ESS Heil Air Motion Transformer AMT Tweeter?

I think there was an AKer who incorporated these tweeters into a SET+ FR drivers setup. How was that achieved?

I believe I am one of a couple of people on AK that I know of. I think Sebrof is the other person using the Heil tweets with fullrage single drivers.

My heil's are integrated with a passive, series wired crossover. The heils provide very little load on the amp so as not to hurt efficiency of the system. I believe that the overall impedence of my set up is around 12 ohms. I am getting close to 105db sound pressure levels with a 3.5watt per side SET amp and a couple of powered subs. The heil tweeter is a real performer.

Mwalt and myself are both using them with Hornshoppe horns with a simple conventional crossover consisting of a capacitor and an inductor.

MWalt said:

I believe I am one of a couple of people on AK that I know of. I think Sebrof is the other person using the Heil tweets with fullrage single drivers.

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I believe he's using them with Altec 416's...not exactly full range, but a very interesting pairing.

Thanks gents, very interesting. I think it was you MWalt that I had in my mind btw.
I am liking my AN drivers so much to the extent that I might try integrating additional tweeters in future.
Not a necessity but an itch I'd like to scratch for the time being.

davidro said:

Thanks gents, very interesting. I think it was you MWalt that I had in my mind btw.
I am liking my AN drivers so much to the extent that I might try integrating additional tweeters in future.
Not a necessity but an itch I'd like to scratch for the time being.

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The Hornshoppe Horns were great before I added the Heil's. I think njcanuck and I can both agree that the addition of the Heil tweets made them that much better. They (Heil's) make more midrange than you would think. They can be crossed fairly low.

Apparently my ANs can barely hit 15kHz. So perhaps what you're suggesting would apply in my case too. Too bad the Heils are pretty rare here.

Been running a pair of big Heil's in a two way setup with four Dynaudio 20W75's and an active crossover for years. Crossed over around 2.2K.

davidro said:

Apparently my ANs can barely hit 15kHz. So perhaps what you're suggesting would apply in my case too. Too bad the Heils are pretty rare here.

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If I understand it correctly, the Heils are also referred to as ribbon tweeters which seem to be popular in a number of speaker systems.

Beyma and others offer models, quality unknown.

A friend, who is also a professional musician, voice model and voice and piano instructor, likes to substitute the tweeters on his speakers. In his case, he likes horn loaded tweeters. The reason I know this is they were connected and laying on his three way speakers with a deck of playing cards under the magnet for proper elevation. Apparently they have been there for years, mission accomplished. I did convince him to add some wire nuts over the bare copper twist.....

Just a thought, your speaker cabinets are beautiful, and probably not a trivial cost item. Have you considered running the tweeters and crossover-attenuator outboard thus preserving your cabinets and allowing you a lot of latitude to experiment with different tweeters, settings and configurations??

The whole issue of where the magnets, diaphragms and drivers should be located is new to me, I suspect one of the books on making your own speakers discusses this in detail. Certainly if the tweeters are free floating or in their own little box, trial and error at no cost become an option.......

The woofer and mid range horns designs used by Altec seem to peak out around 17.5k, which is the limit of my hearing. My 14 year old continues raising her hand up to 20K....

Bubo said:

Just a thought, your speaker cabinets are beautiful, and probably not a trivial cost item. Have you considered running the tweeters and crossover-attenuator outboard thus preserving your cabinets and allowing you a lot of latitude to experiment with different tweeters, settings and configurations??

The whole issue of where the magnets, diaphragms and drivers should be located is new to me, I suspect one of the books on making your own speakers discusses this in detail. Certainly if the tweeters are free floating or in their own little box, trial and error at no cost become an option.......

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The Hornshoppes are usually set up with the Heils and crossovers outboard as in the attached pic.

Note that the two drivers are located very close to each other. I have become a believer that a single full-range driver provides the best imaging, but by locating two drivers very close together you can still maintain an 'almost' single point source. I now tend to shy away from multidriver systems.

davidro said:

Apparently my ANs can barely hit 15kHz. So perhaps what you're suggesting would apply in my case too. Too bad the Heils are pretty rare here.

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You can order them online.

http://www.parts-express.com/Search.aspx?keyword=air motion tweeter&sitesearch=true

I run Martin Logan Motion series speakers because of the Heil style air motion tweeters in them. So smooth and fast...

Bubo said:

If I understand it correctly, the Heils are also referred to as ribbon tweeters which seem to be popular in a number of speaker systems.

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I am pretty sure that the Heil is a dipole tweeter, not a ribbon. I believe that they are a competitor to ribbon tweets.

I've seen the Heil described as a 'folded ribbon' tweeter design.

There's many type and variants of the Heil "air motion" tweeter used by lots of other speaker company's.

Oh if I go the ESS route with the ANs, I'm definitely doing the outboard option.

I saw a pair of Elac super tweeters on their own stands. I liked the aesthetics.

If they were on their own stands, integrating their position with the single drivers would be easier too.

davidro said:

Oh if I go the ESS route with the ANs, I'm definitely doing the outboard option.

I saw a pair of Elac super tweeters on their own stands. I liked the aesthetics.

If they were on their own stands, integrating their position with the single drivers would be easier too.

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Elac? :thmbsp: that's an omni direction tweeter!

Yeah that is. Sweet sounding stuff I think.
Initially I was like WTF is this lol, but the aesthetics were nice.

This talk makes me mmmmm over those Plasma tweeters which were available secondhand locally...

Now you know Elac are German right? So that tweeter is going to be very transparent. More on the lines of your Ushers.

Yeah I know. I know ya brotha has a thang for German stuff, too!

Funnily though, Byron, I find the SET powered HE speakers setup to be more transparent than the conventional tweeters in boxes. I know they can't be spec-wise, but the FR feel just more intimate and real. Having said that, my setup probably lacks that upper air a little. Now, adding external tweeters may potentially ruin the coherency but it's all part of the fun....