last iteration of this classic pure electrostatic

www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=1952394163

Thats a great speaker for that price. Take some serious driving and a big room though. I had a pair mid nineties that I ran with an ARC D7011, thought it sounded good but when I put a pair of Accuphase 300w Mono onto them boy did they come alive !! Any previous shortcomings were completely eliminated.

i prefer the original cls, cranky, amp killers, musical sirens.
later versions tamed the bad behaviour but also reduced the magic.
tried the big amp route with plinius and counterpoint, a great match with quicksilver monos.

Not sure I ever ran mine with my quicksilver mono's. My quicksilvers were the original 8417 models and hopelessly unreliable, nice when they were working though.

mine were the slightly later 6 tube 8417 with black top transformers and smallish caps.
early into ownership i had an internal phillips cap explode, the distributor supplied replacement sounded different so i had both amps wondercapped.
later i had a few issues with replacement 8417s.
other than the above it was a fairly reliable, much more so than my jadis.

found an old, pre-digital pic.

Wow, looks like we had similar set ups. My pre at the time was an SP9 mk2, my quickies were the 4 valve version, kept on having issues with the bias running away on one tube or other, the plates going cheery red, then pop. Got to the stage pretty quickly where they were off for repair more often than they were running, revalved several times to no improvement. Hopeless.

sp8 mk II above

who did you by your quickies from ?
mine were audio excellence ex-demos.

when audio excellence folded, alan gore/the music room bought all their spare 8417s, all of which were worse than my old set.

the original design had each pair of outputs sharing a bias circuit, making matched pairs crucial.
alan modified my amps to allow individual bias setting.

Morning chaps.
Back to the OP just for a sec... has anyone else experienced issues running 220v gear in NZ?
Like, ’catastrophic power transformer failure’ kind of issues?

Ps. Love the old analog photos MichaelW. Keep ‘em coming! 😀

i'm not a sparky but I cant imagine that 220v in a transformer would cause any issues as its close enough to what is supposed to come out of our wall sockets anyhow. Perhaps theres an electrical engineer on here that could comment ? I cant remember what mine were but assuming they were the same I never experienced any issues.

MW: Cant remember where my quickies came from (listening Post trade in maybe), and yes matched quads it was for mine which got very expensive quickly...

Had a number of techs go over them all to no avail. Interesting to read reports of them in the US now where they say how wonderful they were and no mention of reliability issues. I believe the later ones were better ?

small world !
do you remember when you got them ?
in 1996 i traded in my arc and quicksilvers to listening post tokoroa for a krell integrated.



i recall contacting mike sanders/quicksilver designer about getting replacement 8417, he said even he didn't have stocks, hence the switch to kt88 for later monos.
he also had a mod to convert 8417 amps to run kt tubes.

Feb 17, 2019 10:24:37 GMT 12 raveydave said:

Morning chaps.
Back to the OP just for a sec... has anyone else experienced issues running 220v gear in NZ?
Like, ’catastrophic power transformer failure’ kind of issues?

Hi raveydave - I'm no EE, but in NZ, electricity supply should be 230vac. In our area of (central) AKL, we get 233-243vac mains. Which means, if your equipment is designed for 220vac (eg in HK), then the equipment with be running on ~5-10% higher volts - except for any regulated DC internal supplies, which should be 'regulated' (held at design voltage). Not usually a big problem.

Probably of greater concern is equipment designed for 60Hz mains freq (eg USA) - in which the power transformers will usually run hotter on our 50Hz mains (even with a 230/115vac step-down TX)

That's my understanding.

DarkLantern blog - darklanternforowen.wordpress.com

Thanks for that Owen. Very interesting.
You may recall I had a Cayin 300b SET amp about 10 years ago.
That was a 220v ex-HK unit, and well, after a couple of years of faithful service, the power transformer eventually died.
So on the recommendation of our excellent local valve tech, and with the support of the HK agent, I was able to source a “European Voltage” 240v replacement unit directly from the manufacturer. I’ve moved on from that amp, but still interesting they manufactured distinct transformers for 220v vs 230-240v markets...

Recently, another service tech (again, West Auckland) had a similar story about some locally represented 220v “high end” solid state Japanese gear suffering a similar fate.

YVMV? (Your Voltage May Vary?)

Just found a few old pics of the pair of CLS II we were "custodians" of, for a brief time.

FWIW it turns out they were 220v as well!

The sound was truly amazing on the end of my good friend's Plinius MA-102 / M12 combo (to the right of the speakers)

Set up right, they could produce a truly formative experience... resulting in a hi-fi epiphany, even!

Feb 17, 2019 16:22:20 GMT 12 raveydave said:

Thanks for that Owen. Very interesting.
You may recall I had a Cayin 300b SET amp about 10 years ago.
That was a 220v ex-HK unit, and well, after a couple of years of faithful service, the power transformer eventually died.
So on the recommendation of our excellent local valve tech, and with the support of the HK agent, I was able to source a “European Voltage” 240v replacement unit directly from the manufacturer. I’ve moved on from that amp, but still interesting they manufactured distinct transformers for 220v vs 230-240v markets...

Recently, another service tech (again, West Auckland) had a similar story about some locally represented 220v “high end” solid state Japanese gear suffering a similar fate.

YVMV? (Your Voltage May Vary?)

Two relevant things were occurring here:

1) When a PTX receives 5-10% more incoming mains voltage & subsequently produces 5-10% output voltaqes, it should not bother the PTX, as these variations are small & should not be a problem for the wire or insulation. I have often applied 10% higher voltages to to PTXs in order to achieve higher output volts when needed.

2) Of more interest is when the above happens, the higher voltages are received by the signal circuit - in the case of valve circuits, valves are very tolerant of such variations in operating points. So again, should be no problem.

So, I would suspect just low quality PTX construction. Or, something like mains 'spikes', or even lightning has been known to damage PTXs.
I have had 2 x Italian-made PTX in 2 separate devices, fail after quite a few years service - replaced with NZ re-wound replacements.

(Sorry about digression, michaelw )

DarkLantern blog - darklanternforowen.wordpress.com

np...
if i may add my power quirk story...

once upon a time i bought a fosgate surround sound processor from hk.
it was 220v, plugged into nz's 230/240 the remote didn't work, a royal pia as it could only be controlled via remote.
using a variac to step down to the unit's preferred 220v all worked again.
weird.

back to cls...
the curved panel turned out to be hugely problematic to manufacture.
there are probably no cls 1 still running their original panels.

I'd love to own a pair of these.

I first heard the originals at a HiFi show in the 80's, driven by a Pink Triangle turntable (amplification long forgotten). But I do remember being mesmerised by the sound coming out of these "screens". It was like the first time I heard a pair of Quad ESLs. Different sound but the same captivating nature.

Me too, but sadly dont have either the room or the amplification.