After some months of drawing, chatting and
several e-mails, a full weekend of measurements - both of my studio acoustic behaviour AND my (handy) amplifiers and ancillary gears - and, most of all, an impressive load of wood-working, screwing, veneering, measuring, cutting, glueing and sanding, Franz Hinterlehner delivered the freshly brewed
ELODIS' "TGE" (... aehm...) bass enclosure: a true horn capable of
true 109 db/W/m at 100 Hz/at the chosen positioning, to match my Goto's upper ways and capable of an outstanding 140+ db max. SPL (in room!!!)... something to REALLY (if needed or simply wished...) LITERALLY shake the whole building: a VERY musical way to committ suicide, if the case!
He arrived, after driving from his workshop based in a tiny 70-souls village at some 100 km from Wien for about 800 km to my hometown, bringing a full van worth of well padded, wheeled for transportation, painstackingly hand-crafted in Austria, front-loaded bass-horns AND an amazingly well-made - robust and airy enough to do not offend ears and eyes - holder made of aluminium bars, Teflon and Delignit's Modellholz... an impressive combo, truly and necessarily HUGE, as you cannot fool acoustic laws, but still keeping an extremely WAF high-ratio.
The unloading, uncrating and re-assemblying of the "TGE" bass-horns and horns holders was worth four strong people careful job for about three hours, followed by a couple more for Franz and myself in the studio aligning drivers and horns...
On last Saturday, quite late in the afternoon, after cabling and changing active crossover levels, we were ready (...) for turning ON the behemoth and return to what we all are for... music.
It's painful self-consciousness and banally true that after hardware and gears, we - Franz and myself, like a couple of friends who already tasted (new) Gotorama - begin with appreciating workmanship, impressiveness, details, BUT when music flows, virtually ALL - expenses included - vanishes and only Music should - actually and luckly it happens - remains!
Beside the stress involved in carefully and safely handling something weighting, ALL included - i.e. TGE bass-horns, holders and Goto horns and drivers - about 400 kilos per side (!), it's my VERY opinion as the "ship-owner" of TGE's, they're far more easy in the room than the (so approssimative, DIY looking) previous rig.
As per mr. Hinterlehner's wise suggestion, we used Teflon-made feet which easily allow to a single person to fine tune speakers position... furthermore and seldom seen in WEB's commonly showed horns systems, the drivers are physically aligned and tunable (thanks to Roman, Klaus and Reinhard's suggestions), sturdily mounted again using holder made of aluminium with cork and Teflon-made contact parts.
It's something reminding - please forgive me - a Leonardo da Vinci's drawing, it's shape and function, ALL carefully conceived and in-house built, with total control of every building step and best available materials - i.e. about one thousand high-torque steel screws to give needed strength internally, where Delignit's Modellholz was throughly used, with aluminium sub-chassis inbedded in plywood... impressive thinking that all, say ALL screws - inside the enclosure and for the doubled, external panels, sealing the sound-chamber - are torqued at proprietary nM-torque depending on the function and/or position of screw iteself, vibes-proof... the impressive operating-manual will include tons of technical informations and tips, something - again - seldom available in audio industry.
It may please everyone or be unpleasant and ugly looking for someone else, but me, the owner, I already "clicked" with the enormous capabilities of such a design... and, most of all, like it happened with Thomas Schick and Thomas Mayer, years ago, it's always and again, an already seen movie - i.e. people meeting first, sort-of joining (and enjoying) more the relationship than a given "product", but a common, yet personal vision, skill and taste... sharing with a common goal.
That's greatest merit of bespoke audio: man-made stuffs for men!
Franz Hinterlehner and his father Franz (Senior) in their tidy workshop, worked around this project for more than
1.000 hours, including MDF. 1:1 prototyping (...) and the results, let me say filterless and sincerely, is
absolutely worth ANY money, everywhere, anytime. ELODIS' "TGE" bass horns, with Goto's stuffs to make (new) Gotorama, will possibly be my last speaker system... saying this after only few days, while I'll sure have to fiddle and fine-tune and improve positioning, cabling, crossover... BUT,
hey!, thinking to beloved Japan and cool Shinkansen travelling, "I reached Hakata"!
Thanks to Franz for his skill, knowledge, dedication and friendship... I only hope the TGE's project will give to him the necessary feedback to begin a small, absolutely bespoke production able to reach more music lovers, goodwill people who knows how a grand-piano, a cello, a guitar or a flugelhorn sounds at a concert.
BTW... what about the shivers, folks?!?!
Well, quite amusingly, I felt sick as I was - during last Saturday first listening session in my studio - a victim of a quite worrying two minutes+ long goose-bumps and shivers attack... legs, arms, like a low-voltage underskin, a truly one-of-a-kind experience at home, as it's something absolutely unexpected, unwanted, automatic, and sure, a 120 percent sincere body-language expression... a primitive way to say:
"WOW!" which I know sooooo well, BUT mostly, would say always, coming from live performances - i.e. last evening with Gidon Kremer's violin or Paolo Fresu's horn, Dave Holland's double-bass or Ralph Towner's 12 strings guitar, months ago... it's musical orgasm, bar none!
... and Franz - in Eames-mode - smiles...
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