Ohm Walsh speakers; Anyone have any experience

Sean,

The Dynaco 416 (vs. the 400 or 410)has proved stable (for me) for the Fs.

Your point re refoaming is well make. Since the bass is not deficient for my music system I have not really thought about refoaming which would be a real_&*$#$.

I will give a look into the cabinets and check the status of the packing. There could very well be settling after almost 30 years.

I bought a pair of Ohm Walsh 2's about 20 years ago and used them for 15 years. Great speakers for the money - then. But I haven't kept up with Ohm's latest offerings.

Zorpman: I don't doubt that the Dynaco's are stable driving the load. Quite honestly, while the Dynaco's may be up to the task in terms of brute force, i'm certain that there is plenty of room to move in terms of improved sonics. I'd be curious as to what amps, if any, that you've tried on the F's other than the Dynaco's and the results that you've obtained.

Also, are you using the factory speaker cable at the base of the speaker or are you directly connecting to the binding posts at the driver ? If you are running the internal factory wiring, you are in for a REAL treat once you bypass it.

As far as the foam surround goes, it may still be quite healthy and in "perfect shape". That does not mean that it is the appropriate "stiffness" or that the driver is properly aligned. In severe cases, you may even be running into the driver binding up, resulting in limited excursion and a lack of deep bass. That is EXACTLY what i ran into on my second set of F's after a "world famous" speaker repair facility claimed to have repaired them. I then had to pay someone else to remove the fresh glue & foam and re-do the whole job. Evidently, the first shop knew that they must have screwed up as they refunded the entire amount.

My biggest problem with all of this was that these speakers spent well over a year in "limbo" due to all of these problems. Obviously, not all speaker repair facilities are up to refoaming these drivers, so be VERY careful with whom you trust the wellfare of your "babies" to. Sean
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I recently purchased a pair of OHM Walsh speakers and ended up returning them. I had more than one discussion with them on the problems I thought they exibited and they were genuinely concerned and interested in my thoughts. They even indicated they would make some changes to them to taylor it to my needs, but I declined. I realized that I was chasing that old OHM sound that I so fondly remembered but they were not even remotely close to that; but then what speakers are? With the right amps those old OHM's were magic!

Here are a few websites that discuss the Ohm A's, F's and later "Walsh series" of Ohm brand speakers. As a side note, i've included a link that discusses modified Hill Plasmatronics. Since Plasma drivers are "mass-less" and radiate in what is basically an omni-directional pattern, they are theoretically the most accurate transducer available. Only problem is that they aren't capable of high spl's, have phenomenally limited low frequency response, produce harmful emissions of ozone and are generators of mass levels of RFI ( in most cases ). As such, there are drawbacks involved : )

Brief overview of Walsh design from Singapore. This one kind of combines info on the original Walsh drivers with the later "Walsh series" type drivers that i commented on above.

Ohm A, F & Walsh series written about as being "unique speakers". Also includes comments about "skinny speakers" : )

Modified Plasmatronics, comparisons of Ohm A cone vs Ohm F cone Let's just say that the results obtained with the modified Plasmatronics make ANY other speaker known to mankind look "really bad"... The owner of the Hills that runs this website sold his Ohm A's after getting the Plasma's to do what he wanted out of them.

There was a Walsh driver based website on AOL that is no longer running, but it may have been moved and i simply haven't found it yet. I do know how to contact the person that ran the site and am working on finding out the current address, if still up and running. Sean
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