the saga finding enough working survivor Allison acoustics speakers ! for 11.2 HT system


gee i just can’t win ! i am always looking for a good deal on some Allison speakers and i had found a guy selling some allison LC110 speakers on CL i ask for photos. gosh they look perfect ! he only wants $50 ! i agree of course i offer to pay for packing them up i ask him if he wants extra $ to pack them he says nothing so i just send him $50

he gets totally PO and tells me "what happened to packing $ "?says "returning your $ and parting them out on e bay! "

have not seen the $ refused returned yet ,

i apologize for the misunderstanding in messages txt try to leave voice message and send an additional $50 "for packing "and free shipping label i hear ....................................................................... nothing ! 🥲

well i’m safe pay pal for goods and services though it can take 30 days to get $ back!

just could not believe he would get so bent out of shape over such a little thing !

UPDATE

HEARD FR HIM I SENT MO $ APARENTLY HE NEEDED / WANTED mo $ TO GET MORE PACKING MATERIALS ? SO FAR IT IS $50 FOR SPEAKERS AND $75 FOR the packing materials ! 🙂

Well, good news they are on the way should arrive tues eve, ! apparently he is fanatical about packing doing it right ! i always try to obey USPS regs padding, doubled boxed , padding between boxes .

sad even tho well packed one of the tweeters got damaged in shipping 🥲 sucks ! 🥲

he had the grille against a piece of foam and it pushed on the grille and the grille pushed in the allison convex dome now the irreplaceable tweeter is junk ! should have supported the speaker around the sides !

i cut a u shape out of the foam to show him what MIGHT have worked to protect the tweeter cone the ALLISON convex cone tweeters and mids are VERY easy to damage and unobtainium !

Many models had metal protective grilles on them the grilles on these area very stiff screen material but it damaged the cone. it cannot be repaired ,

did not help  UPS driver  dropped the box a foot onto the porch ! jerks!
( what can you expect for the $100K per year drivers get ! YES really ! ) 

I will get my $ back for speakers $54 packing $75 and shipping $35
lesson is try to discern what you might have done or said that annoyed someone ( nothing in this case apparently ! ) noneless, we apologised ,were humble and we finished the buisiness we initiated ! sad the tweeter was damaged beyond repair tho !sadMay be an image of record player and speakerMay be an image of speaker and saddle-stitched leatherMay be an image of textMay be an image of textMay be an image of speakerMay be an image of speaker

128x128quickjack1234

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score ! got a pair of Allison AL 105 speakers for $35 ! a bit rough on outside but should clean up w/ some TLC

woofers were even professionally re-foamed YES w/ foam NOT rubber! ( rubber screws up the sound ) and there is longer lasting , more chemically stable foam surrounds now 🙂 🙂

AL105 the baby of the AL range !May be an image of speaker, television and textMay be a graphic of blueprint, floor plan and text

 nroSopdetsc11r58m9h97h9hi87e1ag085uOc2ut8mml3c a0o741fbf7a20  · 

well, pretty excited !

found a chap selling some of the RA speakers! a center channel, 2 mini monitors and TWO of the RARE mythical Allison 8' push -pull subs! have not seen any for sale for years!

WOWO ! OK so made an offer and now will have to figure out a way to get them shipped fr NJ ! to AZ !

anyone live near Cliffwood , NJ 07721 ?

worse case scenario will hire a guy fr CL to pick them up, box them and ship them U haul has great boxes and padding for speakers for reasonable prices.

so no excuses for not shipping !

I send a free UPS label via e mail they can drop them off @ a UPS location or just call for a pick up ! 🙂

sure would be nice to swap those tweeters for some better AL series convex ones! theses will make great ATmos speakers in the 11.1 all Allison HT system!

now the DIY is theses are old school UNPOWERED! no built in plate amps so what do i do to amp them ? what/ how do i drive them ?

Jack Dale

Author

Top contributor

PS yes we hired a earnest eager young Muslim man a refugee who fled fr horrible violence fr a craigs list ad $5 we placed and he did a great job packing them so they arrived w/ NO damage !

always nice to see blind faith in someone you do not know and have never met is rewarded as they were honest and did the job well .

we paid him $100 in advance to go pick up the speakers , buy boxes fr lowes , packing material prepare them and drop them off @ UPS 🙂

Jack Dale

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Top contributor

well the deal has changed he says he has apparently got rid of the mini monitors so we are looking @ the two subwoofers and 2 center channels for $350 seems bit high but i want them .

