Vintage Tannoy's,,what are your amps?

I own Tannoy Arundel that use 15' drivers, completely redone the crossovers (without changing any component values) and I drive them with an all BAT setup and could not be happier. IMO Tannoys may not be the most accurate speakers out there in terms of but the are surely some of the most musical and enjoyable transducers.

I am running my Tannoy LRM's fully active, using a BSS 360 x-over.
These have the (necessary) two-band parametric eq build in.
Amplifiers are a MC2 Audio MC450 for bass duties and a QSC CSX4 for treble.

These are now the most accurate speakers I have heard in 25yrs
(luckily I can compare them to live instruments regularly) for all
music except classic orchestral works.

I got my best results with my Tannoy Ardens (1977, re-wired with copper-foil-in-oil caps to HF, vertically biamped) with a pair of Sugden Au 31s. It was then that I discovered how much they love some surplus of available amplifier power. I foolishly replaced the Sugdens with Musical Fidelity A3cr and yes, got more clarity, but missed the scale of the sound I got with the Sugdens. I can easily imagine they would sound great active biamped, as long as the crossover was done right. With a parametric you might be able to get rid of that annoying zing I hear about 5kHz, too.

Damn right Tannoys like their juice!
As a rule of thumb the more clean power you can give them the better they get! That said I was amazed by the transformation after going active.
The only way to describe it is that they now have the clarity and midrange of
Quad ESL's combined with the dynamics and bass (well almost; just wait for the new cabs which will lower the response to 30Hz) of Klipschorns...

The crossover point and slope are not that critical: 800-1000Hz for 15" and
about 1.2k for 12's. Slope either 12dB or 24dB (better but remember to reverse the treble connections! The passive xover slope is 12dB which requires the treble to be wired out of phase.)
You will need the parametric for the notch filter to avoid the dreaded "Tannoy
Honk". This varies slightly across the different drivers but if you look at your passive crossover you'll find a cap, a coil and a resistance strapped across the treble unit. Thats the notch filter; just draw out the slopes created by the components and there is your starting point! Needless to say that a low level
parametric is far more precise then passive high level filtering.
The second eq band is needed because Tannoy tweeters have a response very much like modern constant directivity horns and so require some boost from
5-6kHz to 20k. About 4.5-6 dB/oct..In the end the crossover responses can be dramatically improved and the total absence of coils in the signal path means that the bass tightens up no end! There are bottom end is full of previously unheard detail. It is surprising how many recordings which I thought were badly done with lots of bottom end mush turned out to be really rather good...

Sounds like a lot of processing but the way I see it the same processing happens in the passive crossover and I can take the energy needed to do it from the signal current (passive) or I can leave the signal unmolested and use mains current to do the processing!
Careful shopping on ebay also meant that the whole thing cost me less then a set of top-notch caps... you will need some response measuring kit though for fine tuning.

Lastly a word of warning: Activate your Tannoys and no other speaker will ever do!

Interesting.....I am debating selling the Quads, that could free up some cash..;-)