Tannoy GRF 90
 

I was very lucky to get a pair of this beautiful creation.

It sound supersmooth, but could have more "punch" in my opinion. Its totally another animal than my previous Klipsch Cornwall III that played with "hornynes" and balls.

But the GRF got something special... Im pretty new to the dual concentric driver, so have to give it some burnin time. Hope it gets more "open", the bass goes very very low.

Sensibility on 95db vs 102 from the Cornwall shows on my Accuphase meters :P.

Anyone other having this speakers, or have heard them?


http://www.hifisentralen.no/forumet/...18bfdf958d.jpg

They look awesome! Your system looks fantastic!!

It takes time for the dual concentric drivers to 'bed in' and start to produce decent base.

Having read a number of Japanese Audio blogs on Tannoys (the joy of employing a fluent Japanese speaker- sadly now left the country & touring Korea) they all say it takes up to 500 hours at decent volumes to get Tannoys doing bass.

In fact, some commentators have stated that some Japanese owners of big Tannoys NEVER fully run them in due to the speakers being 'shoehorned' into small apartments. and only played as low to moderate levels- hell I crank up my Tannoys all the time- 15" drivers can energize a room!

Having recently returned from Japan, I can testify to the small roomed apartments that large numbers of Japanese Audiophiles live in.

I recently rewired and up-dated the speaker binding posts on my 20 year old Tannoy Canterburys & it took a good 100 hours to get the deep base back.

I also placed my Tannoys on Granite Plinths which vastly improved the bass as the front heavy Canterburys were sinking into the carpet. See this thread http://www.audioaficionado.org/tanno...e-plinths.html

Also, have a play with the cross-over adjustments. I have my Tannoy Canterbury Cross-over adjustments set at Energy -1.5 which suits my listening room - the Roll Off is set at 'Level'. My contact within Tannoy tells me the 'Roll Off' adjustment is really designed to allow the speaker to cope with 78rpm recordings & should always be set to 'Level' if you are not playing them!


Finally- consider buying the Tannoy supertweeters- I think they are a must have. Haven't listened to the new version, but my ST100's seemed to improve the bass response of the Canterbury's.

Have fun!

Nick

Hi

able to post a video of your setup playing on youtube?

Can do... but not now :)

Also have a issue with one of the speakers, that i think Tannoy will step up and fix asap.

One of the speaker got a "resonant" on one type of bass hz, like a cable inside is starting to vibrate and hitting the driver.. pretty annoying on some tunes... but on "97%" of what i have played i cant recognize it. First time i heard it I belived it was something hanging on the wall that "vibrated", picture or something :P.

Sounds like the voice coil maybe rubbing or the spider is not correctly installed or has sagged.

A friend of mine had a similar issue with one of his speakers, and he was advised to rotate the driver 180 degrees as after 20 or so years the spider was sagging due to gravity (they were HPD drivers). It worked, the vibrating sound went away.

Changed the driver. no more problem :).

http://www.hifisentralen.no/forumet/...r-dsc03304.jpg

Superb, such small room but very high end equipments.

Beautiful system!

yes very VERY beautiful. I am a little jealous, but just a littlel :)

congrats to a lovely system

Always good to see new big Tannoys out in the wild. If the current line was available when I bought my Canterbury SE, the GRF 90 would be atop my list. It looks like a replacement for the Yorkminster SE, but with much improved aesthetics. Too bad it's "limited". The Yorkminster SE had better bass than Canterbury SE, btw.

I've always played mine loud. To be honest mine do display a minor rattle in 1 speaker on certain bass notes, but it's very rare. Sounds like a loose cable wire or other fixture rattling around. With all the acoustic energy coming from those cabinets and exciting god knows what in those "fancy" cabinets (yes these 15" drivers can easily energize a good sized room), it can be excused, so I never bothered to explore further. Been that way since day 1. Actually it may well be the damn variable port system -- good idea, not the best implementation.

That said, I've also experienced a tweeter diaphragm issue that developed over time on a my set of Kensington SE - that was more of a metallic ringing/static distortion on certain notes, and was more annoying. Probably something was going wrong with the voice coil. I got that one fixed with a replacement tweeter diaphragm, which fortunately is very small and simply bolts onto the back of the enormous driver (exact same part for Kensington, Yorkminster, Canterbury, and Westminster SE). I've also heard of the same happening to a pair of Dimension TD12 (same fix, slightly different part), and possibly a TD10. I HOPE I can get an SE diaphragm in the future if I need one again!!

Unfortunately, relatively very few people have experience with these wonderful speakers. Here's mine:
http://cdn.head-fi.org/d/de/900x900p..._1574-002.jpeg

I've always loved listening in very dim/dark lighting and seeing those gold rims outline the huge dual-concentric drivers. Man, I just love Tannoys.