I’ve recently purchased a pair of Tannoy Legacy Cheviot and paired it with a Sugden Masterclass IA-4. I’m very happy with the sound overall. I installed some IsoAcoustic Gaia II to raise them up a little bit to help with the HF. Does anyone else use these speakers, I would love to hear your experiences.
I'm not a Legacy series owner, although we've started looking at both the Eaton and Cheviot lines for a purchase in 1-2 years. I'd love to hear your and others' feedback on these.
I actually had 15” HPD Berkeley before but was forced to sell them due to downsizing my home. They are fantastic speakers, but their pepper pot tweeter is very bright and took a lot of time to tone down. I must have tried 10 different amplifiers before finally settling one Clones Audio. The Legacy series (across the board) now features a tulip waveguide tweeter which is much smoother and I’ve actually found that I need to use a somewhat bright amplifier in order to get a balanced performer. Another difference is cabinet construction, these 12” Cheviots actually weigh more than the 15” Berkeley so there’s a lot less cabinet resonance with the series. All in all I’m pretty happy, but definitely surprised by the total change in HF.
I listen to just about anything, from classical to hard metal, electronica and acoustic music. The reason I like Tannoys is because they sound great with all music.
I have the Legacy Eaton and a friend of mine have the Legacy Cheviot. We both love them! Not sure if one should add the wood wax on them when purchased new? Have you done so? Fully agree they sound great on everything and never create fatigue. Focus is on music experience and I've never had speakers creating such connections to music before.
That’s wondrous to me, because you could regulate the Berkeley Tweeters in a wide range. Still, when Harman took over Tannoy in 1974 (I believe), that created a lot of unhappiness and the move of the factory to Scotland even more, so they lost most of their skilled workers. This resulted in a unsatisfactory manufacturing quality for some years, which also led to very uneven drilled pepper pots, out of spec components and not good crossovers. Might have been a reason, I have seen pictures of terrible pepper pots. Tired foam surrounds may also have played a role. Generally the pepper pots are seen as the superior tweeters. Have heard the new Arden, Cheviot and Eaton intensely and they are indeed excellent speakers with perfect treble, very well done but expected for the price. Compared to old Tannoy they have way more slam, they are nearly modern speakers now - “nearly” meant in a good way. Definitely superior to most other Designs out there including Harbeth. Still for my case I wouldn’t change them against my 1970 Golds (12inch), that’s why I had this intense testing. There is something golden about these old designs, something so coherent and right (driven by a stone old tube amp), that they are absolutely competitive with a few mods (new better crossover, speaker back slightly open - and to be tested, more weight for the cabinets and a Heil AMT Supertweeter, if my back ever allows this). In the old times (for some companies even today) cabinet vibrations were a means of construction, so a direct comparison of weight doesn’t mean much. If you place vintage Tannoy freestanding, you will get less bass than you expect though, they are made to be at or near a wall. Also amp choice plays a big role, the damping factor should be max. 20 or around there, otherwise they sound like dead wood and the tweeter gets dominant. General vintage role: construction date of speaker +/-10 years should be the amp age. Tube amps generally work better ...
This reminds me of something as well. I have vintage Cheviots, which are without a doubt the best speakers I have ever owned. I run them with tubes (EL-84’s or 6V6). When I first got them I removed the wood footers since they had some water damage anyway. I sprung for some nice custom made metal stands, which give me the ability to spike the tops and the bottoms and get them up off the ground about 8 inches, which is perfect. They sound **** on these stands. Worse when spiked. And I believe it very much has something to do with these stands helping to damp the cabinet resonances, which I believe are part of the design. Now I have them up on wooden boxes, which look crap but sound much better.
Indeed this is really an issue. When I got the Tannoy, I set them up like normal speakers well off the walls and on spiked devices. And wondered where the bass was ... not much for 12inch. Then I started reading. Very near the wall on 2 solid Teak blocks did the job beautifully then. The loosened back made it better again, they must breathe. The old times with hard coated paper surrounds and Alnico magnets were simply different.
I run my Legacy Cheviots with a Bryston b60r as a preamp into a pair of Dynaco mkiii. The positioning is basically according to the Cardas speaker placement method with some tweaks to better fit my room with surrounding furniture etc. The sound is awesome! I have no wishes or thoughts whatsoever to change my speakers. Music of choice is mainly jazz at the moment but my record collection spans from the mentioned jazz to Death Metal.
