Intro to the elusive Celestion Ditton 88. Quite a rare species. I've seen one pair (now 2, as of yesterday) of the 88 for sale as well as one pair or KEF KM1 in my adult life. The KM1 were for sale for about £15K, I will have them one day. On board amps, 4x 15" woofers and a 400W tweeter per channel! Max dB output astonishing for the '1980s check 'em out!
I bought the 88 pair (for less). I've been looking for a pair for 20 years.
Apart from the 33s, I have had all the other Dittons before. The 551 is very good by the way. The 88 is not to be erroneously confused with the Ditton 66 series 2 (a redesigned 662 with a 13" and a passive at the rear), or the Ditton 662 (13" with passive at the front). The 88 has a 148 litre enclosure and two parallel driven 12" woofers with a unique midrange and Tweeter*.
My first pair of speakers was a pair of Wharfedale Dovedale 3 when I was about 10 years old. Early intro into a 12" woofer. Earliest had the woofer inside and the back of the cab was screwed on. Later the back was fixed and the woofer was screwed in from the front, even later they had veneer at the front. Be careful for seized voice coils. The later had green foam around the edge, which was comical as I thought his was the gasket for the mounting inside, if you have some now, do they still have a gasket inside?
In about 1992 when I was 14, my dad (who was running KEF Coda 3 in the living room with a lovely short depth Sansui receiver) spotted a pair of Ditton 66 in the then Yellow Pages / Free ads. In High Wycombe, we went and bought them for £100. I had them and loved them for years until they were stolen with the TV in a burglary. I remember in 1998 I bought a new flagship Yamaha DSP-A1 5.1 amplifier and remember all my friends coming round to watch Eric Claptons' Unplugged DVD in 5.1, well 5.0 at the time. Pretty spesh.
The 66 says on paper it can go down to 18 Hz, this though needs a big room, and if I recall that was also written at -6dB. Caused in a way by the cabinet volume and passive radiator back wave. At that time car stereos and Jungle music with Earthquake subs were becoming my interest and the bass was far higher than normal speakers were made to make then. Home cinema also pushed the sub adoption.
Early DnB, atmospheric, futuristic, flying with promises, included some beautiful bass lines for the 66s!
Try 'Close your eyes and listen' by Chameleon here: • Just Close Your Eyes & Listen close your eyes whilst you listen and get everyone out of the house, and hopefully have a detached house!) Also wonderful stereo synth left right fluttering. From a great lesser known Good Looking album, Blame Presents Logical Progression Level 2) Try: • 1.01. Visions Of Mars & • shogun / artemis - nautilus
Also a new modern. Try ' • BIOS & • Moul'y & Lucida - The Abyss
I always thought the 66 was the pinnacle so had a few pairs over the years. At the same time, I had 662, 44, and 25. The 25 and 44 have good bass if you can't get a 66. The 66 doesn't mate well with other speakers (if they are set to play bass) or active subwoofers unless you can vary the phase in more ways than 0 and 180 degrees. If I recall the crossover is 270 degrees in a 66.
Later I then I learned of the 88. I bought tweeters 15 years ago from a guy on eBay who knew people from Celestion. He congratulated me on either having the 88s or the *10s. I said I had neither Yet! But I could dream. I bought the 4 woofers and the rest minus the cabinets from a nice fellow from Bordeaux, France. He kindly drove the parts to my parents house which was about 2 hours from Bordeaux. Many years have passed. I then luckily acquired a near mint pair. I am attempting a new cabinet build project to end up with two pairs 40 years apart. The wood inside the originals is stamped April 1987.
The tweeter is a T3916 (D88) / T4029 (in the *10). Reference tweeter, alloy one piece dome used only in the D88 and the *10. The midrange is unique to the 88, T3968. The woofers are unique, or they are shared with the System 6000, they have a coil resistance of 11 ohms. Please let me know the woofer number for those in the System 6000?. The Woofer here is T3967. They look similar to those in a 25, 45, 66, but they have different magnets and voice coil resistance and the baskets are normally natural alloy colour, not black. The cone is more doped and shiny in the 88.
The cabinets are being made, we will see more in episode 2. For the crossovers in the video I want to experiment with new caps and try it on the bench first. Also I then want to convert and move the OE cross over to enable Bi Amp and Bi Wiring. I will connect it with two 1/4" jack mono plugs so they entry points in the back plate resemble the OE entry points.
Информация по комментариям в разработке