Rogers LS3/5a

[TurnerGuy]

1975 was the punch card era.

They still had some punched cards, and paper tape, being used at BBC Research Department in 1987/1988 ! In the service planning department there was a system that digitised the signal strength contours that engineers marked on paper maps when out surveying - a mouse type thing was manually moved around the countour and a button generated a reading to be printed out on paper tape. This paper tape was then read into a reader on a PDP-11 and transferred over to a VAX. It was also backed up on to punched cards and stored !
This got replaced by a system I worked on that was based on an Atari ST 🙂
The room the digitisation was done in was next door to one of the sound department rooms with some LS5/8s in - to bring this back to an audio context...

 

[TurnerGuy]

A friend of mine has Gold Badge Falcons and they are very well made trustfully recreated very clean sounding speakers. Their upper bass bump makes them sound bigger than the cabinet size but their HF is bit too hot for modern sources in my view.
He also has the Stirling V2 BBC licenced 11Ω which is a clone with treated SEAS woofers but keeps standard response and thin wall cabinet. Maybe not a true LS3/5a but it has a more natural balance. Possibly due to its smoother Scanspeak tweeter. Not as transparent as the Falcon 15Ω GB though.

If you want smooth and transparent then try the new Stirling V3.2 🙂

 

[TurnerGuy]

If you are after the BBC monitor sound with good bass look at the Spendor SP1. It is part of the BBC monitor lineage and successor to the Spendor BC1. Can be had for under $600US which is usually way under price of LS3/5a speakers from that era. They are ported. I have a pair and love them. Glenn

I tried some SP1s but was underwhelmed with my Quad 707 amps, but the Harbeth M30.1 sounds very much like a large LS3/5a - I had some Cicable external crossovers on my 11ohm LS3/5as and preferred these in the end, but it was very close and the Harbeths obviously have better bass