 

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+2

 

the pair of vintage Allison top of line AL130 i bought recently ! , the boxes good for shipping. ( u haul )

PIA sellers who will not ship ! "local pick up only " have had to hire a guy on CL nearby seller to go pay him ,get them. box them up ! i e mail him a prepaid shipping label!

to find working survivors you have to look all over USA !

Jack Dale

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Top contributor

this why the Allisons were / are magic !

SCORE !

found some bucket list Alllison Al130 speakers ! they were top of the Alllison line !

Back in the day , these speakers were a phenom smoking most other speakers in reviews !

even Consumers Reports scientists and engineers said it was the best speaker they had ever heard and made it a "best buy " ! LOL 🤣

need some OEM midrange as someone put in some lame AR midrange when the original mid-drivers failed in the 1980s'! ( and the tweeters got damaged in shipping 🥲) sourced these fr the 2nd owner , orig owner recently replaced the woofers w/ orig NOS woofers!

sadly NO current speaker maker has the knowledge ,expertise, skills or ability to make the patented Allison Convex tweeters and midranges !

( they were notoriously difficult to make! )

sad that, as they were one of the MOST innovative and effective innovations EVER in speaker design.

even now, 50 years on nothing is superior or equal .

Roy allison said :

And re the push =pull woofers ,

( a classic VINTAGE design ! )

Allison said : "The Push-Pull Design used in the IC10 Speakers is used to reduce second harmonic distortion. The results are typically a 10dB -20dB reduction of distortion in the second harmonic."

they are electrically OUT of phase but acoustically IN phase !

some reviewer said

" Because of the system’s unusual woofer configuration, we were especially interested to check the low-frequency distortion. With a constant drive level of 2.25 volts (equivalent to a 90-dB SPL at 1 meter), the distortion was only 8 percent at 20 Hz, 2.5 percent at 40 Hz, and between 0.5 and 0.7 percent from 60 to 130 Hz. This is exceptional performance for a pair of 6-inch drivers and seems to confirm the merit of the push-pull design."

( they were testing the AL125 the AL 130 have 8 " woofers )

As for the rest of the speakers

AL series :here is ol' Roy himself explaining WHY the conVEX cones work

Lander: "You also designed the midranges and tweeters that your speakers used."

Allison: "Developing midrange and tweeter systems that were high enough in quality to complement the woofer we anticipated making was much more difficult. I worked out a configuration that I thought would produce extremely wide dispersion, which I deemed essential. I always wanted maximum dispersion of energy at all frequencies, and preferably the SAME amount of energy at all frequencies, and I set about to get it. That resulted in what was then a UNIQUE DESIGN for a tweeter-and-midrange configuration: what is essentially half a pulsating sphere. When you make it flexible—from paper—and clamp the outer edge to the mounting plate, then drive it at the midway point, the surface of this driver is going to be forced to change its radius of curvature so that there's a relatively large component of motion at right angles to the voice-coil as well as in line with the voice-coil motion."

Lander: "And this gave you the dispersion you were after. Do you still favor paper cones?"

Allison: " Yes, I do. Not for a woofer, where the material doesn't matter very much as long as it works like a piston.

At the other end of the spectrum, I don't want it to work like a piston, because even a small tweeter, if it's big enough to produce any reasonable amount of energy, is going to become DIRECTIONAL at very high frequencies.

So I have to use a very flexible material, and paper has a nice ratio of stiffness to sound-energy absorption when it flexes.

With the right configuration and density and stiffness, paper can behave in a UNIQUE way. It's aided in my design by the material used to clamp the outer edge to the mounting plate—a very thin layer of foam, which is pretty effective in absorbing any energy that wants to reflect back from the edge and cause nonuniform response.

I had emphasized dispersion in order to re-create as best I could the performance-hall ambience.

I don't want to put up with a sweet spot, and I'd rather have less dramatically precise imaging but a close simulation of what you hear in a concert hall in terms of envelopment. For that, you need reverberant energy broadcast at very wide angles from the loudspeakers, so the bulk of the energy has a chance to do multiple reflections before it reaches your ear. I think pinpoint imaging has to do with synthetically generated music, not acoustic music—except perhaps for a solo instrument or a solo voice, where you might want fairly sharp localization. For envelopment, you need widespread energy generation."

