Club-27 and Robert Bastani spent a lot of time minimizing transition influences. Each time a signal crosses from one medium or material boundary to another, some influence of this transition can reflect in the final sound. It starts with the incoming speaker leads. The five-way binding post accepts banana or spade terminated loudspeaker cables, with the bare wire connection already used to connect the drivers (we learnt that they recommend connecting your speaker leads also as bare wire to eliminate small losses). This means no soldering. From the binding post two sets of wires leave for the drivers. For the widebander, the leads solder directly with the resistor to the voice coil leads to bypass the slip-on terminals. The tweeter exploits a similarly bare-boned solution, with one wire from the terminal soldered to the resistor, then capacitor then tweeter. The other lead goes straight to the tweeter. Looking at the back, the dangling wires, naked resistors and tie-wrapped capacitor elicit an unfinished impression but there's method to its minimalist madness. We were told that sound trials noted sonic degradation from adding a cover or fixing the wires.
When the subwoofer is slid over the protruding L-bracket, the speaker becomes a single part. Let's take a closer look. Armin already apologized for the paint finish of our samples. He had the option of bringing a burnt-in sample with a poor paint job; or a pretty but virgin production sample. Break-in for the Bastanis widebander means at least 400 hours. That's a whopping 17 days of constant play. We were glad he opted for sound not looks. In the horn flare of the tweeter we noticed a nickel-sized felt dot. The widebander sports 7 of them encircling the dust cap.
Another feature of the Jimi—or in fact any Club-27 loudspeaker—is the recessed mounting of the widebander. It couples to the back of the baffle to create a 2.5cm deep transition in front of the cone whose paper, in proprietary Bastani fashion, gets an application of violin lacquer. This secret compound alters the thin cone's damping and renders it less stiff. Now the driver reaches frequencies above its original break-up point. The Jimi driver hits 7kHz without issues except for getting beamy around the dust caps. That's why the felt pads show up there – tweaky perhaps but effective.
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