Grainger, So glad you chimed in with the Maxell man reference! That's one of my favorite pieces of HiFi art. Particularly impressionable to me when I was a little kid making beastie boys and Jane's Addiction mix tapes (sure shows my age, I know!)
If you need some added HF reinforcement then we could work a method to get them taller, but still mass loaded effectively as the stands do. We could either angle them a few degrees upwards for you (easy) Or, for some extra money to cover the bamboo, we could make them physically taller.
One note is that to toe them in pointed directly at your ears will get you the flattest, strongest HF presence in the mix. They kindof work like a stationary set of headphones in that case. I totally understand your listening requirements btw, everyone has their own set of ears to please to be sure. I actually got into HiFi originally (more than the quoted ten years ago) because of my interest and study of the mechanisms behind hearing loss after a brush with a month of solid tinitus after a rock concert when I was young. It went away, and I "never did THAT again..." but the concern over maintaining my hearing put it in my mind that I should start thinking about how I might help peoples' health with my engineering tendencies. And it turns out that a more "pleasant" set of overtones will cause less hearing loss than a more "ragged" sounding set, given the same volume level (I wish I remember where I found that article...). But in either case, it made me realize that I needed to start listening to higher fidelity equipment, because of all the music listening I was doing at the time.
And yes I really have to echo, Jim's comments that everything really does matter. Molly has been putting together an article about our approach to construction on the new website that should paint a much clearer picture of why it is that we build small speakers that you wouldn't know are small unless you opened your eyes to look at them.
I actually wore my TJ 45 tubes out during the development phase of the Orca and Jim is being really kind to be sending me some NOS ones to try out as well. Also, I'll be picking up a set of EL 45s to mess around with pretty soon here because they were also Terry Cain's reference tubes in his Electronluv monoblocks. And man, did those things sound good!
So suffice it to say that the 45 does work with the Orca, its just that I haven't heard them recently. Also, in time we'll be picking up a set of JJ 2A3s which are supposed to be very fine sounding as well.
And Sean, indeed, the Orca was designed as a crossover product in so many ways - they are well made and fun to listen to so they can serve as excellent "mean-time" speakers until a big project is finished up... but they also might find themselves assured living room residency in either case.
My stereo system before I met Molly was actually the PA system I was putting together last year before it sent off to our client, who at the time was the CEO and founder of Etsy.com. I was serious with this project. It took a year to conceive, build and fully tune, and I even rented a space in the industrial district that I could live in and test with loud music legally 24/7! To give you an idea, there were many hours spent adjusting and designing it while I was wearing hearing protection
But funny enough though, besides an RTA, I was actually using a set of Orcas and subs as my reference speakers to tune this PA system's fully programmable phase, eq, and crossover slopes. It was really cool to be able to get the two totally different systems sounding so similar to each other, just that the big one got louder. So much louder...
But oh right! Back to my wife... When Molly and I married it was clear that, while she loved the sound of the PA system I was building she was not quite willing to take the leap to live in the industrial district of south downtown, Seattle with me so that another one could be built and tested. So we moved into her place in Belltown and brought the Orcas with us. Several larger speakers were given a shot as well. I should preface this by saying that Molly is a VERY patient and understanding woman, so she was even open to the idea of a pair of Thrashers with my FE166ES-R drivers in them (which sounded great, but didn't quite allow us to walk all the way around the room without loosing the high frequencies or be able to understand the lyrics while listening at background volume levels. But after a while, as more evenings were being spent with our eyes actually closed, sitting back and enjoying the music, she (and I) had to admit that we came to prefer the sound of the Orcas with or without the Sub to whatever else I was able to cook up. They just sounded better, so we kept them.
But back to the Maxell Man, gosh am I looking forward to being able to being "blown away" by 45 tubes again soon!
Cheers,
Clark
