Allison Two owner down under in NZ - time for restoration!

[markoneswift]

Hi all,

I've been buying various pieces of vintage hifi for many years as a hobby. Recently, an audio repair and retail business in Auckland closed down following the death of the owner and lead tech. All of the remaining stock and unfinished repair jobs have been filtering out through an auction house in Auckland and that is how I came across there Allison Twos - I was the only bidder and secure them for the mighty sum of $5 NZD 🙂

I will say, I have some prior experience with Allison speakers. A few years ago, I found a pair of Sixes in an op shop not far from where I live. I got those for $5 too and refoamed the woofers on them. Those were my first taste of the 'Allison effect'!

As far as my latest acquisitions go, well here's the good and the bad....

Good - all drivers (except one tweeter, which is physically missing) test well. Two tweeter domes are slightly pushed in, not too badly. Cabinets are in great shape - corners, edges and veneer are all great. Woofers have been refoamed by the former repair shop. Speaker binding posts have been upgraded to modern multi-way types.

Bad - all drivers on one unit have been disconnected from their brass binding posts. Missing a tweeter. Missing covers. Crossovers in unknown condition.

Here's a picture of them in my lounge and more info to follow once I really get into them - 

 

[newandold]

10 hours ago, markoneswift said:

Hi all,

I've been buying various pieces of vintage hifi for many years as a hobby. Recently, an audio repair and retail business in Auckland closed down following the death of the owner and lead tech. All of the remaining stock and unfinished repair jobs have been filtering out through an auction house in Auckland and that is how I came across there Allison Twos - I was the only bidder and secure them for the mighty sum of $5 NZD 🙂

I will say, I have some prior experience with Allison speakers. A few years ago, I found a pair of Sixes in an op shop not far from where I live. I got those for $5 too and refoamed the woofers on them. Those were my first taste of the 'Allison effect'!

As far as my latest acquisitions go, well here's the good and the bad....

Good - all drivers (except one tweeter, which is physically missing) test well. Two tweeter domes are slightly pushed in, not too badly. Cabinets are in great shape - corners, edges and veneer are all great. Woofers have been refoamed by the former repair shop. Speaker binding posts have been upgraded to modern multi-way types.

Bad - all drivers on one unit have been disconnected from their brass binding posts. Missing a tweeter. Missing covers. Crossovers in unknown condition.

Here's a picture of them in my lounge and more info to follow once I really get into them - 

 

They look really good…… I’ve seen twos out there where the seller was looking for a lot of money and the cabinets were totally beat up so you have a great foundation to work with.

The other thing that seems good is that it was a professional repair shop apparently that did the binding posts and the refoams.

In order to replace those binding posts(can you shoot a picture of the rear?) they would’ve needed to get into the crossover and that’s where the gamble comes in. Hopefully, they put it all back and didn’t change anything that would also change the specs.

at this late date, I would grab any Allison Tweeter that would fit in models one through nine or some of the AL series. The original Alison tweeters for the two, were cooled with silicone grease whereas the two-way systems used ferrofluid.  that being said it’s easier to get away with the two way-substitute. If nothing else is available to put in there. not so the other way around.

[markoneswift]

11 hours ago, newandold said:

They look really good…… I’ve seen twos out there where the seller was looking for a lot of money and the cabinets were totally beat up so you have a great foundation to work with.

The other thing that seems good is that it was a professional repair shop apparently that did the binding posts and the refoams.

In order to replace those binding posts(can you shoot a picture of the rear?) they would’ve needed to get into the crossover and that’s where the gamble comes in. Hopefully, they put it all back and didn’t change anything that would also change the specs.

at this late date, I would grab any Allison Tweeter that would fit in models one through nine or some of the AL series. The original Alison tweeters for the two, were cooled with silicone grease whereas the two-way systems used ferrofluid.  that being said it’s easier to get away with the two way-substitute. If nothing else is available to put in there. not so the other way around.

Here's a pic of the back. Kinda looks like the whole back panel has been taken out maybe - not sure - then been glued back in again. From what I can see inside, the crossover components look original but the wiring looks to have been upgraded to a more modern OFC type.

 

[markoneswift]

One interesting thing which I learned today about the Allisons is - I don't need a soldering iron to replace mids or tweeters. I didn't realise that those brass posts were actually push-in connectors. When I saw that all the drivers on one unit had been disconnected, I was thinking I'd have a fair bit of soldering to do. Then I looked for closely and realised the tinsel leads just go into the posts and that's it. Brilliant.

