Telonics Speaker Enclosures

George Seymour · Post by **George Seymour** » 18 Mar 2012 9:13 am

Any one have any information or experience regarding the Telonics speaker enclosures?
Thanks,
George

Justin Griffith · Post by **Justin Griffith** » 18 Mar 2012 7:19 pm

I played thru a pair in the Telonics room at the Dallas show. I thought they were awfully good. One was open back and one was not.
You might shoot Dave Beaty an E-mail.

Dave at telonics dot com

Ron Whitworth · Post by **Ron Whitworth** » 19 Mar 2012 7:50 pm

Hello George;
I contacted Dave Beaty about your inquiry regarding the Telonics speaker enclosures.
He was sending you an email with all the info about them in it.
Thank You for requesting the info & for considering them.
If you have any further questions that you want to ask please do not hesitate to ask Dave or myself.
Always glad to help out anyone we can.
Thank You ... Ron

Dave Beaty · Post by **Dave Beaty** » 19 Mar 2012 8:54 pm

George,
Normally I would just send this information directly to you, but there have been so many inquiries regarding the new Telonics Pro Audio speaker enclosures since the Arizona and Texas shows, I will list a bit of information here and send you additional info directly as well.

Making a long story short, we go to great lengths to design and build very high end electronics for the professional musician and in some cases, our work is foiled by the use of poorly designed speaker enclosures and/or the usage of incorrect or inferior speakers.

As Stacy says, everything matters!

So, since we needed very high quality enclosures for our own usage in the laboratory and at shows, we invested engineering time and expense to design the very best from the ground up.
The attached sheet shows our 15 inch enclosures with a natural finish speaker baffle board. We have since added a “black face” series for those musicians who want their speakers to disappear into the back line on stage.
We have also added 12 inch speaker baffles for the open-back models for those musicians who double on Tele’s or fiddles and/or who want the very high end sound like the old twin amps.
We are an electronics company and we had no desire to delve into carpentry, however we really had no choice as we were unable to buy enclosures of the quality we wanted – at any price. So, we designed the speaker enclosures with the same approaches we use for our electronics systems, and guaranteed consistency and quality by making the entire process an automated CNC process.

We start with the highest quality, void-free structural Baltic Birch plywood (which is normally used in the construction of experimental aircraft).
The basic structures are CNC machined to fit perfectly, with Dado'd grooves for the front and back bulkheads (four sides) and special dovetail work on the joined ends which was designed to prevent ply separation of the Baltic Birch. The main structure of top, bottom, sides, the front bulkhead and the rear bulkhead is then glued and clamped firmly together. No screws, brads or clips are used in our construction. There are no wood strips (or “stringers”) at all in our enclosures. Both the closed backs and the open backs are made from a solid sheet of B-Birch; the front bulkhead also starts out as a solid piece of B-Birch from which an opening is cut out, leaving a bulkhead for the speaker baffle to mount up against.
The only major component to be added at that point is the speaker baffle. On early units, the speaker baffle is mounted to the front bulkhead with substantial wood screws. On the newer black-face units (great for speaker experimenters), the speaker baffle is attached with 10-32 bolts which mate with drop-forged propeller nuts which have bee CNC seated in the front bulkhead. This makes it possible to remove and replace the baffle board repeatedly with no damage or wear to the forward bulkhead. (We do NOT use conventional “Tee” nuts at all, as they tended to be much weaker and tend to deform and turn in the wood in our experiments).

On natural-finish baffle units, the entire cabinet – exclusive of the baffle board, is then sprayed with high-temperature urethane, no glue-on coverings are used at all. This coating is similar to pickup bed liner material, it is almost impossible to scratch or wear. It is very costly (about $100/cabinet for that process alone), but it is the very best process available. The baffle board is finished inside and out with clear lacquer. A person can easily remove the natural finish baffle boards and paint them to match guitars, etc. if desired.

On black-face units, the basic construction is exactly the same as the natural-face units, however the baffle board is finished with a black lacquer and the attachment process for the baffle uses the 10-32 bolts and drop-forged propeller nuts as previously mentioned. This increases the cost $10, but it is perfect for people who want to change out their speakers easily.

In the case of either the natural-face, or black-face baffle enclosures, the only remaining steps are to mount the handles (again using the high-strength 10-32 screws and drop-forged propeller nuts), and finally we protect the corners with black polymer stacking corners (we use the “plastic” corners because they have grooved mating surfaces for stacking vertically, they do not rust and they can be easily replaced in the future if desired.

The cabinets are normally supplied with standard ¼ inch jacks on both the front and back of the cabinets, however we also offer the (far superior) Speak-On type connectors at additional cost, of course they require the more expensive Speak-On cables as well.
As mentioned previously, these enclosures were designed to round out our amplification systems with a top-end unit. Accordingly we offer them essentially at our cost to produce them, plus shipping. We also make them available at the Arizona and Texas shows without shipping costs. The prices are the same for either 15” or 12” units.

