Holy moly i love this type of talk! I have owned a multitude of pairs of the ESS AMT line of towers, pyramids, bookshelfs, etc. Whence first i heard the AMT MONITOR towers, i was sold on the sound of the Heils. The owner, a youngster, had removed the cast 12" front firing woofer radiator combo, and replaced them with generic ribbed-pulp 12's. While removing the phase coherence of a single 12 and a bass radiator, he was essentially phase-cancelling bass, enhancing midrange production, increasing power handling, and biasing power levels of two 8ohm woofers and one Heil diapragm, towards the woofers. Something about that combination, or having never heard the AMT ESS line of loudspeakers, threw me for a loop. I had never in my life heard a pair of house speakers, floor standing or otherwise, sound that brilliant and punchy. Today, yes, this very day the 7th of August yr 2006, i currently own ONE pair of the AMT-1B pyramids / ONE pair of the AMT-3 Rock Monitors / ONE pair of the AMT MONITORS / ONE pair of the AMT-1C pyramids / ONE pair of the AMT-1D bookshelfs / ONE pair of the AMT-1D pyramids / ONE pair of the AMT-II pyramids / ONE pair of the M6 mini-bookshelfs (non-Heil) / ONE pair of the PS-820 bookshelfs / and ONE pair of the PS-920 bookshelfs. Can you tell i was adversely affected by the one experience??? lol... i love the Heil line-up, i listen to the whole lot of them, regularly!
ESS speakers "Translinear" Transstatic
These were speakers designed by California based company called ESS, that is, Electro Static Sound before they used the Heil Air Montion transformer. These models were current in 1970-1975. I am curious if any one still owns either of the above models, or has seem them listed on any of them listed in the used audio web sites. They were incredible speakers for their time,and sounded as good as many of so-called elctrostatics of today. They used good driver elements, for example, the KEF B-139 oval driver for the bass response.If anyone has knowledge of either of these above vintage speakers,please leave info on this Web page. Thank you!!