Emilar?

[Guido]

Who can tell me something about these little wonders ?

[Cyclotronguy]

What ya wanna know? Have a pair, and various drivers that fit sitting out in the garage.

Cyclotronguy

[Guido]

It would be interesting to hear something about that company. Do they still produce? From what time these Horns/Drivers are?

[Cyclotronguy]

Emilar or what remains is still in business, their information is on the web. As I understand they are not currently casting the 800 Hz or the 500 Hz horns. Those that they do sell, seem to be refurbished pieces from the used market.

The horns and compression drivers all seem to be well made. Our company has a pair of the larger 500 Hz horns (EH500's) which were sourced from BB King. Don't know how they performed with the Emilar compression drivers, but with TAD 4001's they are spectacular.

I have a pair of horns identical to yours with JBL compression drivers in floor monitors flanked by twin TAD 1101h cones.... they seem just fine.

Cyclotronguy

[Guido]

Thanks for that info!

[GordonW]

Emilar came into prominence in the mid-late '70s, during the "Beatrice Foods era" of JBL. At that time, the Beatrice management was unwilling to put the effort into precision manufacturing, that many industrial and scientific clients (ie NASA, among others) demanded. Emilar came along, and according to one Emilar ex-employee I talked to "at a time where JBL couldn't usually maintain thousands of an inch tolerance uniformity, Emilar could do precision down to the ten-thousanth-of-an-inch range". In short, they were the extreme high-end of industrial acoustical manufacturing, and as a result, began the trend that led to a LOT of the industrial market being lost by JBL, to Emilar and others.

I don't know much about Emilar in recent years... the person I know that worked there, left the company in about 1980, IIRC. But the equipment of that era, is still regarded by many industrial engineers as pretty much the state-of-the-art of its time...

Regards,
Gordon.

[londonloud]

Nice to hear a little history about the company. I've always admired these horns for mid-throw use. And with the perfect driver like the TAD 4001s, they would def kill. But while the horns are periodically available at a decent price, securing a pr of 4001s to pair them up can break the bank. Those puppies can get close to a G each! But there is no other way to go! Now if I can only find someone with a pair of Frazier Texans they wanna get rid of, I'll be in heave:bouncy:n!