Tekton Design Moab

Oh, I've been listening, and thoroughly enjoying, the best sound I have ever heard, anywhere. Truly. Not even that close. For a long time, many months, I've been doing one thing after another with never really enough time for everything to completely settle in. Its strange, for sure a lot of guys don't believe it, but its not just the major components a lot of things get better over time just being left playing music undisturbed. Mine finally got that the last several weeks and its pretty sweet.  

Moab break-in is pretty short and sweet. Basically they sound great and I was enjoying mine right out of the box. They did improve of course but were pretty stable after only about 50 hours. If you hunt around the Tekton site there's an old thread where Eric says the same thing- full break-in is about 50 hours but if they don't sound great right out of the box send em back. Nobody sends em back.

Bi-wire and bi-amp you are paying for extra Cardas speaker binding posts. No way I would ever do either but for some reason some guys want the option and so he offers it. The $500 upgrade I got was the better Cardas binding posts, better crossover components, and mil-spec (whatever that means) internal wiring. I've been inside and can tell you the parts quality is quite high.

There's two Be upgrades. The cheap one is just the one tweeter. The expensive one is the tweeter and all 14 of the midrange drivers are Be. That's 15 Be drivers. At the time it was hard to believe how good the Moabs would be, and easy to assume the Be upgrade couldn't possibly be worth it. Now having lived with these a while its a lot easier to believe Eric when he says all-Be Moabs will go up against everything at every price. So yes it is an expensive upgrade, but you are then getting six-figure speakers.  

There's a clue there to keep in mind. Just his normal everyday Moabs are so good its hard to believe until you get them. The comments you hear from Eric and others are, if anything, understated. These are truly remarkable speakers. To try and tell someone how good they are, well you see all the hateful reactions it generates from some people. Now imagine trying to say oh and with Be tweeters now its as good as anything from Magico, Wilson, etc, at any price. Total trigger warning, brain vessels bursting, H18 going overdrive. This probably explains why even with all my questions about upgrades Eric never really pushed all-Be drivers to me at all. But then after I had them and was talking to him one day about how awesome they are he lowered his voice and sort of conspiratorially offered that with all-Be it is a match for anything out there.  

Never would have believed it before. No problem believing it now. If its something you can afford- go for it.

The speakers are big and the boxes are huge but I had no trouble bringing them in and unboxing them all by myself. Old Dominion will bring them to your door but not set foot inside your house. One box was (very) slightly damaged, the delivery guy was happy to wait and let me open and inspect while he was there. About the only thing worth mentioning here is it helps to have a high ceiling! Tried doing one in my 9ft high listening room, had to go back to the vaulted ceiling living room. (You could do it with a lower ceiling, but would need to either lay it down or tilt it, and I would suggest an extra set of hands for that.)

Packaging is cardboard not crates, which makes everything a lot easier. (I've had crates- no thanks!)

With questions your best bet is to just call and ask. If you get Eric he's always busy but usually impressively willing to talk as long as you don't mind being interrupted by work going on. If you get Tammy she can answer most questions, and has more time, so try and use her for general info and save Eric for the more technical stuff.

How close are you to ordering?

Thanks for your reply and all the information.  

Right now I’m in the dreaming stage.  My current listening room is in a 14’x13’ basement bedroom.  Fully carpeted and with three small windows at ceiling height. We just moved into this house and there is a 12’x28’ screened sunroom that’s going to become a four season room starting in a couple weeks.  So after it’s completed, the roughly 16’X20’ family room is hopefully going to become the new listening room.  
So if you see me asking about preamps, amps to power them, you’ll know I’m getting close.

Thanks again.

Hey MC! Glad to hear you didn’t kick the bucket. Sounds like it was pretty close. I kind of wondered because I didn’t see you posting anywhere but I didn’t want to be too nosy, I figured somebody would post some news at some point if you were sick. Yeah, I only sold the 410 Because they didn’t match my new MacIntosh speakers. I am happy with the mid range and highs that come from the towers. It has a little more detail than the Moab but it’s so close it’s crazy. I’m glad that I essentially got the speakers for free what is it because if I would’ve paid big money for them I would’ve been really upset. I may wait until after The holidays when Eric slows down and talk to him about a new set of Ulfs

I was at one point on 10 liters 02, which is a lot of oxygen, and even at that out of breath and feeling like I was about 10 feet underwater. That's just lying there. Just to roll over, adjust blankets, was an effort it took a while to recover from. How close I was to being on a vent, I don't want to know. Too close for comfort. 

Its no secret I was originally settled on Ulfs. Only at the last minute I let teajay talk me out of them and into Moabs. No regrets. But his point was the only difference between them is the tiny little bass range covered by the extra Ulf woofers. This for sure is wrong. All the drivers in the Ulf are better quality. I'm sure if you dig into it with Eric you will learn there's better crossover and other parts upgrades as well. Eric always says all his speakers sound the same, they just get more refined as you move up the line. A lot of guys talk the talk of refined, but then when it comes to it they buy coarse ground.

No regrets though because the difference in price is what will get me a Raven amp a lot sooner- and that will for sure be a big step up in refinement. My point is to talk to Eric about it. Now being an experienced owner you'll be in a much better position to figure it out. Its hard before living with Moabs to believe anything could actually be this good, let alone a lot better.

Two big questions I would have for him: All-Be Moabs or Ulfs? And, what about the new statement speakers?

Impression I got last we talked was all-Be Moabs is the killer setup. Not that all-Be Ulfs wouldn't be even better still. Which now you are in a good position to ask him about.

The statement speaker, find out what you can. All I know is he's working on something really groundbreaking. Like now he's made phenomenally good reasonably priced speakers, the next step is ones that go more directly at the cost no object SOTA boutique speakers - and beat them all. He already feels something like his all-Be Moab or Ulf are there, but wants something equally good in looks and build. So they will cost a lot more. But still cheap, as such things go. If I was looking upwards of $20k (which you could be with optioned Ulfs) I'd be real curious to know.

"Kind of lost interest in the blather."

It was not the blather. It has been well wishes ever since you entered the hospital.