2. speakers
  3. 1074201935

A cry for help to Snell B owners

Hi
Have you ever experienced that a powerful on paper amplifier couldn't bring your speakers to life?
I just encountered this problem .I bought 2(two!) Conrad-Johnson MF 2500A (each is rated at 240 watts per channel) for vertical bi-amping and this combo cannot bring Snell type B to life.I hear high frequencies,upper midrange and bass,no lower midrange and midbass.There is no soundstage,just flat music coming out of the left and right speaker.The burn-in is out of question because i've been running this combo 24/7 for a month already.Before i had (still do) one 13 year old Conrad Johnson MF 200 (rated at 200 watts per ch) and it was moving those speakers with ease.When i look closely at the midrange with the old amp playing,i can actually see the drivers move,while with the new ones i can only feel them move by touching the drivers.
I called CJ office and they are puzzled.I tried reaching Snell but all their numbers are disconnected (the recent one with 978 area code).I know that the amps are not faulty.
The only last step left for me is disconnecting crossover and bi-amp with external one,but i have no idea how to do it and which one to use.Please,help me.
overhang

Showing 1 response by atmasphere

atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,574 posts
 
I ran Bs for some years. They did quite well. We were putting a lot of excursion on the LF drivers and had them replaced twice before Snell replaced them with a beefed up set and we had no further problems. The reason you can't get a grip on the driver is that it is nearly 20 ohms at 60 Hz. Most transistor amps don't make any power at that impedance- if you have a 250 watt amp it will make about 90 watts at that frequency. So the speaker will appear bass shy. Try a tube amp instead.

If I'm wrong I'd like to hear about what you find out. We had excellent results but had to sell the speaker as it was getting to be too 'inexpensive' for us to be taken seriously with it (politics!). But I remember the speaker fondly. It took about 9 months to really break-in properly, and after that people commented how it had resolution similar to electrostatics.

Good Luck!
More to discover