Picked up some Celestion SL6sis

gmjungbluth

I just won a local estate auction for a pair of Celestion SL6Sis. They were hard to make out in the online photos, and I think that's why my bid won. Judging from what they go for on eBay, I made out.

So I picked them up today. They amazingly came with a ton of heavy speaker cable (which I haven't gone through yet) and were mounted on their original equipment steel Celestion stands, which weigh a ton. So a total score!

The cabinets are a bit beat up but the grilles are nice. Then I pull the grilles off.

Uh oh!

Two dented tweeters! These are the later aluminum dome tweeters. Maybe my investment wasn't as good as I thought it was. I started to think that at least I can part them out and get my money back.

But when I set them up and plugged them in to my NAD 7100 receiver, I was quite impressed. These sound pretty good. On the stands they throw a good soundstage and sound quite well-balanced. Bass is a little absent but for a small two-way monitor I'm not surprised.

My short listen didn't uncover anything that would lead me to believe that the tweeters were not functioning normally. I'm going to try them out against a few other pairs of my speakers lying around (Paradigm Atoms, B&W DM601s, Polk Monitor 7s) to see what I can tease out.

[Deleted User]

Hello,
Excellent find! Ranked as one of the 100 most influential audio products by Stereophile. Enjoy!
Regards, Ken

gmjungbluth

Thanks Ken!!

I just did an extended listen and back to back with the Paradigms and the B&Ws I referenced above. I'll do a more detailed writeup when I can on my blog (silverfacestereo.wordpress.com) but heres my quick and dirty -

Dented tweeters or no, these Celestions rock. Compared to the B&Ws they're more airy, with maybe a little less bass volume, but range is there. The B&Ws are very fatiguing in the treble. I had to turn off Magic Man because the cymbal hits were almost painful.

The Paradigms were really nice - good soundstage and separation. They felt soft however. But all in all a nice-sounding speaker and easy to live with.

But the Celestions were something else. I felt like they were 'grown up' compared to the others.

This pair is a little beat up and the tweeters are a little bent. I would restore them but unless I can find a set of mint replacement tweeters at a reasonable price I'll likely just let them be the way they are.

Score!!!

Kenneth Swauger wrote: »

Hello,
Excellent find! Ranked as one of the 100 most influential audio products by Stereophile. Enjoy!
Regards, Ken

gmjungbluth

I just posted my more detailed review of the Celestions on my blog - hope you enjoy:

http://silverfacestereo.wordpress.com/2014/04/29/bookshelf-shootout-celestion-sl-6si-vs-bw-dm601-vs-paradigm-atom-v4/

Overall they are great. The other big discovery was how disappointing my B&W DM601s were in that test. Ouch. I did not expect that at all.

cnh

Nice review. I'm not surprised at the harshness in the B&Ws. I've never been able to tolerate those tweeters--no comparison to anything else needed!

Celestion domes are a different beast even the lower end models, I had some DL 6 Series II with metal domes. Certainly well below you're higher models, but I never found the Celestions to be harsh up high.

Enjoy!

cnh

oldmodman

If you are lucky it might be possible to pull the dents out with tape or a vacuum nozzle. I have pretty good luck making caved in JBL domes almost perfect with those methods.

gmjungbluth

Thanks, I'll try that! I was thinking about trying a repair at first but at this point I'm almost leery of hurting anything - they make me happy as-is. that said sometimes I think I can hear some sort of click or resonance during transitions but there is no distortion or regular artifacts that I can pinpoint. Maybe I'm just being paranoid....

G

oldmodman wrote: »

If you are lucky it might be possible to pull the dents out with tape or a vacuum nozzle. I have pretty good luck making caved in JBL domes almost perfect with those methods.

westmassguy

There's a few Celestion tweeters on eBay. You'll have to get the model off the back of yours.
You could try the vacuum method, if you can separate the front grill from the diaphragm. The dents will interfere with the dispersion characteristics.

Mr. Bubbles

not sure about the celestion tweets but many of the old vintage tweets can be easily dissasembled and then reassembled with some care to get the VC centered properly. I would try the vacuum method first but if that fails and they can be dissasmbled, the dome can be worked from the backside through the voice coil. I do prefer the vacuum method in these situations when it works, however.