Lander: That could explain why your Allison Acoustics speakers met with what you admit was a mixed response. You've also speculated that their appearance, which I've always liked, put some people off.

Allison: "They looked unusual. People didn't expect speakers to look like that, and unconventional things can create suspicion."
Photo another pair of AL130 i bought sadly the former owner replaced the blown allison  midrange w/ some bogus AR mid ! 

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note that MOST modern speakers due to the severe limitations of concave cones and design have a NARROW sweet spot ! which makes placement and alignment critical they get more energy directed at a listener so can skate w/ lousy efficiency and low-powered receivers but the system only really sounds good in a limited seating area . but that is the current fashion ( or is it poor design ? cheaping out on materials , hardware ? )
 


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Alan Maier

Rising contributor

Some sellers don’t ship due to the tax rules that report your sales to the IRS when using electronic payments. The threshold is $600 over the course of a year.

Jack Dale

Author

Top contributor

Alan Maier Bah, never heard that ! I do not think that is a reason . none enforces that really.

who do you think is reporting payments ? not pay pal which is bank accounts and credit cards and that is what most people use ! as it’s 100% safe for both parties ( friends and families )

Alan Maier

Rising contributor

I used to ship audio equipment all the time. The folks at UPS and FedEx knew me as a regular customer - I even had accounts with both of them. However the reporting threshold went from $20,000 and quite a number of transactions down to $600 and no minimum. PayPal, Venmo and others are forced to report annual transactions over $600 to the IRS now. Of course you can claim the sales were personal items, but you still need to at least explain the 1099 to the IRS. Since I am retired now and restore audio equipment as a hobby, I don’t need to track COGS and explain it to the IRS. I do local/cash

Jack Dale

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Top contributor

Alan Maier naw you exaggerate you do not have to explain anything and the IRS does nothing. please chill you are wrong . noone cites that as a reason. we would not buy fr you . I seems you are part of the problem ! just spamming my post what a guy ! you all can ignore this malarkey! 🤣

ONLY IF YOU HAVE A BUSINESS ACCOUNT !

"this rule is aimed at individuals who run a side hustle, small business or do part-time work and receive payments through a business account on third-party payment platforms. So if you don’t have a business account and you’re just sending money this won’t apply to you and your transactions won’t trigger a 1099-K form."

Alan Maier

Rising contributor

Jack Dale Well that is good news. I know people who occasionally sell on ebay who have been stopping at $600. It looks like there is a short term $5000 point now. I don’t mind shipping at all.

Jerry Emery

Rising contributor

Jack Dale actually PayPal is required to report it as they are considered a banking institution. Does anyone really read it? That I don’t know. But I can assure you that they regularly make that information available.

 

Jack Dale

Author

Top contributor

Jerry Emery well I researched it with the IRS and you don’t have to worry about it if it’s a personal account it only applies to business accounts so will you all please stop already.

Try a simple Google search geniuses

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Jack Dale

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Top contributor

Most say they just don’t want to be bothered boxing up and shipping so i have found good ways to make it painless as possible and offering to pay extra sometimes works too ! often now the cost of shipping $200 -300 + is more than we pay for old allison speakers !

 

Reply to Alan Maier

 

Jack Dale

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Top contributor

so glad we put to rest , buried the silly rumor folks were reluctant to ship due to a tax liability and if someone seems reluctant you can ASK and overcome that objection ! I know it will be question i will ask ! hard enough to buy vintage gear w/ out THIS silly issue! 🙂

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admired , envied and NEVER duplicated ! the Allison convex cone midrange and tweeter!

There is no modern tweeter capable of as wide dispersion as Allison's tweeter. It was innovative than, and it is innovative now as well, by both past and modern standards.

Wide dispersion from conventional modern and old tweeters is possible only with some complex waveguides//phase plugs/slots/lenses/reflectors.

search for the patent ? according to interview w/ Roy there is none !

SM: The transducers used in the Allison One looked proprietary. What were the design criteria for the dome tweeter, dome midrange and woofers?

RA: The midrange and tweeter units are not really domes in the usual sense. They are convex radiators, but each is driven by a voice coil at approximately half the distance from the centre to the suspension edge. Neither has a spider. The cone part of the tweeter, although convex overall, is curved inward and the outer edge is clamped through a very thin ring of latex foam to the mounting plate. Thus the radius of curvature of the cone changes as the voice coil moves, simulating a pulsating hemisphere that puts large amounts of high-frequency energy into the reverberant field all the way up to 20kHz. The midrange unit has a straight-sided cone with a flexible polyethylene edge suspension. It has extremely wide and uniform dispersion over its operating range… as does the tweeter.

