Rectillinear speakers with Jensen Flexair woofers

[LouB]

Hi all,

I remember the Rectillinears of the early 70's, having listened to them with the ears of an adolescent. (at Musicraft in Oak Park, IL) Was VERY impressed then but the resources of a Jr. High student were meager.

I now recognize the woofers as having been the Jensen Flexair line.

Funny how the Rectillinears are held in high regard but the same drivers in a Jensen cabinet (TF-3 etc.) elicit sneers.

The same drivers can also be found in the Allied Knight house brand speakers of the era.

 

Lou

[JKent]

Hi Lou

Welcome to CSP!

I don't claim to be an expert on Rectilinears and I have no experience with Jensen, but from a google search it would appear Jensen Flexair woofers had pleated surrounds.

On the 3 Rectilinears I've worked on; the Mini III (nice speaker), XI and XIa, the woofer surrounds were cloth inverted roll, like early KLH woofers.

I think their TOTL was the III--original and "low boy" versions. Looks like those DID have the pleated surrounds.

Anyway, this kind of vintage hi fi forensics is fun.

What do you make of the JansZen woofers? Some people confuse JansZen and Jensen but they're clearly 2 different companies. The JansZens are sought after for their electrostic tweeters (side note: The KLH Model Nine full range electrostatic was a JansZen and Arthur Janszen was responsible for the industrial design of the KLH Model Eight radio). I had a pair of JansZen 800s for a while. They did not have the electrostatics, just common phenolic ring tweeters but the woofers LOOKED cool: Cast aluminum frames with pleated red cloth surrounds. Flexair? I dunno. Probably not. Looks like the Flexairs had steel frames.

-Kent

[LouB]

Hi Kent,

I really should have been more specific in regards to which ones I was referring to. Yes, it was the model three. I don't remember hearing the others. The high boys and low boys were just wonderful in the midrange and not shabby at all in the bass as I recall.

[ra.ra]

I've never seen that 6-bolt red pleated woofer shown in JKent's post, but yes, the late 60's and 70's Rectilinears are generally a very nice family of speakers, and like several other manufacturers, they often used the same or similar drivers in various models with different configurations or cabinet volumes. The model III used at least two different 12" woofers, as shown, from Jensen (rear-mounted, pleated surround, small port) and CTS (front-mounted, cloth roll surround, larger port). There were several other tweaks to this model as outlined in the following post.

http://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/rectilinear-iii-description-long.560970/