2. speakers
  3. 1092333957

ESS and Heil air-motion tranformer - any thoughts?

These seem like interesting speakers, has anyone on this board had any experience with the ESS line of speakers?

A.M.T. description:

"The Heil diaphragm, made of soft, quiet mylar to reduce background noise, is bonded with conductive aluminum strips. It is equivalent in surface area to a conventional cone type eight inch midrange driver, but is accordion-folded down to a compact one-inch band for better point source dispersion. The low mass diaphragm is suspended in a massive magnet structure concentrating an intense magnetic field around the diaphragm.

When a signal passes through the aluminum strips, the bellows-like motion of the folded "pleats" squeezes air out five times faster then the air motion of a conventional cone driver. The virtual "instant acceleration" provides high definition, crisp transients, and overall spaciousness with superb dynamic range. This type of performance distinguishes the heil from all other transducers."

http://www.essspeakers.com/
128x128dawgbyte

Showing 1 response by mrmb

mrmb's avatar
mrmb
299 posts
 
Still have my AMT-3's ("RockMonitors") from the 1973/74 time frame. Their configuration consisted of the Air Motion Transformer, a 5" mid range and (2) 10" drivers.

Up until a few years ago, they were used in a HT system, but are currently in my son's seldom played, and never critically, 2nd.system.

The 10" drivers were re-coned twice, and then totally replaced.

If someone knew their way around speaker design, replacing the crossover and the (3) drivers with "matched" ones, would probably substantially improve a so-so speaker.

The lack of synergy between the standard drivers and the Transformer were the speaker's weakness, but in the 70's, when loud was good, and louder was better, the AMT's driven by a Phase Linear 400 were a lot of fun.

BTW, I still am using the 1978 Phase Linear Model 400 Series II to drive rear channels in a 7.1 HT set-up.
More to discover