Good Speakers for HF-20

Walter R

Member
I’m new to Audiokarma. My backup vacuum tube stereo (in the bedroom) is a pair of Eico HF-20s. I bought them 15 years ago when they were still inexpensive and just dusted them off. Right now I’m using them with a pair of Optimus Pro 7 speakers that I already had in my ham shack. Can anyone suggest some good used bookshelf speaker models that would be an upgrade. Most modern speakers have much higher power requirements.
I use a $20 Amazon Bluetooth receiver to feed my MP3 collection into the system from WinAmp on my computer. I’m pleased with the results but am open to suggested alternatives.
TIA
Walter R
 
Are you open to mid-fields or only bookshelves ?

If so, you can search for a pair of Paradigm 7SE , 5SE , or even 3SE

I think you have a 4 ohm tap on your amp, so, you can remove the crossovers and only use a 8uf film capacitor as tweeter filter.
 
Are you open to mid-fields or only bookshelves ?

If so, you can search for a pair of Paradigm 7SE , 5SE , or even 3SE

I think you have a 4 ohm tap on your amp, so, you can remove the crossovers and only use a 8uf film capacitor as tweeter filter.
 
Even the 3SE has an input power requirement of 15 to 150 watts. I’m dubious that I’d get good results with an amp that struggles to put out 20 watts.
 
20 watts is more than enough with Any speakers with an effeciency rating of 91db or above to more than rattle the 'ol eyeballs.
 
I use my 7SE with one 8 watts or one 10 watts amplifiers, SE 300B or Push-Pull EL84 , unless I wish to annoy neighbourhood , i don't need more power.
 
Yeah those HF-20's should have plenty of power to push most any highly efficient speaker system to great SPL levels..........as long as they're pretty much in spec.
 
Made an offer on a pair of Klipsch KG 1.5s. If that doesn’t get accepted there is a pair of Paradigm 5se in driving distance.
 
Paradigm have very fine sounding drivers, when they are original with the original thin vinyl like dome, they sound sweet, the replacements fabric dome tweeters sound harsh compared to the originals.

Most the time you find the authentics drivers in Paradigm speakers, because they have robust voice coils, but are long time out of production.

For the woofer, there is two versions, one, the first generation I think, had a steel basket, while the second generation have alloy basket, alloy basket woofers are generaly better, I bought a second pair and realised that was steel, they may be quite rare, never really used them, since always like to listen to the other pair, and have too much speakers to use them all.

I modded my speakers, for my woofers, I inverted the surround rubbers and re-glued them in the rear of the cone, the cone make more like a flat, and a horn skape that produces very good midrange, I replaced the Vifa D25 TG-55 by D25 TG-85 tweeters, that are chambered, very smooth, I completely removed the original crossovers, I connected the woofer directly to the amp, and in parallel, the tweeter is connected to 2X4uf = 8uf PIO caps, to the positive pole of the tweeter, that gives a low impedance of two times 6 ohms in parallel with a filter for one of them at some frequencies, ≈ 3-4 ohms or maybe less or more at some frequencies, impedance is a variable factor, but connected to a 4 ohm tap of a tube amplifiers, that's fine, I use the same 6P14P-EV output tubes for years, and never had a problen, they still test like or very close to new on my tube tester and works like the day I got them.

These speakers give me an ideal sound for most of my music listenigns, the extreme low frequencies are not very low or loud compares to my 10" or 12" woofers, but bass response is very well controled and low resonance, undistorted, all frequencies produces very low distortion factor.
 
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