Cello Stradivarie Premiere
Andy Mansker
fruitless. Can anyone fill me in on manufacture date,
current value, sound qualities, amp choices, manufacturer
availability, etc,
thanks,
andy
Steven R. Rochlin
i have the Cello brochure here at it says:
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The Strad Premiere is identical to the Master except in height and
driver compliment. The Strad Premiere is a three way design,
including one 12" woofer, one midrange and one tweeter. This gives
the Premiere less vertical height (45") (115cm) and (Steve adds: at
THAT time of publishing this brochure) makes it the most physically
discreet of the Strad models. The Premiere is built with the same
drivers, crossover boards, cabinet construction, wiring and quality
control as its big brothers. Therefore, the Premiere offers full
Cello performance, appearance and reliability.
The Premiere can be driven by any Cello amplifier with excellent
results and, while extremely transparent and revealing, can produce
up to 115bB SPL. Its efficiency is 90dB (1...@2.83V). The impedance
measures nominally 4 Ohms. Use with the Audio Palette or Palette
Preamplifier will enable the listener to compensate for tonal balance
problems in the recordings themselves, allowing the full capabilities
of the Strad Premiere and associated equipment to be enjoyed.
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My comments/opinions here are first and foremost that Cello is out
of business. Therefore you can expect no warranty and i do not
believe there is anyone offering out of warranty repair and no
schematics seem to be available so that a technician can fix the
unit. Being a loudspeaker, schematics may not be necessary as parts
and troubleshooting are fairly basic.
Other problems is the low 4 ohm load and medium sensitivity rating of
90dB. With a 90dB rating you may need a higher wattage amplifier (100
watts per channel or better) and one that has good/high current
delivery (Krell, Classe, Rowland, etc). Tube amplifiers like the
bigger Kora, Manley, VTL, BAT, Lamm might also be considered. i hear
these loudspeakers at the Cello showroom in New York City years ago.
They seem much like what ATC was offering at much lower prices. As
for the pricing of the Cello Strad, i do not have the old list price
here, but might i suggest you find out and then AT LEAST 1/2 it. In
other words it might be worth less than 1/2 of new list price due to
being used PLUS there being no warranty/official service offered. If
you like these loudspeaker you may instead choose to buy a new pair
of ATC loudspeakers as they are much the same i believe and your new
ATC units will have a good warranty and service. Hope this helps.
Enjoy the music,
Steven R. Rochlin
http://www.EnjoyTheMusic.com
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tma...@plrb.org
several years until about a year ago. They were serial numbers 161 and
162. The list price in 1996 when I bought them was $10,000 per pair in
rosewood and $15,000 per pair in piano black lacquer. The last list
price I saw was $18,000 in piano black lacquer.
The Cello Premieres were truly excellent and I lived happily with them
longer than any other speaker I have owned. The combination of life-
like dynamics, tonality, and staging was truly satisfying. Yes, the
Cello Masters and Grandmasters were quite a bit better yet at these
things, but I could not afford them then or later. Gene Pope of the
now defunct Pope Music recordings used the Premieres as his usual
location monitor speakers.
I seriously doubt that these speakers are the same or even similar to
any ATC model. The Cellos were not designed as an active speaker
(i.e., one with built-in amps), whereas most ATCs are designed as
active with passive models also available for audiophiles who don't
trust the speaker manaufacturer's choice of amplification, or who just
want to mix and match. The Cello's drivers are by Dynaudio: 12-inch
woofer, 3-inch dome midrange, and the 1+ inch Esotar tweeter. All
internal wiring is Cello's own Litz in various sizes. The speakers
really should be tri-wired for best performance and the gold-over-brass
nut-and-bolt binding posts only accept spade lugs or O-rings. I used
(and still use) a tri-wire harness of Cello Strings 3 litz-wire speaker
cable which listed for $1800 for a 3-meter pair. The base of the
cabinet is filled with 75 pounds of sand. Each speaker weighs about
250 pounds. They sounded best without spikes (the bases are fitted for
4 spikes, but no spikes came with my pair) and the back and sides of
the cabinet should be parallel to the room walls for best staging and
imaging. The front baffle is cut at an angle (like many NHT speakers)
so that, with the sides parallel to the walls, the front is
automatically toed in some 20 degrees.
The speakers do need a powerful amp to take advantage of their great
dynamic capabilities. I used a Cello Duet 350 which produced about 600
watts per channel into the 4-ohm load of the Premieres, and often
thought of buying another Duet so I could biamp or bridge the amps for
up to 1400 watts per channel, which Mark Levinson (the man) recommended
to me since he knew I liked to listen to orchestral power music at high
volumes. Before I sold the speakers, I tried them with a single pair
of Bryston 7Bs and that amplification was at least as good as a single
Cello Duet 350--less warm sounding, but even more transparently
detailed, better staging and imaging, and better dynamics.