Neither is proprietary inasmuch as they’re not protected by patents, but they are difficult and time-consuming to make properly, and they do project relatively far out from the front cabinet panel, which complicates the grille design. They have not been imitated, probably for those reasons.

Roy F. Allison Interview | Hi-Fi | Feature | AVHub

Thanks for the likes folks I'm constantly amazed when I'm looking for something and totally unexpected I run across some gem like I just found above so I'm able to copy paste it and share it with you all

As I recall it started because somebody was trying to say in another group that the Allison Twetter was not the best dispersion of any Tweeter ever and I knew that couldn't be true so here we go Google searching and look what turned up another erudite empirical concise and enjoyable! Explanation by Roy himself!

The technology of the internet and the freedom it gives us to find this kind of thing is just amazing isn't it?Allison AL-110/115 tweeter question - Allison - The Classic ...

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wowo got the ( Allison ) RA labs "mini monitors" fr a e bay ad for $70 and they look brand new never used and came in the original boxes too ! 🙂 seem similar to the AL105 ?May be an image of speakerMay be an image of bicycle, welcome mat and textMay be an image of speaker

It reminds me of the guy who kept posting Youtube videos of his system and had a Jadis tube amp or something like that. He'd post long incomprehensible posts.

Oh yes, and he was always modifying some crappy single driver speakers that had holes in the cabinets.

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Jond:

You're welcome.

I'm in therapy recovering repressed memories.

Ask away and I'll include the query in my next session!!!

 

DeKay

 

well then why not just scroll on if you have nothing useful to add or contribute you are just harassing me and have been reported this is good useful in formation j#$$%  like you never contribute anything just make snarky comments very juvenile you would be banned fr FB try posting this type of comment on FB allison page i am admin you will be gone ! banned we detest bullies 

Jack Dale

Author

Admin

+1

Thanks for the likes folks I'm constantly amazed when I'm looking for something and totally unexpected I run across some gem like I just found above so I'm able to copy paste it and share it with you all

As I recall it started because somebody was trying to say in another group that the Allison Twetter was not the best dispersion of any Tweeter ever and I knew that couldn't be true so here we go Google searching and look what turned up another erudite empirical concise and enjoyable! Explanation by Roy himself!

The technology of the internet and the freedom it gives us to find this kind of thing is just amazing isn't it?
we never could have imagined this research ability at our fingertips! 

another episode in aquiring allison speakers ! the saga of getting theses rare model NL654 -seem to be a squished pair if AL110 ! shorter and deeper !
they sound awesome of course as ALLISON do and the path of acquisition was quite tortuous!
i saw them in a CL ad for sale local pick up only in LASalle , CO. all three for $160!
OMG the typical PIA when the seller WILL NOT SHIP !
i tried to hire anyone who would/ could to go there to his house pay for them and box them up, send them to me ! no takers ! managed to piss off some movers (O you might think they would logicly MOVE items! ) LOL er NO asked churches, cafe etc and hired and fired a scammer! ( this is a town of 2,800 people in remote NE Colorado! ) by this time it has been 3 months they are still not sold! I looked on Google Maps saw a sewing business called them and explained I needed to hire someone to do this and Lo and behold the woman who answered said "oh yes it’s MY husband who is selling the speakers! " OMG what are the odds? ( well one of 2,800! ) anyway she said he would ship them now so I sent him a free pre-paid UPS label and paid him PayPal for G & S the speakers were FINALLY MINE ! AH so IT WAS FATE!

SCORE !

found 3 VERY rare Allison acoustic speakers model NL-654 !

WE think they were a later version of the AL110 same drivers! smaller but deeper cabinet ! they should be shipped out on Friday!

Very excited to hear these ! current owner says they sound great ! very clean , pure sound ! 🙂

Looks like someone may have swapped out one of the woofers bummer if so as they were unique to allison proprietary really long excursion cone designs as they crossed over higher than most woofers ! nothing much below 50 Hz as is typical of speakers back in the day! will add a small subwoofer ! get down to 20 hz ! 🙂

anybody ever hear of Allison model NL-654? similar to AL110 ? 🙂

looks like one of the woofers is swapped out ? 🥹May be an image of speaker and textMay be an image of speakerMay be an image of speaker