Jemusic wrote: That was great and I can only imagine how much they cost. Interesting to see they are using valve amps (class A no doubt) to drive it all.

I had an interesting experience in the 70's. A guy built a whole house around his Hi Fi setup. He constructed a large Hi Fi listening room in the shape of a large exponential horn! And you sat right inside. The floor was normal but the ceiling was tilted like a control room. The walls were a perfect horn shape both sides. He had an 18" woofer in a large concrete enclosure under the house that feed up into the mouth of the horn. (yes bass down to under 20 Hz very real my friend) Massive transistor amps powered the bass driver.

The main speakers that you faced were two large glass panels that were positioned at 45 degrees. So you looked right through the two front speakers. He had a massive electrostatic speaker drivers setup (driven by Williamson class A valve amps and a rack full of them) in the sides of the horn which fired the sound sideways into the glass panels and then the sound bounced off them and straight out to you!

How did it all sound, well unbelievable comes to mind. He was into organ music so I can understand the bass concept. But when we played something like a funk album or Steely Dan or Switched on Bach we nearly fell off our seat!

Great story. Yeah, this system is esoteric, to say the least. The time and energy involved. Making your own coils, epoxying, and building everything from the drivers, to cabinets, to amplifiers. And to a degree works, from the flat surface area, to altered tweeter, and woofer locations, helping to time align things. Fabulous.

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One of my favorite cabinets of all time and have heard them in clubs, theater, to a good friend of mines own house is the JBL paragon. It's a wonderful design of one giant and beautiful sculpted wood cabinet, where the horns are directed towards the surface and radiate away, giving a brilliant live stage presence. The base is ported back inside at both left and right sides, and the results are to say the least, powerful.
Inside the port are radiating ring reproducers, at each side. The whole thing is very enormous, but very magical. I've head Pink Floyd's The Wall, and lot of good tunes through as a bud of mine had to have them. The woodwork really finishes them off. A little hard to describe.
Designed by James B. Lansing in 1957!
Well, the image says it all.

They're almost 9 feet wide.

JBL Paragon

Steve Carter wrote: They look great but can I hang 'em on the picture rail?

Lol, you could hang them if the spirit moves you. Or the house, either one. oh, yeah, dont use the Paragons to hang, unless its on some steel girders