Reliability-wise, I did have problems with an intermittent tweeter in
one of the speakers. Cello replaced it, no questions asked, but Cello
is no longer around. As it turned out, I don't think the tweeter was
actually at fault. Loose edge-connector clip-on wiring probably was
the culprit, but I only discovered this when I physically swapped out
the new tweeter for the old.
If you really want to know the lowdown on the Premieres, perhaps Mark
Levinson (the man), now of Red Rose Music, would be willing to talk
with you about them.
In article <91b2a...@news2.newsguy.com>,
Steven R. Rochlin
>>>....I seriously doubt that these speakers are the same or even
similar to any ATC model...<<<
As i recall when i heard them, they did sound good, if a bit
expensive. Visually, they seemed very similar to the ATC models of
the time, though probably a bit customized by Cello. i believe Cello
was known, at times, for taking a manufacture's product and refacing
with possible modifications... it was then caled a "Cello" product
per se. Glad you find them enjoyable as they seemed MUCH better than
Cello's larger offering to my ears. Bigger is not always better. Of
course in the end what really matters is that you...
Enjoy the music,
Steven R. Rochlin
Slow Typist
'souped-up' AR 3, while the Cello Grandmasters are the AR LST ?
Take the basic AR design, used the best parts (Dynaudio, expensive
resistors/capacitors, inert cabinet) and it becomes Cello....
Jet
"Andy Mansker" <aman...@znet.com> wrote in message
news:91733q$gl6$1...@bourbaki.localdomain...
tma...@plrb.org
Acoustic Research AR-3a speakers and the slightly later AR LST. Mark
was also a fan of the later small AR-M1, actually using these in some
of his demos. The driver arrangement, the use of soft domes for
midrange and tweeter, the frequency balance, is the old AR with much
better clarity, detail, dynamics, and staging thrown in. The Amati
series looks just like a bigger AR LST--forward facing 3-way with
outward-angled additional flanking mids and tweets. The Strad Legend
looks just like a larger AR-3 or 3a. The Premiere is similar in
driver complement to the Legend, but is a floor-stander with greater
dynamics and more bass extension. The Premiere is actually a bit of
an odd-man- out in the line since it alone is a vented speaker.
The Premiere is excellent, but certainly in Cello's former New York
headquarters showroom the Master and GrandMaster sounded much better
to me than the Premiere. I would have bought the Masters in a second
if I had had the cash, and would have sprung for the GrandMasters if
I also had the additional cash for a bigger room with a higher
ceiling. Written comments on the Masters and GrandMasters from others
who have heard them at the Cello showroom or elsewhere are usually of
the walk- on-water variety. See, for example, Lewis Lipnick's review
of an entire Cello system (which included the Masters) in Stereophile
vol. 18, No. 7 (July 1995), p. 91, in which he concluded that the
Cello system was, for him, "the end of the road" in his quest for
musical accuracy and enjoyment in an audio system. What may not
appeal to some is that they are rather warm sounding, with lots of
midbass energy, but then, that is how most folks react to live
unamplified music in a good hall if they are not familiar with that
"absolute sound" reference.
Cello was rebranding and tweaking Apogee Digital (not the speaker
company, but the one which produces pro-audio digital products and
the Wyde-Eye cable) products and was to the very end selling such a
product as their Cello Reference DAC, which I still use. Cello never
produced a CD transport and at various times recommended the Forsell
Air Reference, the Sounds of Silence Vibraplane/Marantz Professional
CDR- 620, and later the Meridian 800 as CD transports for an
all-Cello system. As far as I know, however, the speakers, amps, and
preamps sold under the Cello name by Cello at the end were their own
designs, inspired though they may have been, by others.
In article <91dgg...@news1.newsguy.com>,
"Steven R. Rochlin" <steven_...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> tmallin,
>
> >>>....I seriously doubt that these speakers are the same or even
> similar to any ATC model...<<<
>
> As i recall when i heard them, they did sound good, if a bit
> expensive. Visually, they seemed very similar to the ATC models of
> the time, though probably a bit customized by Cello. i believe Cello
> was known, at times, for taking a manufacture's product and refacing
> with possible modifications... it was then caled a "Cello" product
> per se. Glad you find them enjoyable as they seemed MUCH better than
> Cello's larger offering to my ears. Bigger is not always better. Of
> course in the end what really matters is that you...
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