Lumley lm2

justshoemarkjustshoemark
in Loudspeakers
Hi all have just pick a pair up for a still. But need some front grills any one had any dealings with these. Many thanks.

Comments

  • cj66cj66
    Those were pricey in their day! I've only ever seen a pair, they were at a customers house that I was delivering some ATCs to.
    I was unfamiliar with the design so asked. The owner said they had served him well but he wanted to change.
    After hearing the ATCs on his own system he was less complimentary of them!

    Looking around the net there seems to be very polarised opinions on them. I wonder how complex the xovers were for all those drivers?

    Get that SECA on there and see what happens! (I assume you already know that they are fully working).
  • AntiCrapAntiCrap
    Check tweeters some die
  • justshoemarkjustshoemark
    Tweeters are all good col.
    Dose anyone no tje spec of these as I can't find much about them.
  • PACPAC
    I used to have the lumley Lampros 3ABs which were similar in design (ie in drivers used) but know that with all their designs they aimed to make a fairly undemanding load for driving amplifiers, being fairly biased towards valve amplification.

    Drive units look like Morel mid ranges and those plus the tweeters (including upper HF ribbons) look to be the same as used in the Lampros speakers.  They suffer from three main issues which are phase shift with rising frequency, field lobing shifts and don't work very well near field due to the multi-driver configuration (you can clearly hear the shifts between drive units which affects clarity and focus near field).

    They were designed for listening out of near field from a minimum of about 2 or 3m and further back and really do need to be toed inwards so their axis is on the listener or you will suffer from horizontal field lobing and phase shifts. This is best demonstrated by taking a recording of a female singer who signs a few bars over an extended range from mids up to lower HF.  You will hear her voice appear to shift across the sound stage as the steps in off axis response between drivers becomes apparent unless toed in towards you.  They may have dealt with this better in the LM2s than the Lampros speakers.  It may only be apparent on some recordings but it will be clearly audible.  Part of the reason is that the linearity of those morel domed mids is only over a very narrow band and they have a pronounced hump in response, plus are not the smoothest off-axis (they are decent sounding though within their bands). This makes crossover transfer function really difficult to design for linearity and Lumley never seemed to quite manage to cure this it in some of their designs.  Also, the use of twin dome tweeters to cover the holes in off axis response from the upper mid range then passing over to the ribbon creates yet another stepped response. This, combined with the very complex phase integration at play makes for rather a disjointed speaker performance but they did work hard at ironing out of much of the problem areas as they could.  I had mine for a year or two and thoroughly enjoyed them despite the challenging design that Lumley faced with them!

    For all of that, they are (at least I think so) an enjoyable listen and can move a reasonable amount of air too.
  • justshoemarkjustshoemark
    Yea I am enjoying them so far. Do you no if they are 4 or 8 ohms as I find the seca finds it hard to drive them the tops break up. Bit with my claymore they seem easy to drive and don't break up. The bass is awesome and the mid is 2 4 inch cones not the dome type. Thank you for your reply.
  • PACPAC
    edited November 2015
    The Seca isn't really rated to drive these if the 15 watt version as they need more watts up them, at least 50 watts SS is recommended. I had this discussion with John Jefferies (the designer) some years ago, and his larger monitors including the LM and Lampros series were designed to be matched with his higher powered valve amps of the time, but he did tell me that the Lampros 300 could be driven adequately with the Lumley ST40 valve amp which was what I used at that time (40 watts push-pull).  You are in danger of driving the amp into clipping and damaging the tweeters if much below this.  Hearing distortion in the upper reaches is a classic tell tale sign and they wont last long if pushed to any volume using a low powered amp.  

    The mids are the 3 inch domes, as in the photos.  They are not cones. the cone drivers are the bass drivers.
  • justshoemarkjustshoemark
    No the mids are kevlar cones 4 inch. And then there's two 1.5 inch dome tweeters a ribbon super tweeter and I think an 8 inch woofer.
    I throught it was down to power have to see if I can get a bigger out put of the seca.
  • AntiCrapAntiCrap
    Justin, have you removed C4 on the SECA amp PCB
  • PACPAC
    Ah...so they don't look like these then:

  • justshoemarkjustshoemark
    No don't look like that. Abit like it. Lol
    And no I haven col.
  • justshoemarkjustshoemark
    So Colin
    What will taking the c4 out do.
  • justshoemarkjustshoemark
    Just found out there lumley lms 500
  • PACPAC
    That makes more sense.  The LM2s are as shown in the link.

    These were my old pair:

    image
  • uglymusicuglymusic
    They look like beasts.
  • PACPAC
    edited November 2015
    They were very good David and could rattle the neighbours' windows with the bass that they produced.  Unfortunately, they were also a little flawed.  There wasn't a great deal of thought in general for the Lampros series of speakers (and other Lumley monitors) to the lobing patterns created by the choice of drivers and their orientation and the crossover design, which I suspect was done purely by ear and on axis (at a guess, actual phase response wouldn't have been great either!).  As a result, they had several very large waists in the off axis response, so extreme for the mid range that female vocals always sounded like the singer was moving across the stage when the pitch off the voice rose!  Of course, this was only apparent of you sat off axis, as toed towards the listener they were very good indeed.  I suspect that a lot of this had to do with the use of a ribbon tweeter which has very poor off axis response and in this case, I suspect was run quite low.  On axis, it was exceptional.

    Probably one of the nicest sounding speakers I've come across when correctly positioned and listen to in one fixed spot.  Listen too close (within a few metres) and things started to fall apart a bit as you might imagine but they were not designed for near field use. Cabinets were exceptional. In this case, solid Rosewood (not a ply board to be seen) and heavily internally braced and damped.  Damping was as for a sealed box, ie completely stuffed.  The crossover occupied most of one side of the enclosure and was a very complex point to point wired design. There was also a full range driver (actually not full range but covered upper bass to mid range) on the rear for "ambience" together with its own attenuator.

    They were curved on all surfaces to control standing wave formation and would have cost a small fortune to build.  In the early 1990s I think they retailed at about £5,500.  You probably wouldn't get a lot of change now out of that if you had to build them!
Sign In or Register to comment.