A couple of months ago, I received a call from an individual I had assisted almost forty years ago. This was an individual that was a colleague if a close friend the late Dr. Philip Marin, a close friend and colleague of mine. This lady had recently moved to the Midwest from New York and joined the faculty of the UND law school.
The system was Quad ESL 63, a Quad 306 power amp, Sota Turntable, Carver FM tuner and NAK cassette deck. Unfortunately the salesman had sold her this piece of Audiophoolery at huge expense instead of selling her a Quad 44 or Quad 34 preamp. The issue I was consulted about all those years ago was a turntable problem.
So she was sold this at huge expense: - a Spectral Acoustics DMC-5. Apart from being over priced junk it had inadequate inputs.
It had line out, tape in and out and only phono and one Aux. So an external selector switch was required! Even forty years ago the price was $3000.00 for this piece of junk.
The problem was no sound on one channel and a very loud rough buzz on the other.
So, I retrieved the Quad 306 and the Spectral preamp, and put them on the test bench. The Quad 306 was dead on one channel, and the Spectral acoustics had a loud rough buzz on both channels on the bench. The Spectral acoustics had a couple of burnt resistors on both channels, same on both. The power supply was emitting a horrid very rough supply trace. The power supply was riveted to the circuit board and totally sealed and enclosed. So I had enough of that and advised a trip to the recycling center. I don't service that kind of junk.
I had never had a Quad 306 in my shop before have never seen another. They are current dumping amps that were 70 watts per channel and specifically designed to mate with the Quad ESL 63s. Now the Quad ESL 63s have a maximum power handling of 100 watts per channel. If this is exceeded there is quick protection at the speaker which is highly intrusive. As I have said before Peter Walker was highly trouble averse, and so designed this amp 30 watts below the maximum speaker input. This is a loss of 1.5 db. That is essentially insignificant. The production run of the Quad 306 was only 20,000 units. So they are quite rare.
As expected from Quad, the 306 was beautifully made and constructed. Service manuals and circuits are readily available, so I soon had the 306 back as good new, and provided warranty service as my late friend Peter Walker would have expected me to.
Quad 306.
So the question became what to replace the Spectral unit with. After much discussion the decision was made to move to AV. Since space was at a premium a close out deal on a Marantz NR1711 7.2 receiver was obtained from Crutchfield. The power amps will never be used just the preouts.
So I made the 350 mile journey with my eldest son David to do the installation. I did the AV and he redid the Internet service. She just had cable and one computer. So a router and Wi-Fi was set up and a new cable modem replacing the cable companies junk.
Quad ESL 63
The re-configured system.
I have not heard the ESL 63s for sometime. The re-acquaintance was a most pleasurable experience. The sound is absolutely superb. These are not high spl. speakers, but their tonal accuracy unparalled. After all these years they still remain one of the finest, if not the finest speakers ever. The sound was so transparent and neutral and the bass much deeper than you would expect with zero coloration. These remain the only truly phase coherent speaker combined with an almost perfect transient response, which makes the music so real and exciting. They remain Peter Walker's outstanding achievement.
He told me that his main intent was to produce a speaker as a yardstick against which higher powered cone speakers could be judged. I have to say my AV room the speakers are very close indeed. I can see why visitors have often asked if my speakers have electrostatic panels.
No other speaker can come close to producing a square wave like this.
Not only that, but a pair out of phase can cancel that square wave in mid room. Peter Walker personally demonstrated that to me in Huntingdon on one of my visits to Quad.
Obviously the bass is a little limited. Because of the delay lines and the diaphragm moving with ripples across the membrane a close mic measurement is useless and misleading. So you have to rely on the averaged room response.
The HF fall off is entirely appropriate for the in room response. Due to the size of the panel there will be and is a bass roll off.
So it is 6db. down at 40 Hz and 24db. down at 20 Hz. However on listening to CDs on those speakers in that small town home living room, the bass was very much present and without a trace or hint of coloration. The listening experience was outstandingly good, engaging and a totally pleasurable experience.
When all was said and done, we had a very happy and grateful customer.
["Once again, I wanted to thank you, David, and Denise for your truly extraordinary and generous efforts to revive my ailing stereo system, and then to transform it into a completely new enterprise with both expanded audio and visual capabilities and internet connectivity.
I say this sincerely and without exaggeration:
It truly is amazing that my system is up and running again, and I have you to thank for this life-enhancing change. I have now sampled tens and tens of different CDs and old cassette tapes and am so pleased with what I hear — and with the access I have regained to this dimension of my life. And to know that the sound will likely be even better when I get the Quads on their stands again — wow! And that there is much more that I could do with this system when the time is right. Just astonishing, really."]
