantastic. 

Right with you there bdp24.  Rewired my Saec with one length of OCC from cartridge to Cardas RCA jacks. 

I did completely upgrade the crossover parts in the LFT-8b with a copper foil inductor on the mid-panel, larger gauge copper wire inductor on the woofer, all high quality polypropylene caps and wires everything inside with Furutech OCC wire soldered with silver content solder and of course the Cardas posts.  The only resistor on the tweeter panel is the Mundorf MResist Ultra which are super clean sounding.  The sand resistors are terrible sounding.  Very grainy (no pun intended).  

Just the copper foil inductor on the mid-panel was a huge sonic improvement!   Much smoother sound and more revealing.  

The reason I kept everything inside was that the speakers would be much easier to sell if I ever want to.  I always consider that when modding things. 

I know many people feel the bare wire is the only way to go.  Yes it does sound fantastic.  At least for a year or so until it oxidizes.   I believe in soldering or at least tinning the wire with good silver solder so things don’t oxidize.  If you’ve ever had to re-terminated wire and stripped the insulation off and found the wire now needs to be scrapped off because of oxidation, corrosion, etc you see why I don’t like leaving bare wire.  

I’m a retired high end Audio electronics tech that’s always had the champagne taste but on a beer budget.  So I’ve tended to build most of my own equipment as you can see. 

The amps are about 125W per ch. using four KT-150’s with Teflon V-Cap coupling caps.  Power supplies are on the bottom. Uses two EL84’s for the current source to the cathodes of the two 6SN7 input tubes.  Right now using four Sylvania 6J5 tubes.  

The preamp is the exact circuit from a Cary SLP-05 ultimate without the headphone section.  All coupling caps are Mundorf Supreme EVO - SilverGold Oil Film Caps.  The silver chassis below is the PS for it.  There’s about 900uf of Solan propylene in the preamps PS section.  Each tube has its own 1-1/2 amp filament regulator so I can run about any 6SN7 replacement.  Right now running a pair of old Mullard  ecc32/cv181 tubes on the balanced input.  Also a use 6F8G’s in an adapter a lot.  All inputs/outputs wired with Kimber Silver wire.  The rest with Kimber copper in the preamp and amps.  

I’ve completely gone through the Schiit Yggdrasil and extensively upgraded all the PS areas, chassis damping, etc which was a huge improvement.  

I also have an old Theta 4-tube preamp that I’ve completely (I mean completely) rebuilt and has a large external PS with a lot of propylene (about 700uf plus electrolytics) and uses a toroidal xfrmer.   The phono section uses teflon V-Caps and 3.0uf TRT StealthCaps in the line section and I only use it as a phono preamp.  About the only original parts I kept were the Mills wire wound resistors.  I even installed 9-pin teflon tube sockets.  The controls are all bypassed.  This output to via RCA to the SE inputs of my main preamp. And is converted to a balanced signal.  My amps only have balanced inputs which keeps down the number of tubes needed. 

I’ve tried to max things out but still keep things convenient to disconnect and move.  

The Thorens tt has a Saec WE-308L with all the Fonolab upgrades and a Technics EPC-U205mkIII cartridge with a Jico SAS Boron stylus.  Really enjoying music from this system.

I used the same values as the manual states.  Just much better quality.  If I had the money I could go even further but you can only do what you can afford.  I do have a pair of the Rythmik F12 subs also.  One on each side and back towards the corner of the 8b’s.  They work nicely with the 8b’s.  Not as nice as open baffle subs but very good!

I use a 20 amp balanced AC line conditioner from Equi=Tech.  But I’d like to know more about the various Music Purifiers and Ground Enhancers.  I have test to use any.  I’ve always just over-maxed out the components power supply filtering.  Being a tech person I tend to not buy mysterious black boxes until I know what’s in them and how they work.  Or else you end up spending $500 on a little device that you find out is just a ferrite ring around the AC wire and incased in black plastic so you don’t know what it is.  Yes I’ve seen that done!

Any good forums on these kinds of filters/enhancers?

I’m definitely sure that would sound amazing ricevs.  It would take a good load of those batteries to provide the power and current needed.  Nothing I can afford to do anymore.  
The first time I heard a battery operated preamp back in the early 80’s it completely blew me away.  Can imagine everything on battery.  

I’ve found the LFT-8b’s to be very critical on setup.  I have mine just slightly toed in.  There is a point where as you listen and adjust the speakers in/out and tilted up/down that all of a sudden it comes into perfect alignment and the sound almost doubles in impact and fullness and the soundstage comes in.  I mean very, very slight movements make all the difference in the world. 
I’ve never had any issue with not enough highs from the tweeters.  In fact I’ve had the opposite issue and have had to upgrade the tweeter caps and resistor (Mundorf) to smooth and tone it down.   The panels or woofer do not rattle, resonate or make any noise.  Most likely yours had an issue in that area and the panels had loose material or something.  And I many times blast my system a lot with prog rock to very loud db’s.  I have added a pair of Rythmik F12’s which sound great with the LFT-8b’s.  Are the LFT-8b’s the perfect speaker?  No but I don’t know of any other speaker in the price range that will give you the magic that these speakers do.  I’ve worked in and out of the high end audio industry since the mid 80’s and have had Quad ESL-63’s, various dynamic speakers, have tried Magnaplaners (never liked), also tried Aqoustats, Sound Labs, old Quad 63’s, Martin Logan and many other electrostatics, etc. over the years.  None are perfect and the ones that come closer to what I’d like are way out of my price range.  The ET LFT-8b’s do sooo much right.  Especially when the crossover parts are upgraded, they can just be amazing!  They can bring you into that arena of forgetting any speakers are there and just being carried far away into the music.  That’s what it’s about anyway.  Of course they will not match ever system or room.  But no one speaker is for everybody.  Also everybody has different tastes!