Expert Senior - new purchase

[Marco Gilardetti]

Andy I can't believe you bought another!!! And look at that pipe organ in the background!!!

[Orchorsol]

Andy I can't believe you bought another!!! And look at that pipe organ in the background!!!

Another two, even! The other one should be arriving tomorrow. I must be utterly mad...

Great to hear from you Marco!

[Marco Gilardetti]

Well, that's a cheerful insanity for sure!

What amazes me most of those EMGs are the obvious design flaws, and how they deliver a terrific sound nonetheless. I suppose the super-long duct and oversized horn defeat all other aspects. Still, one wanders what would happen with a better designed arm and a real tractrix-contoured duct!

Nevermind and enjoy your two new buddies!

[Orchorsol]

Ah, the Tractrix horns were an entirely different approach, designed by Paul Voigt, as I'm sure you're aware Marco. The EMG and Expert horn systems are not inferior, just different 'technology' - the mathematics (impedance matching and in this case, 4-dimensional modelling of a hemispherical wavefront) were worked out by Percy Wilson; EMG and Expert took his designs and developed them. A few years ago Graham Rankin, Ian Maxted and I were visited by Bjørn Kolbrek, an eminent horn scientist (incidentally he is co-author of an enormous horn speaker textbook which has just been published, and includes comprehensive historical as well as technical content) - he made lots of tests and concluded that the EMG and Expert horns (and the Voigt Tractix) are really not a great deal more primitive than the best hi-fi horns today. Strangely, it seems there are many radically different ways, all complex, to 'solve' horn requirements... (I must add, I'm sounding as if I know a great deal about all this technically, which definitely isn't the case!) I have an EMG Mk Xb and a Mk Xb Oversize arranged for stereo listening - at some point in future I will attach high quality drivers to both and run them from the hi fi system!

Here's a 'panoramic' photo sweeping round two sides of our main room (the Expert Senior is on the right; the hi fi is in the big cabinet):

[emgcr]

At last it is revealed whence these behemoths come to populate our globe---the breeding grounds of planet Cornucopia.

A new sibling blasts forth into space...............

[Roaring20s]

For that last photograph, a reworking a poem By Samuel Taylor Coleridge...

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan Andy of Britain
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph Music, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea...



James.

[Orchorsol]

Hilarious, both!

The fake plastic chandelier (already in the house when we moved here, and highly amusing in itself) gives a really unworldly effect!

[Inigo]

And the lamp at the ceiling gives a bright light alternating with darker shades of light that makes it still more irreal... Seems kind of Nemo's cave in the deepest of the Nautilus...!

[VanEpsFan1914]

Incandescent bulbs would lose that interrogation-room vibe, but then it would lose its sci-fi glamour.

[tomb]

Great find …… Nice phonograph Tom