It was forgotten for years.
In short the history is as such:
The PHIlIPS AD5046N must had been found somewhere in UK.
It was in a perhaps uncomfortable position. The grill was missing and there was no way to tell that it was a PHILIPS miracle. But just a nicely looking full range driver could be seen on top and it was desired to be bought. Then it came to Athens.
It was almost abandoned for years in various storerooms. But on every occasion it was carried with other things to a new storeroom. It was never tried and it must have felt lonely.
The last storeroom was the petrol burning boiler room of a building.
Many people must have seen it but nobody dared to take it as it looked rather ugly without the grill and abandoned.
One day it was decided after buying the fabulous Grampian DP4/L omnidirectional microphone from eBay that no other microphone should be bought no matter what. It all had become too addictive and this mic sounded as flat from producer's brain to listener's brain as possible.
This choice immediately freed time and it was decided to visit the boiler room which over the years had become a gas boiler room.
It was time to send some things for recycling.
A few years ago there was a flood in this store room. And water was there for a whole summer. The loudspeaker must had been wet at some of its surface as there is a very strong discoloration on the right bottom side of the speaker come. This area is very darkened in patterns. Or the cause may had been fumes from the burning petrol. The speaker looked even more apauling and nobody even wanted to touch it.
But of course the only thing from those out of the boiler room that was decided not to recycle and give it a try out of curiosity was this strange and interesting looking speaker.
So after so many years it found itself to the Pleiades lab.
The first thing done was to measure the resistance with a digital YF-3200 multimeter. It could not be believed that it was 800Ω. And was a very cute and detailed click sound. A step voltage function contains all the frequencies. If we hear all this broadband content to our brain we are playing with a very good speaker.
Then the impedance with an Escort digital impedance meter was measured to be 800Ω. The sound of the beep signal was particularly loud. Nice surprises were to come.
By that point the speaker was lifted and the base showed the proud PHIlIPS logo with the AD5046N model number.
Google search was done and it was found that people are impressed by it.
Things were beginning to get very interesting.
The cabinet was cleaned before touching it.
If had to be cleaned about 20-30 times to get all the black stuff from the wood. Petrol burning fumes.
Next thing was it being connected to the Sony CD walkman line out in a noisy area. Sound was soft but interesting.
It was then connected to the Pleides Electra II headphone amplifier. Sound was more promising but the batteries being low and the noisy area made for as loud sound as desired.
It was decided to try it indoors. The Sony Walkman again from low Z out. Then line out. Something was promising and it was decided to get it to play with more volume. A military 8Ω to 600Ω transformer was used to impedance match connected to the CD Walkman low Z headphone out.
The jaw was beginning to drop. The sound was big, clear, dynamic just from a 10mW CD Walkman output. It must had been on the Ingenue - KD Lang CD.
So it was time to try a Pleiades single transistor power amp over the following days.
The rest of the story is described on a previous eureoelectron post.
In short, the first transistor that caught the eye was an RCA/GE 2N3053 transistor.
It immediate sounded amazing with just one such transistor.
It fills rooms with beautiful sound just with 30 milliwatts in class A.
This has become the primary Pleiades loudspeaker reference setup.
Encouraged by the sound it was decided to try driving high Z headphones with 2 Pleiades 2N3053 amplifiers with a lower supply voltage, typically 1.3V.
The sound is amazing too on the Sennheiser HF580 and the 2 setups, high impedance loudspeaker or high impedance headphones sound very similar and world class.
More details and signal path, setup is given on previous euroelectron posts.
Reference:
http://euroelectron.blogspot.gr/2018/03/madonnas-voice-coming-from-point-source.html
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