I went to the audio store to listen to some bookshelf speakers

Ok, so that pair in Oregon may be a little scary around the edges, but if I had to do small stand mounts, I'm looking for Reference de capos.
:)

You mentioned DIY Mr. Fud (and I know you have mad woodworking skills) which to me is even scarier because the good bits cost and how do you get to hear them first...but this Seas A26 kit intrigues me. A little bigger paper cone woofer (and the necessarily wider baffle) & textile dome tweeter that are complimentary enough to get away with a nice simple 1st order crossover - kind of down the same path as the de capo. Even reasonably smooth impedance and sensitivity that might just get along very well with el84s.

Crap shoot without hearing them but there is some buzz & posted opinion (FWIW!!) out there on them, even talk of improving imaging (offset tweeters) & bass (larger boxes) if you want to get creative with cabinets. Some even talk about displacing smaller Harbeths with these and their is mention of 'Orangutans'. Yeah, sure, but hey, they are intriguing.
Someone is gonna have to build a pair of those sometime. We've been talking about them for a decade now,
 
I am planning to do this very thing soon. I have the Seas woofers and a pair of Seas t25 excel tweeters that I picked up from Pat McGinty when he was cleaning shop. My plan is to use a pair of ADS L730 cabinets that I have on hand. I’ve always admired the ADS cabinet design and the metal grills are perfect for a household with small children (2yr old and 5 yr old here). I have the stands that angle the speakers back a bit which should help with time alignment. I plan to route out the current motorboard and replace with something that fits the a26 drivers. Cabinet volume is around 2 cu ft, double that of the A26, so I will try it sealed first but I have the Scan Speak variport resistive vents to try as well.

I’m not sure how well the T25 tweeter will work as a substitute for the T35 but it should at least give me a good idea of the potential of the speakers. If it seems like something that will stick around I’ll probably order the T35’s. Their competition will be my Harbeth c7es3’s. If they can equal or better the Harbeth then I’ll sell those and recoup a chunk of change.
 
I was -- fwiw, and not trying to draw you out into the open with an opinion or anything, @ejfud ;) -- pretty favorably impressed with the Polk L-200 demo pair that made its way around the US in late 2019. They were a bit polite, but nicely balanced and very pleasant to listen to. I couldn't (and still can't), though, figure out why they cost as much as they do. They struck me as overpriced by about half for what they were (are).

DSC_6911 (2) by Mark Hardy, on Flickr
DSC_6908 (2) by Mark Hardy, on Flickr
 
The Polks were far and away the favorites to my ears. Polite is a great description of there sound and yes the price seems crazy. I really think I can get to the sound I like for a lot less money going DIY.
 
In terms of kits and... what would you call them?... "almost kit designs" (I was gonna say "bespoke designs" but that's not quite accurate) -- this is a wonderful time to be alive vis-a-vis good, cost-effective "minimonitor" designs that one can whip up for reasonable prices.

The builder/owner of those somewhat customized Paradoxes I mentioned above (one of the northern New England gurus) has about a kilobuck into them, if memory serves -- but they were (are) very, very good.
 
I was -- fwiw, and not trying to draw you out into the open with an opinion or anything, @ejfud ;) -- pretty favorably impressed with the Polk L-200 demo pair that made its way around the US in late 2019. They were a bit polite, but nicely balanced and very pleasant to listen to. I couldn't (and still can't), though, figure out why they cost as much as they do. They struck me as overpriced by about half for what they were (are).

DSC_6911 (2) by Mark Hardy, on Flickr
DSC_6908 (2) by Mark Hardy, on Flickr
whats that funky black thing on the back of the Polks?
 
I always have to remind myself that part of the price of something is the expertise, years of experience, and time put into making it all work, and not just think of the parts cost. I can buy the world's nicest tweeter and woofer and along the way make one of the world's worst speakers out of them.
 
whats that funky black thing on the back of the Polks?

I'm guessing it's an iteration of what Polk used to (and may still) call "power port technology". Some kind of port tuning thingy, I think.
It keeps cats and mice out of the speaker port.
If you press the two speaker backs together you can grill a piece of meat between them and the oil and fat drains off. It's called the George Foreman Port.
My work is done here :)
Yes, it's part and parcel of their port design -- mostly to ensure clearance from whatever's benind the loudspeakers, methinks.
 