I did have the greatest results using Clones Audio 55PM mono blocks. I literally tried everything with those Berkeley’s (1976). Luxman CL35MKII w/ MQ60C Leak Stereo 20 w/ Varislope Air Tight AM201h Exposure 3010S2d Rogue Cronus Magnum II And a whole bunch more, the Clones & the Luxman were the only ones that played really nice. As for surrounds and things like that, mine were a single owner pair with all the surrounds replaced and upgraded wiring. I left the crossovers alone because they tested quite well. As for stands, I had customs ones made as shown below. Don’t get me wrong, by the time I was ‘finished’ with the system it was a dream. I was forced to sell them due to a downsize. Here’s a photo of the old Berkeley’s with custom stands using Omicron footers. Here’s one of the Cheviot Legacy in my new home, and yes, I’ve used the wax, it does wonders and smells fantastic!
Congratz to the Cheviots, these are fantastic speakers and would be my choice as well, when I would buy new. Great schtuff!
I am exploring options to raise them up, currently using IsoAcoustic GAIA II, but ideally I’d like to see them about 8” higher.
Inexpensive solution for trying now: angle them a bit backward, many speakers benefit from that Or let somebody do 2 solid blocks of oak wood of their size Have seen some Tannoy owners use that
The last time I wanted a simple oak platform I ended up with a perfectly matched stand that cost over $1500! To be fair, they were beautiful, still regret selling them.
Uhm, I am a cheapo and my 4 wooden teakwood bars have cost me 120 haha Still, the pain of the high price is short, whereas the satisfaction from the quality lasts very long
I’ll contribute, since I was looking for helpful information before purchasing my Tannoy Legacy speakers. I would not characterize myself as an audiophile, and I’m new to the hifi hobby, but I will offer what I can. I have the Cheviots using a Luxman L-509X integrated and a Marantz ND8006 player as my source. No vinyl; nothing against the sound, just wanted to keep it simple. My listening area is an open plan space of living room, kitchen, and dining room. Stairs are between the living room and an office on the other side. Dimensions of the living room are 16 1/2 ft (W) by 30ft (L) with 9 ft ceilings. My listening position is 11 1/2 ft from the Cheviots, and they are 21 inches away from inset bookcases in the wall. Getting into hifi correlated with getting into jazz, so that’s by far most of my listening, but I also do classical, ‘70s and ‘80s rock, Motown, Bob Marley, Willie Nelson, some contemporary stuff like Lorde, and other odds and ends. My goals were to have a system that sounded great for my musical tastes, was non-fatiguing, and had enough power to carry well across the entire downstairs, so I could listen to it while working in my office. I also wanted it to work well for when I watched movies, since I only have the one system. The system sounds wonderful to me. Could not be happier. I do indeed listen for hours, and in fact listen to music much more now than any kind of TV or movie watching. The Cheviots excel at all the music listed above and are great for TV/movies. My habit now, after playing music for hours in the background while I work, is to have a dedicated listening session at the end of the night, and I’ll enter into a kind of fugue state where the hours just melt away. When I finally rouse myself to go to bed, I’ll drop off right to sleep because I’m so relaxed. Without a doubt, the Cheviots are one of the best purchases I’ve ever made.
Thanks! I’m really enjoying it. In my research, I’d read Luxman and Tannoy typically make a good pairing, so I was pleased to find it so for myself. Glad to hear the Sugden synergy works as well. I would imagine these speakers would pair well with a number of amps.
I am curious to hear your impressions of the Cheviots after a couple additional months of break-in. And have stayed with the GAIA IIs or have you moved on to a stand? I'm seriously debating between the Cheviots and Eatons right now, so any input is much appreciated! Also, how would you say these work for near field listening (3'-4') at lower volumes? I know these are a bigger speaker, but our room configuration sometimes have us sitting close to the speakers.
Tannoys take a time to break in. They may sound top forwards for around a year. As they break in the Tannoy magic appears. (The treble can be adjusted down) Suspect the break in requirement is why a number of near new Tannoys appears for sale. My preference is to pair them with SS power amps - McIntosh, Luxman and Perreaux have all sounded nice on Tannoys. (Possibly the high damping factor helps to control the bass when the volume goes up) Potentially a good class D amp may also provide a nice presentation
Unfortunately I moved on from them, I’m not 100% sure if I made the right decision. Luckily they went to a friend so I could get them back if I wanted. currently using JBL 4429 with good results.
The biggest issue was room nodes, no matter where i put them I couldn’t get bass in my living room. The JBL are much more forgiving in that sense. *edit That’s actually not entirely true, the speakers sounded fantastic when I was about 3-4 feet away. Abour 8ft apart and 3-4ft away from listening position. Of course that wasn’t practical.
