Rumage sale Patrician IV!! (long)

Bill F.

New Member
I've had a very interesting weekend!
Here's the story:

My wife came home last Friday saying she had seen a tube amplifier at a rumage sale. Of course, my ears pricked up and we jumped back into the car. The rumage sale was a fundraiser at a local elementary school. I'd already combed the place the day before and picked up a nice old Jensen driver for a buck, so I figured the amplifier had to have just been dropped off.

As we pulled into the school lot, I glanced over at the entrance and nearly lost control of the car! There was a hulking peice of mahogany and brass, unmistakeable even at a hundred yards--an Electovoice Patrician IV!

I parked and ran over to it, my wife trailing behind. I placed her beside it, telling her to defend it with her life, and ran on into the school to find a cashier. (On my run in, I passed a old organ tone cabinet--what my wife had seen, having just walked by the Patrician!)

A minute later, the beautiful old Patrician was mine--for all of $65. (They wanted $500 for the organ tone cabinet, so I passed.)

They even delivered it for free.


I know very little about Patrician IVs, so now I am full of questions!

1) How much is it worth (complete and working, though somewhat weathered condition)?

2) Should I consider having it refinished?

3) If so, where?

4) Anyone have any other words of wisdom?


Bill



(PS. For those of you who visit the vintage asylum, sorry for the double post.)
 
What Is A Patrician ?
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Reading from EV literature ; " It is a new experience. It cannot be put into words. It is as subtle, as overwhelming, as awe inspiring as a burst of sunlight after a thunderstorm. It is as if the curtain of darkness has suddenly been drawn back and now you see for the first time what was there all along. Only with the Patrician, you don't see it you hear it. It is the magic gift of the Gods which unlocks the treasure compressed into the grooves of a flat disc of vinylite." From ' Do It Yourself! Build the Patrician Speaker Enclosure " ; Advertising hype is sure nothing new.

Custom Factory Patrician IV
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Mahogany beast...weighs over 350 lbs. Lots of solid hardwood, including the doors. Solid brass handles. Brass plated steel strips for accent on the grill. It's in nice shape for 45 years old. You would think it would sound like hell from looking or reading about it. It is quite detailed and delicate sounding. The bass is solid and powerful down to 25 or 30 Hz.

EV Patrician IV...Georgian Style
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This is a real Patrician IV. It is styled similarly, however, to the Georgian; EV's next model down. The Patrician IV is basically a Klipsch bass bin scaled up by 16 and 2/3 %. It uses the EV 18 WK18" bass driver. The Georgian used the 15WK in a bass bin the same size as the Klipsch. On the top it had a fiber-glass horn with only a single 828HF, and usually a T35 tweeter. On the Georgian the ' doors ' are just for looks. On this custom-built job ( factory special order ) the doors actually open. The woofer is hidden behind the removable front hatch. The grill/door for the high freq. driver compartment is shown open.

View Inside the 200 Hz Wood Horn
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The mid-bass horn also serves as an enclosure or housing for the high frequency horns. Visible is the T-350 super tweeter ( 3,500 Hz to 20 kHz ). Directly below it is the 6HD phenolic diffraction horn; a T25A compression driver attached handles the range between 600 and 3,500 Hz. You can see also one of the twin 828 HF compression drivers.
These drivers radiate directly from the front. From the back they fire into phenolic tubes configured as re-entrant horns, ultimately exausting into the rear of the mid-bass horn. This indirect radiator horn setup covers the range from 200 Hz to 600 cycles. This was unusual, most midrange horns cross over at 500 or 600 Hz. Some people think that 5 or 600 cycles is a very bad point in the freq. range for a crossover. Critical musical and vocal information is in that range. I don't know about that but the bass and mid bass from this monster is sweet. Not boomy or sluggish at all. Highly sensitive...a flea power amp is all you need.

Bass Bin and all the Drivers for the Patrician IV
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The front hatch is removed to show the EV18WK . A spare 18 " woofer is seen also. Atop the folded horn are the other drivers. Originally the T-35 was standard, the bigger and better T-350 was the later standard supertweeter and an available option in 1956. This ' Georgian ' Patrician came with a T- 350. The T-3500 Ionovac was also an option starting, I believe, around 1958.

Simple Diagram of Khorn
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Very simple. The driver is bolted to a baffle, with a ' phase-correcting slot ' ( like a phase plug ). This baffle seals the back chamber. The woofer fires into the sealed front compression chamber, which feeds the twin horns. The pressure waves exit the twin horns, top and bottom, into the room coner. This is the original front-loading, folded-axis, horn.

Inside the Horn
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Behind the cone is a sealed back chamber. The volume of this chamber is critical, the compressed air inside the cavity acts as a spring, in the same manner as an acoustic suspension / sealed cabinet's contained air mass. Linear excursions - of the 18Wk's voice-coil - of up to one inch are possible in this horn, and proper control is determined by this ' tuned ' back chamber.
In the picture, the hatch-plate for the front compression chamber is shown removed. The horn throats are at the top and bottom of the front chamber. The twin folded horns, top and bottom, fire backwards into the room-corner.The interfaces of the walls with the ceiling and floor provide extensions for the two horns. The listener sits, virtually, within the horn.
 
Awesome score there Bill.:thmbsp:

Now all you need to do is find a second one. You found such a neat speaker treasure that you totally forgot about mentioning the tube amp that was why you went in the first place. Was it anything worthwhile? :)

Rob
 
A second one--yeah, right...In my dreams! But I guess if this has taught me anything, it's that anything is possible.

The tube amp my wife spotted that brought us there in the first place was in that organ tone cab--sorry I wasn't clearer.

BTW, Here's a high resolution pic of what mine looks like (though my finish ain't so nice).

Patrician506.jpg


Bill
 
Oh, now I know what you are taliking about. I would have recognized that model as well. I'm impressed! :eek: :eek: :eek:

Does it have the 18" driver?

Rob
 
Yup, I understand the bass section is basically a Khorn scaled up 17% and driven by a single 18"

Can anyone tell me how to open the front grille? It's supposed to be a hinged door, right? Which side does it hinge on? I tried unsuccessfully to open it. I told my wife to karate chop me in the throat if I started prying at it with a screwdriver in my eagerness to see inside...

Bill
 
Hmmm,

Gerry E. over at the AA vintage forum got me wondering if this is actually a Patrician IV, or a II or III. I had seen a Pat IV online, and when I saw that this was the spitting image of it, I just assumed that it was a IV.

The sticker on the back reads:

Electro Voice High Fidelity
Loudspeaker Enclosure
35100034

On the bottom of the front, it says "The Patrician"

Can anyone tell me more from this info?

Bill
 
It sounds like it's in my tiny one-car garage--because it is!

I'll drag it out and take a real listen soon.


BTW, it does seem to be a Pat IV after all, according to Gerry E, who has an older pre-IV.
 
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