Hi all,
I had the pleasure of speaking with @Ron Resnick today. Ron, I must say that I've met many enthusiasts over my over 30 years in this hobby but I don't think I've spoken to anyone as gracious and engaging.
Ron encouraged me to introduce my system to the group in a little more detail after having a great discussion around his choices around the building of his new system- which should be--- absolutely fabulous.
While certainly not state of the art anymore, I am a little reticent to post about them among a group with such high standards - I believe that the Beveridge Electrostatics still perform at a very high level of resolution and do things that are still not approachable by many transducers today at any price.
I wrote, a little while ago, a short story on my speakers & system - which have a bit of personal history- to a member of the local audio group.
Here's the story:
The Beveridge Model III speakers are the last true wave launch full range speakers the Harold Beveridge produced in the early 1980’s. Beveridge was a Canadian that studied Engineering at McGill University in Montreal and was hired by Raytheon to design Radar systems and electronic counter measure systems for the US military programs.
He was a genius. In his retirement from Military work he used what he learned from radar wave technology and adapted it to his love of electrostatic speakers.
I heard the very same speakers I own today at local audiophile’s place when they were current over 35 years ago. He ran them with an Audio Research D79 and SP 6 with a Goldmund Studio Turntable. ( this system 35 years ago would give most current systems a run for their money!) This was the height of state of the art at the time.
When that needle dropped to the record way back then I knew that everything I was trying to accomplish with tube electronics ( not cool back then) and even my Acoustat X’s and model 3’s was a waste of time. They had left an impression on me that I could not duplicate for over 30 years of trying along with listening at dozens of audio shows and multi-kilobuck systems .
Through chance, those speakers were still local and were sold just one more time to another audiophile that the original owner had kept in touch with. Once I heard they were available I had to have them at almost any cost. The second owner was in his early eighties and he was happy to have them go to someone who could appreciate them.
Beveridge’s original efforts were constant charge electrostatic panels where the sound waves were forced through a wave guide to disperse at 180 degrees across the room. These are not dipoles so the room does not impact the sound launch from the speakers a la Martin Logan, Sound Labs, Acoustat etc. The speakers point at each other directly facing!
These panels were fed by dedicated built in servo Output Transformerless (OTL) amps that directly charged the panels at +/- 2000vdc to modulate the audio signal. No step up transformers to step up the audio signal as in Martin Logans, Sound Labs or Quads etc. The audio signal was fed directly from the plates of the tubes to the stators of the electrostatic panels with no transformer losses on the speaker nor audio output transformer for the tube amplifiers.
The signal could not be clearer. Other added benefit: lab grade silicon high voltage wires to carry the polarizing voltage to stators as well as the audio signal that rides on it. No expensive speaker cable trials anymore.
The cost of these units in the late 70’s was over $15K – hideously expensive. Beveridge was forced to eliminate the integral OTL amps and develop a step up transformer based full range model to compete at a lower price point. These are the Model IIIs that I have.
The Model IIIs have two 10” woofers upward and downward firing in a hemholtz configuration with a 6’6” line source electrostatic element in front with a wave guide to disperse the sound about 180 degrees.
To Beveridge’s credit, although the Model IIIs were a compromise to his original design,- no OTL amps- they had the same type of step up transformer as all electrostatics have- he designed the unit so that the elements of the electrostatic panel and the woofers could be driven by 1 amp or bi-amplified with an internal crossover or bi-amplified with an external crossover.
Not leaving well enough alone. I abandoned the internal woofers and deployed a pair of modern subs with internal amp with 200wpc each on the subs.
Subwoofer technology has advanced tremendously in 30 years.
Roger Modjeski who was a young engineer at the time working with Beveridge designed a Direct Drive tube amplifier to eliminate the internal cross over and step up of the Model IIIs .
It is passively 1 st order high pass limited with a single copper V cap to allow everything from about 100Khz up to the panels and I feed the woofers everything below that through a second output.
So effectively, I have the electrostatic panels driven by +/- 2kv directly with no step and no audio output transformer from the tube amps. The only other amp I have had that approached this purity was the Berning ZOTL 270.
If you’ve ever heard an electrostatic panel driven by an OTL amp you’ll get ½ the story… the other half is that the step up in the speaker is eliminated as well- big difference in resolution and clarity.
Pretty complex but I am optimizing it and it sounds real nice. The difference with the Beveridge is its ability to hang an instrument in space it is a bit uncanny. Add this to the low mass diaphragm of an electrostatic -no step up transformers or audio output transformers of any kind and you get a very pure output.
The heart of the analog system is the 150lb 3 box Aesthetix Io Eclipse with volume controls.
No required line stage no step up transformers no extra cables for greater purity- it drives low output cartridges no problem. I have spent years optimizing the tube choices it is exceptionally quiet.
For up front transducers I’ve have added the Clearaudio Goldfinger Statement- I also have on hand the Lyra Atlas, Lyra Etna SL and the Koetsu RSP.
The table is the Brinkman La Grange with Kuzma 4pt and Brinkman 12.1 The room is about 18x 40 purpose built with 9 1/2’ ceilings.
Thanks for listening to this long story of this relatively modest system by today's standards. Even though the Beveridges are over 30 years old they are still widely coveted today and many have them in top class systems across the world. Very few of them were produced as they were built by hand but those that survived still make some great music today.
