Sensitive low-wattage s/h speakers?

I'd really appreciate your recommendations for a pair of speakers, preferably s/h and cheapish, to go with the weird little outfit I run in my workshop. It's a Marantz CD63 into a simple little SE triode amp I built myself. The amp puts out about 7 watts per channel! But it's a small room and I need to hear the doorbell, so I want speakers that will play well at low wattage and low volume.

For comedy value if nothing else I will confess that the current speakers I use are open baffles strung up to the ceiling, with Saba greencones, 8" wide range and tweeters. There's some German cult thing about these 50s radiogram speakers, I happened to buy the speakers cheap and then found out about it. They actually do sound beautiful, very detailed and utterly real. But there's a low bass rolloff, and my attempts to build EQ into the amp to compensate seriously cut down on that reality effect.

So - speakers that sound good at low volume, please...

 

Perhaps some Snell speakers if you can find them, the design behind audionote speakers.

Fostex/Lowther/Tannoy speakers I can think of are rather large for your small room.

 

How about a pair of the original 60's Leak sandwich speakers, can be had for pocket money and aren't bad. I had a pair a few years ago that I bought at a car boot, 15ohm-ers, sounded nice, in a vintage kind of way.

Didn't do really deeeeeeep bass, but have 13" woofers (IIRC) so did have a bit of punch.

 

There's nothing comedic about Saba's. They are very nice.

 

A pair of Klipsch Heresys would fit the bill as long as you can get them back against the wall

 

i'm afraid you may need to struggle a lot and pay even more to find a speaker able to mantain a beauty of saba's midrange while having a decent bass extension - why don't you leave saba drivers playing mid duties without a crossover and (if good with soldering) try to build a small active sub, with a 10" driver for a small room, powered by one of these cheap digital modules. could be even an open baffle to avoid having different 'sound characters' in a room. there are many plans on the net. i would be suprised if this wouldn't outperform a brand name box costing much more money in many aspects .

 

Thanks everyone for the ideas. But yes, I would hate to lose what the Sabas seem to provide. I was surprised how quickly the magic departed once I started wiring EQ components into the amp, which is pretty linear anyway and shouldn't need them. But I do believe that a lot of that quiet magic comes from the delicacy of the Sabas via the simplicity of my little amp. So I'd really like to pursue the powered sub idea. I'm fine with soldering etc but don't really understand where I'd get the (mono?) signal from for the powered sub - a quick explanation of that, or a weblink, would be very much appreciated.

Again thank you for the informed and very useful responses.

 

For those unfamiliar with Saba's, some pics. (shame about the painting!)







and, following from another thread, the midrange on these is generally very 'ok'!

 

the painting on the speaker, or the upside down person?

 

The Sabas plus something else to augment the bass sounds sensible if they are really nice. Also a plug in cordless doorbell may help

 

Yeah those are like mine, but I just have the 8"ers and the tweeters in open baffles. They sound really alive even when whisper-quiet. It's just the bass thing. Those reflex enclosures look as if they might supplement the bass a bit but maybe if I take them out of the open baffles something might be lost. And there's a lot to be said for matt black paint.

Sorry to hassle everyone with my ignorance but all my experience is with guitar amps... could someone give me a link - or an explanation - about how the signal might get divided off my system into a powered subwoofer? I'm quite capable of building a little amp for it but very unfamiliar with crossovers and so on. My tweeters are connected with single poly caps - 2.2uF I think. How about producing a mono signal for a single powered sub?

 

Hey good thought about the cordless doorbell. I nearly lost a customer that way; Buddy Holly records are full of doorbell-like noises it seems. I thought, that Strat is really chimin' on this one.

 

its what I use. The model we bought comes with two ringers. One you plug in and one with batteries that you can move about the house. Very handy. From Argos I think.

 

Many powered subs have stereo high level inputs which take the full range signals from the L & R channel speaker outs on your amp, sum them & feed the result via a lowpass filter into the inbuilt amp & speaker. Actually, you can often get away with feeding such a sub from one channel's speaker outputs. At low frequencies (ie the part you need) both channel's outputs will be quite similar anyway.

 

Ah that's useful, thanks. I don't think the system needs stereo subs, just needed to understand the realpolitic of a dirty little mono one. I was thinking, do I need a pair of buffers, then sum the signal, then amplify it... a bit fancy for the simple but sweet system I have, I felt. But in a rough n ready way one channel would do, no need for buffers just a (adjustable?) low-pass and a little amp. It would keep the component count down, which is the point of the whole system.

Maybe if I made it switcheable channel to channel to make sure?

I was thinking about building the 10" sub driver into a sort of folded open baffle in a box, like they build open-baffle dipoles. Any driver recommendations?

Anything wrong with any of the above??

 

nothing, you are on a good track.

the most reasonable drivers i know - inc amp modules to drive them active - are here:

http://www.hawthorneaudio.com/index.html

they are specialists in the OB design.


a digital amp module with what seems like a decent set of controls (adjustable crossover frequency between 50 and 100hz, phase etc)

http://www.hawthorneaudio.com/catal..._id=23&zenid=024d876a26ff8b0212bb96aeab85c7b3

225$ each.

and a 10" bass driver to go with it:

http://www.hawthorneaudio.com/drivers.htm#10Augie

125$ each.

i don't know how convenient it is for you to order from the states, unfortunately i am not familiar with the UK DIY sites.

 

and yes, the above sub amp can be fed anyhow you like, either as murray described or via low level inputs, if you can get the signal out of your amp.