This is my first post on this site so maybe you will forgive me for being long-winded....and European!
My first criteria for speakers is that they MUST involve me in the music. I have heard many fine monitoring systems which do what they are meant to do but which I would not give house room to for home listening. Likewise I have heard beautiful domestic speakers in a studio control room environment which were next to useless.
Be Yamamura's big cork horns! These were without doubt the most involving speakers I have ever heard. I was aware that the tonality was perhaps not quite accurate but that said no other speakers have 'involved' me in the music to the extent that these speakers managed.
From a purely 'Hi-Fi' angle, Be Yamamura made for an Italian client a pair of one offs which were the best rock speakers I have heard. They comprised bass tubes, a back to back mid-range in a tube suspended in a frame hammock style by wire and a TAD bullet tweeter with hand filed flare.
In both cases the speakers were driven by a total Yamamura system: the horns by his 'current' amps, the tubey system by a completely dual mono PP 845 tube system built in 1/4" copper sheet chassis.
For my own use I have a pair of old UK made Impulse H2 3 way horns along with a variety of hardware incl. DIY, earlier Yamamura prototype stuff and even an old Perreaux power hitched to an early ASR Collector pre with phono.
These horns will do as I have not found anything better and affordable for my purposes. IF allowed I would build in situ open baffles with 15" WE bass, something very papery in the mid - probably modified Lowther - and ribbons at the top, bi-amped with triodes - 845 at the bottom and something very musical in the mid/treble.
