HiFi Subjectivist ¦ Audio Forum ¦ NVA User Group

Lindsayt wrote:If you find a pair for the right price in the right condition, then by all means give them a go. For some they are a final destination speaker. I've liked all the Quad ESL's I've heard including the 63's. I really like the electrostatic midrange.

The 63 had miles of wire in the signal path (analogue delay lines) that were part of the point source circuit, it seriously ferked them up musically compared with the 57.

Well, the 57's are on my ''want list'' I must make sure to have a good amp prepared !!

S.

Also the early 63's were lethal for NVA amps. They employed a crowbar circuit to protect the speaker from overload. What it meant is the sensing circuit for the crowbar would detect high voltage and throw the electronic bar across the speaker inputs and present a dead short circuit to the power amp I couldn't believe it, these people were supposed to intelligent electronic designers. They changed it in about a year as so many people were banging on their door with blown up amplifiers.

I tried some here a few years back, can't remember what amps I had. They did sound wonderful with a "walk-in" size soundstage and the ability to make your hair stand on end with a good female vocal. However, to get them to sound like that they had to be a stupid distance out into the room which took them out of the running.

Ok....If God & Satan sat down over a wee dram to design a loudspeaker.

Surely the Quad ESL would be the outcome.

Magical and a Sin to boot.

Dr Bunsen Honeydew wrote:Strange I love the 57 but hate the 63 :?

So did I until I heard some well off the floor. They had some treble clarity once sited so (the grilles angled treble downwards in the domestic versions) and the bass was better! My favourite stands for them were the Arcici ones although at a friends place and sitting on low seating, the Stand & Deliver? stands worked well on a wooden floor.

Shane, the thing now isn't anything to do with sonics, it's to do with glues coming unstuck and mass panel failure! These things don't seem to last as well as well cared for 57's do and the Yahoo Quad site has been full of tales of woe about rustling and crackling noises due to failing adhesives...

By the way, I directly compared some good 57's to the ATC SCM20 (original model) and the ATC's were as good as the Quad in bass and midband, and this pair creamed the 57's in the treble due to superior dispersion - they didn't 'beam' cymbals at you! Make of that what you will, but rose tinting can do a lot for vintage audio

I swapped my 57s for a pair of Kans!

Good move, Terry :D

57's are not perfect far from it, many compromises in the design. Notably they require valve type voltages to drive the plates, so there are step downs and step ups all over the place. The logic would be to take the direct drive of the output stage valve straight to the plate, yet only Lurcher (AoS name) seems to have done this.

Could never be a production model unless amps were built into speaker cabs as it would be illegal to have hundreds or even thousands of volts running in speaker lines.

But for me the 57 was the best development tool available to me at the time as moving coil speakers were just not open or clean enough for what I was trying to achieve with the circuit. And I needed to hear very clearly into the music. Though I heavily modded my 57s to help achieve this.