History on ohm A's and F's.


I panned through the threads and read how the old ohm a's were remarkable.
Would like to hear more about this and other ohm speakers.
pedrillo

Showing 2 responses by jmbatkh

I've owned Fs, two pair of Walsh 5s and a pair of Walsh Sats (similar to 100s). They float instruments very well, and are coherent, but the Fs are very recessed on top, and bass heavy except in very large rooms. The 5 is much better, but still a bit recessed in the upper mids, and the top is not as detailed as the best. However, they do present large scale works more realistically than most high end speakers and are highly musical, if given enough room and power. The S3s supposedly improve on the weaknesses of earlier versions. The sound of the Walshes is polarizing for audiophiles, but I think music lovers find them to be very endearing indeed.
I had heard the Fs in the '70s, and was very impressed by the power, scale and coherence of the sound. Years later, in the early 90s, I bought a pair of mint Fs to compare to the Walsh 5s I had so I could compare them directly.
To me it was not close. The F sounded heavy and slow in the bottom registers by comparison, and recessed on the top. The Walsh 5 was much better balanced and open sounding.
The decision as to which was a keeper was very easy for me, even though at the time the Walsh 5 was worth 4 or 5 times as much as the Fs on the resale market.
I had a very beefy amp (over 600 wpc into 2 ohms), so I had more than enough drive for either speaker.
From that, and later descriptions of the S3, I would say that it is very safe to assume the S3 is much better yet.
YMMV.