Luminary designer Seigfried Linkwitz has been a proponent of multi-way open baffles for many years. Recently, commercial manufacturers like Jamo, AV123 and others have introduced highly successful models. And of course, the panel speaker (electrostat and planar) folks have been there all along. Getting the midrange driver out of the box brings an intoxicating openness and clarity to the sound. The speaker sound big and unencumbered. Voices and instruments sound “there”. Of course, there are downsides. Dipoles need to be positioned out in the room a good distance, as they’ve got sound coming from the rear of the speaker. If you want to fill a big room with deep, chest thumping OB bass, you’ll need 4 woofers. Or a woofer in-a-box on each side.For most folks and most music, the midrange and coherence of single driver OB’s is worth losing a little bass impact. You can leave your OB’s in the corners for background music and TV (something absorptive behind them wouldn’t hurt). When you’re ready for some serious listening, drag them out to the middle of the room. Listen near-field. As you don’t have to worry about driver integration, you can get as close as you want. If you’re like me, you’ll get lost in the midrange. And you’ll hear all of the bass line. It will be perfectly integrated with the music, neither disconnected nor overwhelming.There are practical considerations for the DIY’er too. Betsys work with amplifiers from 1/2 to 300 watts. You don’t need to be able to cut accurately. The bass is neighbor and wife friendly. The rear wave is out of phase, so there are nulls to the sides. You can have bass in the listening position, but it won’t carry through walls. They are also easy to experiment with. Cut some holes and add some helper woofers. You can use plate amps to drive them. Make replacement center baffles so you can try vintage drivers. Buy a pair of cheap subs from Parts Express, some high efficiency tweeters, take off the wings and try a three-way setup with Betsy as the midrange. Or, leave them alone and spend your time and money on a really good source and amplification.Fullrange drivers and open baffles aren’t the right speakers for everybody. It wouldn’t be any fun to spend dozens of hours gluing hundreds of dollars of birch play into a complicated horn only to find out that you would have been happier with a pair of 70’s JBL L100’s. But the Betsy O.B.s are so cheap and easy; why not give ‘em a shot? Mine aren’t my only speakers, but if I had to choose, they sure could be.
Bang for your buck.