Horns for TAD td4003

[Herman Chigrin]

Hello,

From those that have experimented with various horns on their TD4003 driver...

What are the horn options to get good sound from td4003? Clone of original th4003 or would IWATA work?
So far, have not found a 1.5" wooden Iwata. Has anyone tried the 4003 on Iwata horn?


Thanks,
Herman

[pos]

Hello Herman,

The TD4003 has two important traits that need to be considered when choosing a horn:

Its output diameter is 39mm, ie a bit larger than the 38mm of the JBL (and other brands) 1.5" drivers and horns. That meant you cannot bolt it on a JBL horn and expect it to work correctly: you will get response anomalies in the upper range.

The second trait is that it is not a throatless driver contrary to the TD400Z and most other 1.5" drivers. You can read the JBL technte on the subject to see what that implies.
The TH4003 was tailored-made for the TD4003 in that its extension was the perfect continuation of the one in the throat.

As you are in Germany you might try the TH4371 that is currently for sale in France:https://www.homecinema-fr.com/forum/...t30100822.html
It is pretty narrow directivity, but quite controlled, and of course it will perfectly fit the TD4003 output diameter.

[Herman Chigrin]

POS,

thanks for your advice. I have been listening to three compression drivers WITHOUT horns, just to get a rough idea of their sound signature:
TAD 4002
TAD 4003
JBL 2451 + truextent diaphragms

So far, the 4003 stands out as the best sounding to my ears but hard to tell without having them on horns.

My plan is to put the 4003 on a worthy horn that will bring out the best. Have you tried them with the matching th4003 horns? That's a strange looking horn but how's the sound?

[Mr. Widget]

Hi Herman, I can tell you that the TAD TD-4003 on the TH-4003 is extremely accurate and about as good as this technology gets. I use a pair of TD-4003 drivers on a pair of very faithful clones of the TH-4003 horns in my system and haven't found anything I like better... and I have listened to and owned quite a lot of alternatives.

Unfortunately, I have not tried other horns on these drivers so can not give you any useful suggestions, and sadly TAD stopped producing the horns many years ago.

Other than the clones that I have which I have directly compared with the TAD built version both objectively and subjectively, I have no info on the quality of other clones that may be on the market. The clones that I have are one pair of a dozen or so pairs that were made, but they are no longer available. These were made by my firm when I was in the prototyping business. These were made of an extremely dense mineral filled resin and are exact duplicates of the TAD geometry. There may be a pair of these available somewhere in the world, but I do not know of any.


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[Herman Chigrin]

Hello Widget,

Thanks for your feedback. The only producer of the 4003 horn is the guy from Hungary. I would hope that by now he has refined his manufacturing and quality should probably be good. Don't know of another source. It would be most interesting to compare the TH 4003 on other compatible horns. Who else has the 4003 and tried it on various horns? IWATA?

[merlin]

I too used the TD/TH combination with an ET-703 on top.

In my case the results were not as good as expected and I have always put this down to crossover design as opposed to the drive unit/horn combination itself. I could not get the overall coherence I was looking for.

[Mr. Widget]

I too used the TD/TH combination with an ET-703 on top.

In my case the results were not as good as expected and I have always put this down to crossover design as opposed to the drive unit/horn combination itself. I could not get the overall coherence I was looking for.

I also was unable to get the performance I wanted from my TAD system when I was experimenting with passive networks. Going active with a highly resolving and flexible active crossover has allowed me to get the sound I had hoped for.


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