I've run the pair very briefly - I jumpered over the missing tweeter and installed some little wire jumps between the LF and HF binding posts. WOW - love the sound of these things! Music is everywhere 🙂

Now all I need is a tweeter..... 🙂

 

[newandold]

4 hours ago, markoneswift said:

One interesting thing which I learned today about the Allisons is - I don't need a soldering iron to replace mids or tweeters. I didn't realise that those brass posts were actually push-in connectors. When I saw that all the drivers on one unit had been disconnected, I was thinking I'd have a fair bit of soldering to do. Then I looked for closely and realised the tinsel leads just go into the posts and that's it. Brilliant.

I've run the pair very briefly - I jumpered over the missing tweeter and installed some little wire jumps between the LF and HF binding posts. WOW - love the sound of these things! Music is everywhere 🙂

Now all I need is a tweeter..... 🙂

 

The last upgrade that was done to the Allison two before they stopped making them, was to do away with those pushpin brass connectors and hardwire the mids and tweets internally with clips that just slide on, same as the woofers.

[newandold]

5 hours ago, markoneswift said:

Here's a pic of the back. Kinda looks like the whole back panel has been taken out maybe - not sure - then been glued back in again. From what I can see inside, the crossover components look original but the wiring looks to have been upgraded to a more modern OFC type.

 

It’s a shame really that whoever worked on those could not see to restore what was originally there, rather than do that which was done to them…

All I could think of was that much cursing and screaming must’ve gone on back there in order to pull that off…..A monumental task, indeed, considering the original crossover network was installed within the cabinet, probably before the final assembly of the cabinet was accomplished.

I’m assuming that you use the top two connectors or the bottom two not side to side correct?

now, instead of being able to attenuate the high frequencies on the fly, you wire either A or B, where originally you had three options. Which ever of the two yields you the highest frequency would be the one I would go with which would’ve been the “flat”.

 

[markoneswift]

9 hours ago, newandold said:

It’s a shame really that whoever worked on those could not see to restore what was originally there, rather than do that which was done to them…

All I could think of was that much cursing and screaming must’ve gone on back there in order to pull that off…..A monumental task, indeed, considering the original crossover network was installed within the cabinet, probably before the final assembly of the cabinet was accomplished.

I’m assuming that you use the top two connectors or the bottom two not side to side correct?

now, instead of being able to attenuate the high frequencies on the fly, you wire either A or B, where originally you had three options. Which ever of the two yields you the highest frequency would be the one I would go with which would’ve been the “flat”.

 

The top two connectors are wired to the tweeters  / mids, the lower connecters are wired to the woofers. So essentially they can now be bi-wired (or bi-amped I suppose). Anyway, I have used jumpers to connect the top and bottom binding posts so that my banana plugs from my amp (single pair) can use either pair of binding posts. The 3 way attenuator works as it did originally.

Agreed that whoever did the work must have found it frustrating! There doesn't look to be a whole lot of wriggle room in there!

[newandold]

1 hour ago, markoneswift said:

The top two connectors are wired to the tweeters  / mids, the lower connecters are wired to the woofers. So essentially they can now be bi-wired (or bi-amped I suppose). Anyway, I have used jumpers to connect the top and bottom binding posts so that my banana plugs from my amp (single pair) can use either pair of binding posts. The 3 way attenuator works as it did originally.

Agreed that whoever did the work must have found it frustrating! There doesn't look to be a whole lot of wriggle room in there!

Oops!

looking more closely at the picture, I can now see the attenuator that at first appeared to be missing (now I get it)

[markoneswift]

On 10/14/2024 at 12:20 PM, newandold said:

Oops!

looking more closely at the picture, I can now see the attenuator that at first appeared to be missing (now I get it)

Yeah those levers are tricky to see but definitely still present. I've ordered a tweeter from Ebay, hopefully will arrive in NZ OK without any drama!

[newandold]

6 minutes ago, markoneswift said:

Yeah those levers are tricky to see but definitely still present. I've ordered a tweeter from Ebay, hopefully will arrive in NZ OK without any drama!

Best of luck with the Tweeter!

NZ is on my travel list destination by the way… Beautiful country and friends of ours owned a farm there until recent years. My daughter has been already.

Just came back from Europe, three weeks ago on a beautiful trip to Switzerland and northern Italy… A dream fulfilled that my wife had on her mind for the longest time.

[markoneswift]

10 minutes ago, newandold said:

Best of luck with the Tweeter!

NZ is on my travel list destination by the way… Beautiful country and friends of ours owned a farm there until recent years. My daughter has been already.

Just came back from Europe, three weeks ago on a beautiful trip to Switzerland and northern Italy… A dream fulfilled that my wife had on her mind for the longest time.

We live in Hamilton, the 4th largest city. We are in the upper central region of the North Island. We have Auckland about 90 mins north of us, the beautiful Coromandel Peninsula about 2 hours away, the Bay Of Plenty about 90 minutes away and we go south to ski on Mount Ruapehu in about 2.5 hours. Pretty good location here and WAY cheaper than Auckland 🙂