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Ohm Walsh 4 Month Home Trial Money-Back Guarantee?

Hello all: I've read about Ohm's money back guarantee. Heard their speakers many years ago and they were special. In fact I was ready to purchase the fabulous Ohm C in the 70's but the shop said they were out of stock and the factory was on strike. In my normal impatience, I went down the street and purchased the ESS Heil AMT 2's, another fabulous speaker that I wish I still owned! That was a long time ago. These days I'm considering purchasing a very good quality full range set of speakers. Of course, I want to do a home audition in my system, that's a prerequisite! In my home area there are B&W, Energy, Mirage, Genesis, Klipsch, Paradigm, Magnepan, but you can only home audition a few of these brands. That 4 month home trial of Ohm's sounds great, so Ohm is on my short list. I currently have Definitive Technology BP 7002 speakers, Analysis Plus Oval Nine speaker cables, with a McIntosh MA6900 integrated(200 watts per channel continuous), Simaudio Nova Cdp, Shunyata Hydra 4 and listen to Classic Jazz, Classic and Progressive Rock and R&B. My listening room (family room) is a rectangle, 10 ft wide by 18 ft long by 7 ft high. I'm looking for a full range speaker that offers everything top to bottom; big powerful low end, nice midrange, and crystalline high end. Looking to spend $2500- $3500. Do you know of other quality companies that offer in home trials, and have a full range speaker meeting my top to bottom criteria? My research in this price range has not uncovered anything except Ohm. And, what do you think of the Ohm Walsh line? (Thinking of the Ohm Walsh 200 mkII or 300 mkII. Thanks
foster_9
zkzpb8
212 posts
 
Although today's Ohms are a variation of the original, they definitely benefit from that full range design. Today's models with the addition of the tweeter and a bass port, makes them easier to drive. Thankfully the tweeter doesn't kick in until much higher than typical dynamic designs, hence the addictive nature mentioned above.
unsound
7,311 posts
 
Line, not to be argumentative, but, Foster 9 who started this thread based his curiosity on Ohm Walsh's that he had heard in the 70's.
mapman's avatar
mapman
21,846 posts
 
The newer CLS driver that replaced the original full range F and A drivers back in the 80's are now in their 4th generation of revision.

Original OHM Fs and As were unique in that they used a single physical Walsh omni driver with no electronic crossover to cover full range to 16-17kz or so. The achilles heel of this design was that they were easily over-driven and damaged as a result, so reliability was not the greatest.

The CLS design effectively solved this problem by offloading the very top end from the Walsh driver to a separate tweeter mounted in a manner so as to preserve the "phase coherency" and sound of the original Walsh design as much as possible. Output levels are also physically damped or attenuated in wall facing directions to make placement easier compared to the original full omni WALSH drivers.

mk II and series 3 revisions of the CLS driver use the same Walsh driver but the series 3 a more refined soft dome tweeter as I understand it.

OHM recently announced newer version of some of their larger drivers, including the 5000, which supposedly uses new Walsh driver components for the first time in quite a while, stronger magnets, greater efficiency supposedly, described as evolutionary and not revolutionary in terms of the resulting sound.

New incarnations of the original OHM F and A with updated and supposedly improved full range Walsh drivers can be had here:

http://www.hhr-exoticspeakers.com/HHRabout.htm

..but the in-home trial/guarantee comparable to OHMs may not be available. My understanding is that these new designs by Dale Harder are advertised as somewhat more resistant to over-driving than the originals.

I've never seen nor heard Dale Harder's new creations, but he seems to be most knowledgeable and also seems to be a true lover of the Walsh driver technology.
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