2. speakers
  3. 1265461420

Gale 401a speakers

Anybody else here using these old wonders?
I bought a pair of these for my second system.
A year later and now with three rebuilt pairs I have come to love these things and they now reside most of the time in my main system.

A thirty five year old design has no right to sound so good.Or look so good.
Over the years I have owned all sorts of speakers-electrostats,BBC monitors,horns and all sorts of dynamic speakers and on balance I have to say none were better than these Gales.A very complete and coherent sounding speaker.Most of all they sound really big but never like boxes.

A much misunderstood speaker.By reputation they they are very current hungry and require monster SS power amps.
But in reality they sound best with good tube amps like the Almarro 318B.Tubes seem to take their sound to a different level-some sort of electrical compatability going on I guess.

They warrant fastidious reconditioning.It is very easy to ruin them if reconditioning components are not appropriate.

There is a lot of information at the Gale Google Group.
jtgofish

Showing 1 response by sidssp

sidssp
1,077 posts
 
Haven't seen one of these for a long long time. I used to own a pair with the matching stands in the late 70s. I drove them with a SAE 2600. In a right size room, they did sound big when scale was called for but they also sounded delicate with solo instrument. I love how they played violin concertos.

I had never gotten good result driving them with tubes. Mid range and above sounded great but if you want some real bass impact, it needs a big SS amp.

Have you ever rebuilt the crossovers? We can get much higher quality capacitors now, I suspect they will sound better than when they were new.
More to discover