Clarity and dispersion of upper mids and highs

Spring loaded slot type wiring posts, No bi-amp/bi-wire capability, finicky about placement near corners which can cause upper bass heaviness.

When I first heard these in '75 or '76 I knew I had to find a way to get a pair. Sound Distributors in Birmingham, Huntsville, and Decatur AL sold these great speakers. They loved to demo a direct-to-disc recording of Thelma Houston and Pressure Cookers' "I've Got The Music In Me" and man did it ever sound great! I worked all summer my high school senior year(1977)to save enough to buy a pair of AMT 1B's and it was some of the best money I ever earned and spent! I got new woofs and rads about six years ago and am still in love with their sound. Yes, like everything I've ever bought they are not perfect, but if you tweak them by giving them good space (especially when they are close to a corner) and angle them upward slightly (tip toes can work for this) they will reward you greatly. I'll concede by todays standards they do have competition, but at the time they were introduced they had hardly any in their price range and amazingly they are still close to the price I paid in 1977. I wish I could buy another Olds Cutlass for just a few dollars more than the one I got in'77-I think that puts that in perspective! I purchased another pair in 1997 from ESS. I've actually felt like the highs were not as forward so I turned the mid and high controls to their max. A funny thing happened when I did this, I noticed that one controller was installed backward I guess because as I increased it from the mid point to the full pt. it got duller sounding. ESS was not sympathetic to this and told me just use it in reverse! After spending over a grand this was not the correct answer even though that ended up being the solution. Jeff Shields at ESS (he was with the company in'77) also has my original grilles that I knocked down & sent back for repairs. He told me sorry you'll have to buy new grilles because we just do not repair these. Well that was bad but what was worse is he will not send them back without me sending what a female rep quoted as $40! I have UPS pick-up daily and my freight to them was less than half of that. I'm giving the speakers a 4.0 rating, but the people skills of the company rates a negative 5! Best case senario is that they update the AMT with a faster woofer and make it bi-ampable with heavy duty 5-way binding posts. Also a stand or tip toes that are factory threaded would be great. Oh yeah, they need a center channel Heil speaker too! Love to hear from anyone who has compared Eminent Technology speakers to the AMT's.

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Only speakers that can compare are planar types such as electrostatics, ribbons, and "Maggies"

Fantastic top end sound, and in my humble opinion very good bass and midrange. Great looking speaker!

Foam required replacement after 18 years

May I just say that I own the ESS amt-1a, not the 1b. I couldn't believe the reviews on this site and was not surprised to see similar comments to what I have felt since 1976 when my wife and I bought them new.
I have very fond memories of playing direct to disc recordings such as Thelma Housten's You've got the music in me.
I still know very little about the technical side, probably just as well. What I do know is that I have been very pleased with the sound they provide.
I have recently added a home theatre amp with some aussie speakers (Accusound) at the rear and centre with a 200W active subwoofer. ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC! when listening to 5.1 digital recordings via the DVD player.

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Nil

Heil High End mounted on top of the cabinet

Tubby bass sound and cheap steel stamp woofer basket

If you are interested, The AMT-1 (with the 10" woofer) is a cheap unit that has a steel stamp frame and a real flimsy magnet pole center piece.
I always believed the woofer design was an after thought to the great tweeter idea o'le Mr Heil had in his dream state. Anyhow, I pulled the 2 original 10" woofers out of the cabinets and placed them in storage because one of the
pole pieces was rubbing against the internal frame causing all sorts of noise and headaches. Because I love the AMT-1 pairs so much, I decided to do the Tim Allen special and Upgrade !!!! Woff-Woff...
I bought a pair of JBL's from the LEC10 series (with the inverted center cone APEX) and presto-chango ..It sounds even better. I can't say if the phase alignment between the ESS Ribbon tweeter and the Woofer has been affected but together the units as they now stand sound just fantastic….
Also, I went out and bought a new powered swp110 JBL sub-woofer and bi-amp'd it with my Yamaha switching intergrated amp and together they sound just like what
GOD intended.
Even my wife loves them and she has the DOG-EARS of the family.... ARF-ARF.
Anyhow, hope this bit of notage helps.. It's good to see we have like company.
Keep rocken the Pink floyd.........

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None/

heil high end

only front mounted Heil High end, not good dispersion

I have been exposed to Heil speakers since the 1970's and there was nothing that sounded as good as them back then.

My brother had a pair of ESS Eclipse B102 speakers in the basement collecting dust. I bought 4 10" woofers from radio shack at 20$ apeice. they were getting rid of them. They are 10 inch poly woofers with a foam surround. I put one in the front and one in the back were the passive radiator would have gone. Im not sure how important the original woofers/passive radiators were or are but it was a cheap fix.

