Signature 33 in Detail
Tweeter
The P33 Signatures use the same Ring Radiator tweeter that is used in Whatmough’s flagship speaker, the Paragon. This ultra-expensive tweeter sounds incredibly fast and detailed while also sounding extremely smooth and open. It has a very flat response extending to beyond 40KHz.
The tweeters featured in the Signature P33s are a special 'ring radiator' design as found in Colin Whatmough's Paragon speakers
Mid-Range Driver
The P33 uses a 100mm cellulous fibre coned mid-range driver. This driver has the speed and transparency no bass/mid driver can match. While manufacturing costs of a three-way speaker are considerably higher than that of a two way speaker, the sonic benefits certainly justify this cost.
A three-way speaker allows the designer to use a driver optimized to reproduce bass frequencies for the bass and a driver optimized to reproduce mid frequencies in the mid-range. A bass/mid driver will always be a compromise in the bass or mid-range or more usually both.
The mid-range driver used in the Signature P33 delivers a level of speed and transparency no bass/mid driver can match.
The 33 Bass Drivers
The P33 and P8 use two 170mm fiberglass/nomex hybrid drivers especially developed for these speakers. The cone for this speaker is made of Nomex with a skin of fiberglass. This long throw driver uses a 33mm high temperature voice coil and a large double magnet system.
This driver has very high power handling as well as a very transparent detailed sound quality.
Signature P33 features two 170mm fibreglass/nomex bass drivers specially developed for these speakers.
Crossover Networks
While the standard P33s use Solen and Bennic polypropylene capacitors (used by most high end speaker manufacturers), the P33s use Hovland film and foil capacitors in critical positions, which typically cost 10 times as much as the equivalent Solen or Bennic capacitors. Air cored coils are used throughout, wound from a heavier grade of high purity Australian copper.
As in the P33s, the hand built crossover networks used in the P33 Signatures are point-to-point hard wired, while all components are critically positioned to minimise any interaction. Catdas (USA) litz cabling is used as internal wiring through-out. This cable is both very expensive and tedious to use since every strand is individually insulated, but the sonic results of Cardas cables are stunning.
Binding Posts
Common to all our Signature Series speakers, the P33 Signatures use solid copper binding posts from Cardas (USA). These copper binding posts, which are silver then rhodium plated, are considered by many to be the world’s best terminals.
The P33 Signatures are tri-wireable and have three sets of terminals. The top terminals are connected to the treble section of the crossover network, while the lower terminals connect to the bass/midrange section.
Whatmough does not supply bridging links (which would allow the use of single cables) with its Performance and Signature Series speakers. This is because: -
- To obtain their optimum performance, these speakers should be bi-wired. This involves using a tri-wireable (6-core) cable or three sets of normal 2-core speaker cables. These cables can be connected to one or two sets of speaker terminals at the amplifier. One pair of cables is connected to the speaker’s top (tweeter) terminals, one to the middle (mid-range and the other to the bottom (bass) terminals (negative to the black terminal and positive to the red terminal in each case).
- If tri-wiring is not being used, (hopefully only a temporary measure) a link should made from the same type speaker cable that is being used to connect the speakers to the amplifier. Using this cable, the three positive terminals (red) should be connected together and the three negative terminals (black) should be connected together.