Zilch,
I'm not at all unhappy with the added EV tweeters. I consider them to be one of the best tweeters ever made and after hearing the T350's I could never be happy with T35's again. There's a reason why they go for $800 and upward for a pair on E-Bay. The Altec 3000's I have are great sounding too but the efficiency is too low in this case. I'm not caught up in any guilt about tampering with Altec's design philosophy to do a 2 way that does it all. It clearly does do it all in more than one system for lots of people, but not me. And I feel that having a tweeter sitting on top of the cabinets and connected directly to the amp in no way violates the 19's integrity or value. Just the sound and if it sounds better to me then that's better than dismissing the speakers/drivers because they have limited or weak highs. As I stated before, I've never heard a speaker that does what these do so that says a lot about Altecs design choice for the 19's. I just don't agree with their view on the upper treble. Bozak had the same thoughts with soft treble tweeters and people think they are great too but I never cared for them. The overall smoothness even with the added tweeter, the ability to maintain impact/detail with smoothness, the extended and smooth bass, and the clarity is something most speakers just don't offer and I've heard lots of speakers. Perfect they aren't but no speaker is perfect. They're just closer to perfect than I've ever had before. But even if it were possible to get more extended highs from the 802-8G/811B, would they sound the same and disperse the same as from the smaller horn of the EV T350? I remember EV had a way to extend the highs of their 1823M driver with the addition of a small passive network. My goal has always been to have great sounding vintage tube stereo system with vintage or near vintage speakers using little to no EQ and not a transistor to be seen. TA DAH!
Earl,
I get the whole bi-amp thing but I'm not willing to go that route anymore. My old Bozak 4000's were lots better with a simple bi-amp setup but I've never been able to get those same results with other speakers I've owned because of blend, shelving or overlap problems. I'm just not into 18 or 24db/octave xovers, SS xover networks or expensive tube xover networks. I think I would be spinning my wheels and spending lots of time and money to get back to where I am now with the overall smoothness although I may have a tighter bass. But maybe not if I'm not using an SS amp. Now that I won't be using 4db of bass boost my amp now has more reserve power and I can't crank the 19's up that much in the small room they are in. My ears will bleed or the windows will shatter, whichever comes first.