Good luck, Al. For upgrade ideas just follow my Duetta Interstella thread from years back on this forum. Search will bring it up.
If you have the budget, what I did with a restorer was chuck everything away apart from the magnet arrays and rebuild everything to a higher spec.
Don't worry about neo magnets. Whilst it allows lower power amps, quality high power amps are easily available. Also, the Apogee magnets were huge and stuck to a heavy perforated high mass back plate. Lots of mass is what you want for sonic results i.e. it keeps the speaker inert. But it's a pain in the arse when you need to move them.
I also think I documented stuff like bass clamp upgrades, but in different threads. Those clamps mass damp the bass panels in a manner MDF ones cannot achieve. Well worth it.
I think there are some excellent design choices made by Florian and Daniele. But TBH get those Divas sorted properly and their designs don't actually sound massively better. Their bigger designs will give scale beyond a Diva, however. But Duetta/Diva sized speakers give decent scale and better cohesion that the biggest Clarisys.
It's just physics and no one can beat its laws. All they can do is make various design choices to come up with a decent compromise. I am pretty sure a well sorted pair of Divas will be within the top one percent of speakers out there. In 2025.
If you have the budget, what I did with a restorer was chuck everything away apart from the magnet arrays and rebuild everything to a higher spec.
Don't worry about neo magnets. Whilst it allows lower power amps, quality high power amps are easily available. Also, the Apogee magnets were huge and stuck to a heavy perforated high mass back plate. Lots of mass is what you want for sonic results i.e. it keeps the speaker inert. But it's a pain in the arse when you need to move them.
I also think I documented stuff like bass clamp upgrades, but in different threads. Those clamps mass damp the bass panels in a manner MDF ones cannot achieve. Well worth it.
I think there are some excellent design choices made by Florian and Daniele. But TBH get those Divas sorted properly and their designs don't actually sound massively better. Their bigger designs will give scale beyond a Diva, however. But Duetta/Diva sized speakers give decent scale and better cohesion that the biggest Clarisys.
It's just physics and no one can beat its laws. All they can do is make various design choices to come up with a decent compromise. I am pretty sure a well sorted pair of Divas will be within the top one percent of speakers out there. In 2025.
