My interest in Audio and HiFi goes back to the early eighties. Started with a cheap amp from Realistic and some speakers from Warfdale. During the eighties I bought and sold a lot of different equipment like the B&W DM2/II, Kef Cadenza, Teac tape deck, Denon tape deck, Denon turntable, Denon CD-1500, Onkyo A-7090 amp. Finally I bought a pair of IMF TLS80MKII which remained my favorites for 20 years. Together with my Onkyo amp and Denon CD-1500, they formed my set for a long period. Form 1992 till 2001 my hobby became a little bit a sleeping hobby, mainly enjoying my set with no changes or investments (like a good marriage).

In 2002, my hobby started to itch again. I bough a set of IMF Super compact, and tied them to my Onkyo, together with my TLS80. Also I bought back my old DM2, and started to listen to the different sounds. Early 2003 I bought my current Marantz SR14mkII, DV17, and SA12S1. The TLS80 and Super compact formed the front and rear channel speakers and I bought a Dynaudio Audience centre speaker.

In June 2003 I bought a pair of IMF’s flagship the SACM. Unfortunately the cabinets where in a poor condition so my first idea was to veneer them again, but what more could I do to upgrade the system? After a couple of brainstorm sessions with Ruud Jansen from Speakerland (Netherlands) I decided to pick up the glove and fight the dragon.

I took out all Drivers and had the bass and mid base drivers checked up at Total Speaker Repair in the Netherlands. The mids and bass drivers needed to be centered again. Meanwhile I was working on the cabinets. The cabinet for the “low section” was striped and I glued an entire new MDF 30mm thick cabinet around the original one and finished them with Elesgoflex veneer. The cabinets for the midrange was completely new build with the exact internal dimensions as the original.

And now the tricky part, the adventure of making them a 3-way system. As I have no background in electronics, this challenge is even bigger than it would be with appropriate knowledge. I totally relied on the expertise of Speakerland. Based on the original filters and original schemes, Speakerland was able to design new filters. The low and mid filters are unchanged. We only build them again with better components, but with same specs.

Also each and every filter is now built on a separate PCB.

The real challenge as you will understand was the high filter end the choice of the driver.

Well my choice was to exchange the original Celestion HF1300 and Celestion HF200 for the Scanspeak 6000 Neodymium tweeter. Speakerland designed a new high filter and the system was measured in their acoustic “dead room”. In total it took 3 sessions of measuring and changing the filter. At the end graphs showed a clean flat curve with no real peaks. Now I am really satisfied with the result. The bass is better under control and goes deep, very deep (16HZ). The mid gained transparency and the stage performance of the set improved considerable. The high is very brilliant and transparent and has a better power handling compared with the original Celestions. Also the tilt and slope function of the original filters are removed to avoid any “pollution” in the circuits.

Furthermore I re-wired my old TLS80 with Siltech cables.

Recently I bought a pair of IMF HPCM speakers. I removed the 128/20 and put in place the Kef B139. My son is very happy with the HPCM’s and I have a set of spare bass drivers for my SACM’s.

My Speakers and their components:

IMF SACMBass driver IMF/Elac 128/20

Mid bass IMF/Elac 5/36

Tweeter Scanspeak 6000

TLS80Bass driver Kef B139 sp1044

Mid bass Kef B-110 sp1057

Tweeter Celestion HF1300

Super tweeter Celestion HF2000

Super compactBass driver IMF/Elac 8/30

Mid bass IMF/Elac 4/140F

Tweeter IMF/Elac TW1500F

HPCMBass driver IMF/Elac 128/20 (now B139)

Mid bass IMF/Elac 4HM\L0806

Tweeter Celestion HF2000

Well it was quite an adventure for me, did cost a small fortune and quite some sleepless nights. Are there better speakers? Yes, no doubts but I had a lot of fun and a great result and that’s what counts.

My ultimate dream is to lay my hands on a pair of TDL Reference speakers. Anyone with the “Golden Tip” will get an award from me .

Cheers,

Cor.