Newest vintage speakers to the family

NotaSuv

Picked these amazing sounding beauties up this week........they sound heavenly......now looking for a tubed int amp or pre and source to really bring out the best in them........and no they are not Polks

Knucklehead

What are they?

jacob.simpson

looks pretty well kept and interesting what brand are they.

NotaSuv

Knucklehead wrote: »

What are they?

Sumo Arias...hes a description of them by one of the 3 originators, the email after is from Paul Burton a few days ago...these are in like new shape...

the speaker you are referring to was the Sumo Aria and was designed and manufactured by Highwood Audio of Calgary Alberta Canada. The review you spoke of was first published in Audio June 1992. There were also one or more reviews in Stereophile on Hybrid versions later. Sumo had financial troubles and the team of Sumo (distribution) and Highwood (manufacturer) split. Highwood Audio then merged with Museatex Audio (Ed Meitner) and released a new version under the Museatex name. That went for a couple of years until Museatex management killed the speaker after pissing around with it. The speaker was designed by myself Paul Burton and John Wright. John has since taken over service and modification of Museatex and Meitner equipment as well as designing new equipment, Paul is now back working in Britain and I am designing ausio cables and interconnects. Was a good design as a point source. Our first version (and best) was a line source which we never got to market. Maybe some day who knows. Ed carried on to start EMM Labs which you probably know about and is still here in Calgary. Hope that this helps.
The two designs are not at all alike but it is interesting to read that somebody remembered the old highwood speaker.

The motor used H7 ceramic magnets the pole was vented and the magnet cavity was vented. The pole had a full copper sleeve and there was also a copper shorting ring at the base of the pole and a copper ring inside of the top plate. Theses were necessary to achieve extnded bandwidth. We used fero fluid in the gap to act as a liquid bearing to help keep the voice coil stable. The coil was a four ohm single layer coil again to minimize inductive roll off. There was just over one tesla in the gap. Top plate was 3/8 inch thick. Voice coil was 1.25 inch kapton with a coil of around 32 or 34 guage. The voice coil gap was about the same as a typical dome tweeter. You can imagine this as a bigish tweeter with the worlds biggest suspension. Diaphragm was 150 guage mylar HS. We looked into using neo magnets but they were still on some military list back then and supply was not a dependable thing then.
The line source came first but we were worried that the magnet structure would cost too much. That was before we added alll the tricks to the point source motor. We built both single ended as well as push pull versions of the line source. We used H5 ceramic magnets with iron pole pieces. Efficiency was not too bad at an honest 87 db (not just at 1KHz). I think we used 32 - 34 guage magnet wire (copper clad aluminum). There were eight or ten turns connected via a harnes so all the turns were in the same direction. The stage and image qualities of this speaker were world class I don't think that I have yet to hear the equal. That's about all I can recall at the moment. The real trick is to deal with terminating the traveling wave as it reaches the frame where you don't want it to reflect back into the diaphragm. Regards Moray James.
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If you can hear them and they are working, buy them. A bargain. They are very rare. I don't even have a pair myself.

If you can't hear, them before purchase, quiz the seller. If they prove not to have told the truth you are only out $400 if he won't give you a refund.

There no spare parts I'm afraid, they've been out of production for about 20 years.

Arias should not be played too loud. But if they are still working fine, they should carry on doing so. Just be gentle with them.

Regards
Paul

They sound unlike anything I hear laid my ears on to date............anyone local is more than welcome to come over and see if my ears arent playing tricks on me and this is with a so-so source..

Knucklehead

impressive write up on those bad boys. Im guessing you got a good deal on them. Ive kinda put my HT on the back burner as of late, this vintage stuff is really interesting.

halo71

Those look cool! Kinda Timeframe'ish looking ehh? Grills come off? Ya know, I luv's to see the naked pics!

dorokusai

I'd love to hear those, very neat. It's nice to see someone get adventurous around here instead of just leaping around their SDA's waving an American flag and throwing $20 bills to onlookers.

NotaSuv

Knucklehead wrote: »

impressive write up on those bad boys. Im guessing you got a good deal on them. Ive kinda put my HT on the back burner as of late, this vintage stuff is really interesting.

$400 local pickup off the bay.......

heres a great start for a rare bird you dont see too often..
this link is to the first pair of speaker I ever bought new...pissed away all my grad $$ in 1974 these are some BAD BOYS

http://cgi.ebay.com/EPICURE-1000-M1000-SPEAKERS-ULTIMATE-RARE-ALL-ORIGINAL_W0QQitemZ260555878483QQcmdZViewItemQQptZVintage_Electronics_R2?hash=item3caa573053

Knucklehead

Id like to see the drivers on these if you get a chance.

halo71

I love looking at old speakers like that! Would love some Timeframes. I've been talking with a guy off Craigslist about some Polk's. He has some old Leak Sandwich speakers I would love to go an hear.

Bad Maxx

I personally got a chance to listen to these yesterday, I'd say if anything NotaSUV is being modest in describing the sound these have. I've never heard a speaker that provides the sound these do at a low volume. Of course they sound awesome cranked up too, but the detail and presence was the same at any volume, just incredible clear unadulterated sound. I'm not good at describing sound (as you can tell) but these blow away my former favorite speakers which were the old school DCM TimeWindows. The Arias seem to disappear in the room as if you are surrounded by the sound even though there are only two of them in front of you.

If you ever get a chance to hear these it is a unique experience. and they are a thing of wonder to look at! Simply amazing.

concealer404

NotaSuv wrote: »

$400 local pickup off the bay.......

heres a great start for a rare bird you dont see too often..
this link is to the first pair of speaker I ever bought new...pissed away all my grad $$ in 1974 these are some BAD BOYS

http://cgi.ebay.com/EPICURE-1000-M1000-SPEAKERS-ULTIMATE-RARE-ALL-ORIGINAL_W0QQitemZ260555878483QQcmdZViewItemQQptZVintage_Electronics_R2?hash=item3caa573053

Holy CRAP.

joelll

Epicure 1000's are rare, but they're also able to be made anew. Buy four pairs of Epicure/EPI model 100 (or related models, 90, 100, 105, 150, Epicure 10 etc, or some of the speakers that had two tweeters and woofers per speaker, etc), and then build cabinets according to the (free) plans on this webpage:

http://www.humanspeakers.com/diy/1000.htm

There's a schematic of the crossover and wiring here:

http://www.humanspeakers.com/e/epi1000.htm

The crossover is just a single 10 mF capacitor, and optionally a single resistor for the woofers.

If you don't want to scavenge eight sets of Epicure tweeters and 8" woofers, you can order them new from Human Speakers along with wiring and terminals and all for about $1000. You'll also need a lot of MDF for the cabinets... :-)

*sigh*. I need a basement wood shop...

vc69

dorokusai wrote: »

I'd love to hear those, very neat. It's nice to see someone get adventurous around here instead of just leaping around their SDA's waving an American flag and throwing $20 bills to onlookers.

That right there ^ is some funny ****.