Transmission line speakers!

bdp24,

Hi, I might be giving it the wrong letter, but it was definitely Fried. They were the first mini monitors I had ever seen, and they were really mini! A small two way, amd an rectangular subwoofer that was fairly large. I saw it demoed at House of Hi Fi in Trenton NJ around 1976, when I was considering my first pair of speakers. It sounded really good, but I was 19, and nothing was going to keep me from buying either Bozak Concert Grands (which they also carried) or Klipschorns, which their competitor Hal's Hi Fi carried. The Khorns won.

I owned TDL large monitors, bought the same model twice, and loved them. Great subterranean bass.

That’s a really impressive TL cabinet oldhvymec.

• https://www.usaudiomart.com/details/649184875-tdl-monitor-m-transmission-line-speakersl/images/929958/
  These are the ones that I had with the B110 elliptical bass driver and super tweeter. It was a large speaker, but very good for the time, and the bass was not, but it was able to reach below 20hz.
• The pair in the picture were not mine. Mine had a naked Elac metal dome tweeter and what the brochure called a "mineral" supertweeter.

tomic601,

Thanks for the correction, my mistake. Yes, it was the B-139.

bkeske,

I don't think that Vandersteen ever called any of his speakers transmission lines, and having a slot vent doesn't make them one.

mrdecibel,

The Khorns were nothing like a transmission line, they were just a horn loaded bass driver.

bkeske,

I'm not sure of how a transmission line port differs from any other port, but that is only part of what a transmission line is. It should include a long folded labyrinth from that rear of the bass driver to the port. I would like to hear from others more knowledgeable than myself here as to whether they consider this a transmission line.

mrdecibel,

I don't think we can agree to disagree in this case. The transmission line is the opposite; it amplifies the rear output of the bass driver, and the folded horn of the Khorn amplifies the forward output of the bass driver. 

It's not a matter of opinion, they are different by definition, and what they do.

tomic601,

I can't thank you enough. I was feeling like the odd man out. I appreciate your thorough description of TL design. Having owned the large TDL Monitors, I can attest to the scary extension of their bass. It didn't make itself known above other frequencies except when called for.

I recall a short while after I bought them in the 80's, I had a couple of friends over and we were listening to the first Enya disc at a lower level as we chatted in the living room. Suddenly, the synthesizer hit a subsonic note, and it felt as if a very heavy object had hit the floor. I'll never forget the first time I had that experience with them.

I knew Bud and spoke with him several times when he was still running Fried. He was a real gent, full of knowledge and eager to share it. I owned one of his large bookshelf speakers, a transmission line design, and I remember well that he was one of the very first to design a sattelite/subwoofer system, (Model J?) and it was really impressive.

I owned the model right below the TDL reference speakers twice. I sold the first pair under duress because of their size and always regretted it. Quite a few years later when I finally had a dedicated listening room and had been through a number of other speakers, large and small, I found another used pair online and traveled a couple of hundred miles to buy them. I had them for a very short while when I read some glowing things about Klipsch Epic CF-4 version 1 speakers. I bought them on a guess, and suddenly the TDL's didn't sound good anymore. The Epics were so much more coherent. I sold them at a loss and never looked back. 

Sometimes it's true that you "can't go home".