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I was keep listening my Dutch-made SA8535 tweeter.  There is a lot of deferent with this tweeter and I think it is a good time to pass my early observations about the tweeter Sound.

This driver is not a ribbon tweeter as the Stage Acompany fraudulently claims but rather an isodynamic tweeter. But who care what it is - the sound of this thing is more important.

First experiments with this driver indicted that it hugely affected by the type and the slope of crossover - in fact it is more sensitive to it then any other tweeters I have seen. It does have a good tone and clean with no colorations HF.  It does have good sensitivity and dose very well with low power Melquiades. It behaves very very good, practically perfect, when it stressed and when it operates at higher volumes. It maintains very flat impedance and it very easy load for Melquiades. It does sound compatible with Vitavox S2 when it is directly on axe. It does go very high and it is not juts bogus numbers the manufactures love to publish but it is actually quite auditable. Also while it runs high and clean it does it very reasonably, without unnecessary accents or enunciations.

Something that I do not like. The driver foam bumps near the exit of the  “ribbons” that meant to accommodate the Stage Acompany’s own horns. I do not use the horn, as I do not need any LF extension, but still did not remove the foam “borders”. I presume that the “borders” severely screwed this driver’s ability to sound wide. It sounds well exactly at axe but literally 20-30 degree on right or left it develops a LOT of HF noise and very unpleasant “fuzzy HF fatness”. Another thing that I do not like that it is too much wiling to dive into MF – I need a high order crossover to hold it. Also, the SA8535 does not have that HF delicacy that I observe in TAD PT-R9 driver. The PT-R9 driver by 100W has delicacy and refinement, sophistication and classiness. No one other tweeter that I tried recently has this level of noble stylishness. The SA8535 does not have it. The SA8535’s highs are colorations-free but they lack of certain gracefulness, charm, distinction and fineness. They are very good on their own but they are not as good as they “might be”. PT-R9 has this fineness, Linaeum is perfectly balanced but does not go where “it” would be critical and the SA8535 dose “it” …strangely….

The SA8535 has some kind of own way to sound and I really could not put it in worlds. What I feel with it this the driver make some of the HF not really “recognizable”. I men when any other driver I heard goes up my inner-me anticipate “something”. This “something” to one or other degree get fulfilled or expected. With the SA8535, while I was listening music I was very frequency catching myself that sometime in HF happened some kind of events that I never heard nether in reproduced sound nor live sound. It is important to note that those “alien events” were not necessary bad – but they were “alien events for my listening consciousness. It was like scratching a cat’s belly and then suddenly detect that it has
A sharp metal object hidden inside her fur… Unexpected? More then just that!

Still, I would like to spend a little more with this driver as it is the first of my “high sensitively success” driver. Definably when a sensitively of tweeter does up then there is a LOT of very interesting things going on with our listening awareness. It is relay nothing could beat a clean tweeter at very high sensitively driven by no-feedback SET. I will open a little a veil of secrecy and will tell you that a truly ribbon driver that is being made for me will have ~ 112dB sensitivity. I do not know hoe it will sound but the SA8535 clearly indicate that the more dB per watt the merrier results are.

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