Straut Classic 11S (Here you go Birddog!)

I've been listening to the Strauts for few weeks now. These were purchased from AK member "Birddog" a month after the NE get together at "Thedelihaus's". John was kind enough to hold these for me as was Paul for keeping them at his place until I could pick them up. Thanks again guys. These played at both get togethers and many members were amazed by the sound but seem to be a little intimidated by the size of these monsters plus possibly the fact that they were being called "Kabuki". If that means "Having Multiple Drivers" then that it's all I own. I've tried many speakers (within my budget) and for me, I enjoy the 3 sets of refurbished & recapped Sansui's along with the Straut's. Just my personal opinion.
My impressions on these so far are that no matter what I play, be it rock, jazz, blues, classical, ect...ect...ect...they sound amazing at any volume level. Crisp clear highs, detailed mids and strong tight bass on the low end. I opened them up tonight to see how they were made. One thing I didn't notice before is that these are a mirror imaged set. Notice the position of the Super Tweeter and Bass Port of the right speaker compared to the left. There are supports along the back behind the woofer and also above it. The supertweeter on the left one was not working so I pulled all the pots and cleaned them with DeOxit but that wasn't the problem. I found that the 5W resistor on the crossover was blown. Luckily I had a spare and after replacing it the supertweet came to life. I have no idea what the specs are on these other than being rated for 200W. Only one small paragraph on the web that Birddog found. If anyone out there has any info on these please pass it along. It would be much appreciated. Here are some pics for your veiwing pleasure.

Rod, I'm glad you are enjoying them! Great speakers, I hope that someday you get to bring the cabinets back to life with some new veneer! Are those binding posts on the woofer frame? That's interesting..... Pretty good bang for your buck, if you have the room for them! I'll tell Paul you said thanks, I'm heading down there today

Those are binding posts John. One other thing I found out is the Supertweeter is made by Motorola. Only thing I could find on the net about them is in Swedish. http://www.hifikit.se/show_prod.asp?id=1051

Rodney, I'm impressed with the woofer connections! Binding posts- oh my!

Very nice!!!

Thats what I thought when I pulled the woofers. Makes them much easier to work on compared to soldered connections.

Yup, I've never seen another speaker with the binding posts like that, but there are lots of speakers I've never seen.... Someday you will run into somebody that knows something about these beasts, they must have made more than one pair, even though those may be the only pair that made it to the USA....

I will opine that they sounded better than they look like they should

The Motorola supertweeter would most likely be a piezoelectric driver. They are idiosyncratic devices, notorious for being spitty, but they can be used to good effect if properly crossed-over.

The crossover components look pretty pedestrian. Replacing what look to be NP electrolytics with something like the inexpensive Dayton "Audio Grade" caps from PartsExpress would likely be a cheap tweak.

I like the way the speakers look!

mhardy6647 said:

I will opine that they sounded better than they look like they should

The Motorola supertweeter would most likely be a piezoelectric driver. They are idiosyncratic devices, notorious for being spitty, but they can be used to good effect if properly crossed-over.

The crossover components look pretty pedestrian. Replacing what look to be NP electrolytics with something like the inexpensive Dayton "Audio Grade" caps from PartsExpress would likely be a cheap tweak.

Click to expand...

I had a pair of those Motorolas in the in-car audio system of my first car, as dash-mounted tweeters/supertweeters. Tried them from 4k and I got all kinds of "spittiness" (always wanted a word that inferred what that sound was - thanks!) Changed out the caps and kept them in the 8KHz and above band and they did fine.

Look like fun speakers.