musical, flexable, great value

could use some bass extention

Like many of the reviewers I have owned my Ditton 110's for close to twenty years. I bought these when I was in high school in 1984. These speakers have always done a great job with any type of music. They have also handled their share of abuse while my Yahmaha DX7 was wired to them. I've just purchased an Onkyo 777 and will probably upgrade my speakers to Paradigm Studio 100's. I think I will keep my Ditton's as surronds. They are still great little speakers to listen to today. They have a nice tweeter, warm sound, and decent bass punch for their size. For the amount of enjoyment I have had with these speakers, it was $400 well spent.

Similar Products Used:

pro ac, advent

Good quality drive units (bolted to cabinet), warm sound, highly tweakable and all this for £50 Sterling!

Tone control circuit (full of sound degrading resistors), thin internal wiring with block and tag connectors and pretty thin chipboard cabinet.

Celestion 551

I've had these for just over 2 months now and am extremely happy with them and with the improvement each "tweak" I make to them brings.

They were picked up for the miserly sum of £50 from a lady who had owned them from new.

When I first connected them up to the Audiolabs I was very impressed with the quality (and quantity) of sound. Prolonged listening, however revealed that the bass was overwhelming the mid and high frequencies. My instinct directed me to the crossover, in particular the capacitors.

I tested the caps and found that the values were all over the place (this is usually the case in vintage equipment as the caps dry out through time) and this was responsible for the lack of midrange and treble. This is a common problem and many owners are not aware that the frequencies have changed as they have lived with the sound and have become used to it through the years.

Anyway, I digress, I replaced the capacitors with a mixture of electrolytics and polypropelynes and all I can say is "WOW!!!!" The mid and treble is now a lot more prolific and even the bass has tightened up. The warm "easy listen" is now a warm "sit up and take notice listen"... there is so much more detail and spaciousness.. not studio monitor quality but not far off.

I am so impressed with the potential of these 551's that I have decided to really go to town on them and see just what they are capable of! I will be reporting on the progress at http://celestion551.50megs.com

To date I have just uploaded a few pics of the crossover renovation which has worked wonders. My course of action over the next few weeks which will be uploaded to the site is as follows:

1: Complete rewire.. replace the existing thin wire with something a bit heavier guage. Hard wire (solder) the entire circuit. This should reap major rewards!

2: Substitute the foam damping with long haired wool and "deflex" panels.

3: If there are improvements thus far... Bypass the tone control circuit (horrible and unecessary sound degrading area which is full of resistors and other nasties)

4: All being well with the bypass of the tone control.... 2 coats of Dammar varnish on woofers. (this stuff works wonders on any paper cone, Japanese audiophiles by it by the gallon) Search for Dammar and you will see what I mean.

5: Now we have to strengthen that awful chipboard enclosure!. Plenty of UVPA adhesive and some MDF bracing should do the trick... (this is where you let your imagination run riot) I have a honeycomb structure in mind and shall upload the plans to the site.

6: OK... theoretically We now have an awesome sounding pair of speakers? If this "is" the case it will be out with the sander and on with the varnish .. may even veneer that horrible brown front panel!

If this is "not the case" then £50 for the speakers and £50 renovating them (£100) has got to be classed as a damned good waste of time!!!! An enjoyable waste of time :o)
A night in the pub here (bar) is £40!!!! (20 pints which is UK mans standard per evening!)

As you can probably tell.. I have had my 20 pints for the night!!

The reviews I give below are for the speakers after the X over mod... not as they were when I bought them.

Mike.

Similar Products Used:

Linn Keilidhs
Wilmslow audio Elegance
Tannoy Sterlings
B&W DM 603
Ruark Prologues

Extreme frequency range. Excellent soundfield. Great sound imaging. Commercial type reliability

Avalibility. Problems with the grills

I have owned my Celstion Ditton 66's for over 20 years now. I bought them for $900 back in 1977. They were one of the best speakers you could buy at the time. Today, they still can compete with similar type speaker units. They are very neutral sounding, have excellent range, and overall, sound fantastic. These speaker have stood the test of time and have won. Orginally I used them in my recording booth, but now they sit in my living room. Other than the availability and a small problem with the grill clips, they have no real downfalls

Similar Products Used:

B&W 600 series 2
Celestion UL10
Legacy Audio Classics
Paradigm reference studio/100

Sound and power handling

takes a bit of current to drive them and at low level the tweeters "seem" to distort. wierd ringing sound when music is played sometimes and I mean wierd, I have actually gone to the phone to check if it was ringing!

Ditton 662 speakers from Celestian.
These are great speakers. I have only had one tweeter blow on them since 1980. I used to play music fairly loud prior to marriage! I play guitar so I would crank the tunes and play along. Some of the current spearker technology still does not soud as good or melow as these speakers. Very good base response to for a 12" speaker.
The only thing I would change is the woofer should have been a 15" then they would be perfect. As far as I know they did not make them - these are as good as they get.

Similar Products Used:

small set of ditton bookshelf kinda speakers - model unknown