The natural-face open back enclosures are $225, the natural-face closed-back enclosures are $235.
The black-face open back enclosures are $235, the black-face closed-back enclosures are $245.
All cabinet types are normally in stock.

Frankly, they are a steal at these prices and they will not always be available. My friends and I have been playing 1-4 gigs a week through these cabinets for over two years and I have found them to be ideal for my purposes. That view is shared by an increasing number of professional musicians.

There is an entire, long discussion regarding speaker choices, methods of deploying the cabinets, the mix of open-back and/or closed-back enclosures with various speakers and in various venue situations, etc. But proper treatment of those topics is far beyond the scope of this post.

I hope this information provides answers to your questions George, please let us know if we can be of service in any way.

Dave

Ron Whitworth · Post by **Ron Whitworth** » 20 Mar 2012 2:33 am

Thanks to Dave for posting this Telonics speaker info.
For those of you who do not know Dave, he just will not settle for any Telonics product that will "just do the job."
As you can see from the above description, he goes to every length possible to make it the best he possibly can.
No expense is spared when Dave & company start R&D on any new product as they will only settle for the best it can be. These enclosures are a great bargain & the Telonics guarantee stands behind all of their products.

Ron

George Seymour · Post by **George Seymour** » 21 Mar 2012 1:09 pm

Ron Whitworth wrote:Thanks to Dave for posting this Telonics speaker info.
For those of you who do not know Dave, he just will not settle for any Telonics product that will "just do the job."
As you can see from the above description, he goes to every length possible to make it the best he possibly can.
No expense is spared when Dave & company start R&D on any new product as they will only settle for the best it can be. These enclosures are a great bargain & the Telonics guarantee stands behind all of their products.

Ron

Thanks a million Ron for passing this on to Dave, had an UNBELIEVABLE conversation with him Monday evening. The next couple of weeks should be amazing...

Ron Whitworth · Post by **Ron Whitworth** » 22 Mar 2012 2:31 am

Hello George;
You are certainly welcome Sir. Glad I could help out in any way. Yes Dave is fascinating to talk to.
He just does not give up until he gets things the way he wants them.
Of course him being a steel player + an engineer does not hurt anything either

Thanks ... Ron

David Wright · Post by **David Wright** » 22 Mar 2012 3:15 am

I have been using Dave's cabs for a year now, can't say enough good things about them, for me one open and one closed fill the bill...if your in the market for some new cabs, these just might be for you... Telonics= the best in everything they do...

Paddy Long · Post by **Paddy Long** » 25 Mar 2012 7:27 pm

Dave gave one of the closed back cabinets to Ivan Posa to bring home from Dallas for me, and he delivered it to me in his home town while I was doing my nationwide tour !! awesome cabinet, nice and compact and light - I am just waiting for my gear to arrive home on the freight truck so I can put a BW 1501-4 in it and try it out. I know I am going to end up getting an open backer to go with it too hehe !!! My current Peavey 115E cabinets are great and very robust but they are a bit bigger and quite a bit heavier.

Gregg Laiben · Post by **Gregg Laiben** » 31 Mar 2012 8:15 pm

Received my open back cab this week - loaded it up today with an Eminence EPS-15C that I got from Kevin Hatton last year. Sounds great - very lightweight and compact. It's a very well thought out design - additional feature is that the handle is slightly offset toward the front so that it balances in your hand better than most. Furthermore, the front _and_ rear 1/4" jacks are very handy. Another well engineered and great sounding product from Telonics.

john widgren · Post by **john widgren** » 1 Apr 2012 9:15 am

I received my Telonics (open back as is my preference) speaker cabinet this week. I ordered it with an additional optional baffle board for a 12" speaker (it came with the 15" cut). I got the "stealth" black (my phrase) baffle option. It looks really cool. I can switch from my loaded 15 baffle to my loaded 12 baffle in around 2 minutes. It sounds fantastic. It's a compact and very manageable size and light weight with a neo speaker, but has good depth for a sweet and tight bottom end and full spectrum sound with no audible compression. Of course as is typical of all thing Telonics, the fit, finish and craftsmanship are exquisite, no rattles buzzes, or cabinet noise of any kind.. I love that it has inputs on the face and back, and the offset handle, really works.
Anybody who can get to my place is welcome to demo as either a 12 or 15 configuration. Or come on out to hear me play it live.

Best JW

Murnel Babineaux · Post by **Murnel Babineaux** » 8 Jul 2012 4:03 pm

I've been using one for 3 months now....I have the open back model...Using it with a JBL K-130 and I love it....

The frequency response is very even and the bass end doesn't get flubby or soft....It stays nice and tight....Great product

Murnel

Paddy Long · Post by **Paddy Long** » 8 Jul 2012 4:29 pm

I've been using just the one closed back cabinet with a 1501-4 BW in it and it is just outstanding...I intend to match it with a open-backed one as well.
i have took this speaker cabinet up to Norfolk Island last month as well and the airlines didn't manage to break it ! On it's own it is brilliant so having a matching pair will be amazing

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