The high ends sound fine. I wish these were mounted on top though. Looks like these Heils have a Mesh in front of the highend not sure what it is for, but the overall sound is good. Midrange is almost non-existent. The Heil high end looks like the larger unit but it was sealed off in the back inside the case with this cone looking thing about 4 inches long with a peice of wood glued over the end of the tube. The front of the Heil end is this weird silver metal cover approx 5"h X 7" W with slits in the middle to let the sound come out. (Anybody know about this design)

ESS does not carry new covers for these speakers so I put These black metal woofer covers from radio shack over the woofers. The Heils do not appear to need a cover.

but I love the Heils. E-Bay is always carrying something Heil. I also use a graphic equilizer to help the base and highend, and to simulate a midrange.

Zeig HEIL!!!

Clear sound

Bass is somewhat undefined

I have owned these speakers since 1977. They have the Heil driver mounted in the box above the 12" woofer element. The rear of the box has a 12" passive radiator. I recently replaced the 12" woofers in both, the passive radiators being replaces in 1987.

I originally paid $750 for these speakers.

I resurected these speakers from the garage when I decided to create a home theater room. I re-connected my Sansui 9090Db and discovered that the sound was not as I had remembered. Although the mids and highs were still there, there was a restriction to the effortless clarity that I had remembered.

When my new Parasound Amp (HCA2205) and Preamp (AVC2500) arrived, I hooked them up with 12 awg monster cable and re-discovered clear and effortless sound. I auditioned Saving Private Ryan with the ESS. I heard exceptionally good highs. The Heil driver accurately reproduced the metallic mechanical sounds that other speakers have problems with. More specifically, the sound of the M-1 clip, machine gun mechanicals, sounds of the Tanks as they move. These sounds were all accurately reproduced.

These speakers mesh very well with the Monitor 12i center channel.

I have listened to M & K, Energy, Boston Accustics, Klipsch, Atlantic Tech., B & W.

If you find these speakers, they are definite keepers.

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Magnapans MGIIIa, EPI 100

Have never found a speaker as good that I could afford

No matching Center Channel exists. Please e-mail me if you know of a matching center...

OK - this is not for AMT, but for PS1020, their performance series. Unfortunately, I must be the only guy who owns these because there's no category for them (so i'm intruding here). When I was 24 (1987), I was getting my first credit cards and decided I wanted good speakers. I went to Leos stereo in San Diego and chose the PS1020. This is a 10" woofer and heil tweeter (a little smaller than the great heil in the AMT). They were $222 each. To my uneducated ears they sounded better than the AMTs they had for $400ish - tighter bass...

A couple years ago the woofers burned out (gradual degradation of the foam). Luckily I had moved to Sacramento, and imagine my surprise to find the ESS factory was right in my own town. They reconed the woofers for $75 each (with paper, not the original polyproplene - they are better now).

Along the way I dabbled in some Polk speakers (RT5) as fronts, and stashed my ESS in the other room because they were huge compared to the small Polk bookshelves. The ESS gathered dust and my memory of their greatness faded.

A couple months ago, my HT got promoted to the big room, and out came the old ESS! I was really happy with my result until I found out that I had to "voice match" my center or else I was, like, an audiophile sinner or something. So I bought another pair of polks to match my center, and figured I'd sell my ESS.

Well, I went to bed unhappy every night because those Polk bookshelves just do not even compare to the beautiful rich clear sound of my old, unknown, unfamous, unheralded ESS speakers from 1987.

Finally, I said "screw it, I will go to audiophile hell if I have to", and returned the "matching" fronts to the store so I could return to Heil heaven in my home. The consequence of not "matching" is not near the consequence of using normal bookshelves instead of these wonderful wonderful ESS speakers.

I see these on e-bay from time to time, and I highly recommend them. Anything ESS is going to blow away the modern breed of bookshelf speakers.

Now if ESS made a nice matching center channel, with a little heil in it and a couple small cones - it would just be the greatest thing since sliced bread. Until then, I'll live with the mismatched polk RT245i center. It is not a problem (compared to the problem of having something other than my ESS in front.

Long story short - it will take quite a speaker (probably quite a lot of discretionary cash on hand) to make me ever part with these great speakers!

They even look GREAT with the walnut trim on the top and bottom!

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Polk RT5, RT35i

Sound dispersion, transients and high frequency. Conversation piece design.

Muddy bass on some passages. managable overall though

I bought these speakers in the summer of 1977 for close to a thousand dollars for the pair. That was a lot of money in those days, so that says a lot for the speakers. When I first heard them, I could not believe my ears. The were the cleanest and clearest sounding speakers I had ever heard.I decided to spend the money because I had always been an enthusiat, but money was always a problem. These speakers though took me over the edge. I just had to have them.

In the first couple of years after I bought my ESS Amt1b's I
turned on at least 3 or 4 people to it, and they purchased it.If you audition them you will buy them.They are that good.
After several years of use, the foam around the driver and the passive radiator rotted away and needed to be replaced.