I am planning to do this very thing soon. I have the Seas woofers and a pair of Seas t25 excel tweeters that I picked up from Pat McGinty when he was cleaning shop. My plan is to use a pair of ADS L730 cabinets that I have on hand. I’ve always admired the ADS cabinet design and the metal grills are perfect for a household with small children (2yr old and 5 yr old here). I have the stands that angle the speakers back a bit which should help with time alignment. I plan to route out the current motorboard and replace with something that fits the a26 drivers. Cabinet volume is around 2 cu ft, double that of the A26, so I will try it sealed first but I have the Scan Speak variport resistive vents to try as well.

I’m not sure how well the T25 tweeter will work as a substitute for the T35 but it should at least give me a good idea of the potential of the speakers. If it seems like something that will stick around I’ll probably order the T35’s. Their competition will be my Harbeth c7es3’s. If they can equal or better the Harbeth then I’ll sell those and recoup a chunk of change.
You will probably find This thread relevant. A couple of sources have indicated that the A26 driver is best in a sealed enclosure of 1.5 cubic feet or so. The aperiodic enclosure of the kit and the original A25 is a compromise to allow for a smaller enclosure.

Louis Chochos of Omega builds a couple versions of this kit that are beautifully built and are 1.5 cu ft designs. The Dyna Ten XRS recalls the Devore O/93 while the Dyna Ten intentionally adopts the proportions of the JBL L100. The latter includes custom Deer Creek Audio stands. The speakers aren’t cheap, but the cost for the parts kit and stands is about $1,500 shipped.
 
Thanks for the links, I think I’ve read all of those while researching this build. I already have the Deer Creek stands and the ADS 730’s are near identical proportions to the JBL L100’s. My plan is to make the motorboard removable and build one sealed and one with the aperiodic vent to compare. I also have some of the Mundorf AMT’s that would make an interesting tweeter option. It looks like Omega are using the T25 tweeter rather than the T35 so that’s encouraging. My main obstacle at this point is carving out the time to make it all happen.
 
I have always wanted to hear a pair of these. Looked at that ad when it popped and could not get past this picture of the wiring.

I am not OCD about things but what is going on there?

View attachment 32025
This seller seems to have used copper for the jumpers here - so at very least it will sound way better than the rubbish bridge-plates many speaker manufacturers supply for this purpose. Yes, it looks a bit rough, but the speakers look fine, so I would not let it bother me.

Besides, this is a nice Sunday afternoon mini-project... Make new jumpers using your favorite copper wire! My pick would be solid core Oxygen-free Copper with a PE jacket.

I recently did just this, for our KLIPSCH RP-160M. What a difference it made getting the Klipsch junk-metal jumpers out of the signal path!
(Read as: Nice lift in sound quality...)
 
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Ok, so that pair in Oregon may be a little scary around the edges, but if I had to do small stand mounts, I'm looking for Reference de capos.
:)

You mentioned DIY Mr. Fud (and I know you have mad woodworking skills) which to me is even scarier because the good bits cost and how do you get to hear them first...but this Seas A26 kit intrigues me. A little bigger paper cone woofer (and the necessarily wider baffle) & textile dome tweeter that are complimentary enough to get away with a nice simple 1st order crossover - kind of down the same path as the de capo. Even reasonably smooth impedance and sensitivity that might just get along very well with el84s.

Crap shoot without hearing them but there is some buzz & posted opinion (FWIW!!) out there on them, even talk of improving imaging (offset tweeters) & bass (larger boxes) if you want to get creative with cabinets. Some even talk about displacing smaller Harbeths with these and their is mention of 'Orangutans'. Yeah, sure, but hey, they are intriguing.

Where were you reading about larger boxes and offset tweeters?

I am pretty sure I could make a pair of Ref 3A De Capos pop locally by just purchasing this kit.

Someone is gonna have to build a pair of those sometime. We've been talking about them for a decade now,

You two have been talking about this kit for a decade?
 
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source: Polk announced the "Reserve series" of loudspeakers (I don't know the Urquelle of those images)

There's a flurry of info on this new and seemingly "priced right" line of Polk loudspeakers, including videos, all over teh webz... pretty much everywhere but Polk. Polk's own website does have some info, but their retailers seem to have more. Kind of a weird roll-out (especially with their forum's having gone down, perhaps permanently, just before the "Reference Series" was introduced) -- but if that R200 sounds like the "Legend Series" L200 at roughly half the price... well... it might be well worthy of consideration.
 
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