BillFitzmaurice.info

Hi Guys,

I made my Dad a set of TLAH's for Christmas so thought I'd post some photos.

I'll add more details soon but for now here are some photos of the build.

Those look really great. I'm very envious of your CNC router.

Do you know if there are any acoustical benefits or drawbacks to rear vs front mounting the tweeters?

Great looking TLAH's. What driver and tweeter did you use? How did you design the base? I've been looking to build these and looking for different methods to floor stand them.

How much of a pain was it to get those drivers warrentied?

Very nice!

How does Dad like them?

I think there are some negatives to rear mounting the speakers and its better to front mount but whether you can tell the difference in real life I don't know. The oak in front of the drivers is 15mm thick and I believe the 9mm radius cutter helps to reduce the negative affect of rear mounting whilst improving the visuals.

The damaged speakers were shipped to the UK for free as warranty replacements. Think PE blamed UPS for shipping damage but IMO (and speaking as a design engineer) the damage was caused by manufacturing defects and poor QC.
I recommend anyone who orders from PE to check every speaker. The speakers arrived more than 28 days before I needed them and this could have been an issue when contacting PE for replacements.... Drivers are the standard goldwoods, shielded all-round.

Base is standard I followed bills plans and added spikes after. The speaker is stable on hard floors but very unstable on carpet.

Dad is pleased with them, although he's decided its a good excuse to upgrade the amp..... I'll try and get him to post a review once they are set up properly.

The next steps are to take them apart again and improve the sealing inside as the bass response isn't quite as good as I expected and feel it should be. I know leaks hurt the bass and the oak baffle has a few splits/knot's that I think go all the way through. Hopefully sealing these properly will improve this.

njolliffe wrote: PE blamed UPS for shipping damage but IMO (and speaking as a design engineer) the damage was caused by manufacturing defects and poor QC.

That damage was absolutely caused in shipping. Once across the Pacific, once across the US, and once across the Atlantic can have that result, though chances are that the delivery driver simply dropped the box off the back of his lorry.

the bass response isn't quite as good as I expected and feel it should be.

They are mains and need to be paired with subs, crossed over between 80 and 100Hz.

njolliffe''s Dad here

They are mains and need to be paired with subs, crossed over between 80 and 100Hz.

The TLAH's are paired with a UK manufactured Sub - BK Monolith DF ported reflex - a huge beast. Cross over is handled by Audyssey MultEQ XT32 built into the AV amp with the sub's crossover disabled.
The crossover reported by Audyssey for the TLAH mains is 90hz. I think njolliffe was hoping they'd be good down to 80hz, but for me anything under 100hz should be fine - especially as the sub is now placed between the two mains.
Using white noise and a basic sound level app - it's quite easy to see there's some significant drop off in levels below 100Hz, but I guess Audyssey EQ settings are able to boost enough at 90hz not to depend on the sub.


As living room furniture, the oiled oak fronts with recessed rear speaker mounting looks amazing. As mentioned, I had a few stability issues on the soft carpet flooring at first, but adding some spiked feet, and using the feet adjustment to tip the units back just a little, soon overcame that minor issue. Sound wise they're very crisp at the top end and once Audyssey EQ is doing it's tricks the TLAHs sound much clearer than my previous Mordaunt Short 906's, which until these arrived at Christmas I'd always found to be pretty good.
Audyssey EQ curves are quite different between the left and right speakers, but I suspect that is much more to do with room acoustics - which are far from ideal - than any differences between the TLAHs. When I find the time I plan to do some more testing swapping the speaker positions over.

These are bi-amped into a 7.1 sound system used for both music and movies. The increased sensitivity of the TLAHs over my MS906's exposed some white noise hiss from my Yamaha AV amp, which was a great excuse to move a little more up market and up to date.
Looking forward to pairing these with a matching centre sometime soon.

Welcome Andy!
Glad to see that you like the TLAHs, and that you're expecting to have a centre SLA as well.

Great looking build, and Bravo to you, njolliffe, for making your father such a great gift!

Might I suggest lifting the TLAH off the floor, at least a half a meter? Something tells me that they are just a bit too close to the carpeted floor.