SOLD!-Vintage DCM Time Window Threes!! Meticulously Restored - “Better At Everything”

Model

Time Window Three

Type

Front speaker

Brand

DCM

Vintage and quite hard to find DCM Time Windows 3 - Completely Restored inside and out. They look and sound like they just came out of the box. Finding a pair worthy of a full restoration took me over five years of searching. I am an engineer who has completely serviced these top to bottom. I am located in Oviedo, FL. What was done: I stripped these down to the bone so to speak. First you must remove all of the rotted headliner covering the speaker body. Note: By now any DCM model that used headliner as diffraction and dampening control (l.e., TW 1a,TW3 and the Time Frame series writ large) just has dust and scraps of fabric left where the headliner used to be. If you can’t ever get your grills clean or they get a big smudge of dust every time you bump or touch them- this is why. The removal was a major endeavor in itself as these pictures show. In fact the whole restoration process including getting materials striping everything down, recovering, cleaning all controls, etc. took two sold days of work and sweat. And I have redone several pairs of Time Windows previously. To get things back together I made a template to correctly cut out much improved higher quality acoustic headliner, and re-covered the entire speaker as it originally was done from the factory. This is important for diffraction control and dampening of the cabinet, especially at the Sonotube to particleboard interface (where the round back meets the straight fronts. I removed the end caps and detoxed all the potentiometers, of which there are six inside this speaker. There are three that were calibrated at the factory. These were carefully marked before cleaning them and then reset back after they got a final treatment with faderlube to keep them singing for another 40 years. There are also three user adjustable controls - for tuning the speaker to the rest of your equipment and to the room itself. The solid oak end caps were lightly sanded and hand finished with 5 coats of neutral Danish oil. The result is a lustrous finish far superior to what came out of the factory. I wanted to highlight the contrast between the natural oak and the jet black grill cloth to make them pop and keep that clean retro look. I believe I have succeeded. I inspected and treated all the rubber surrounds on the woofers, checked all the internal wire terminal connections as well as tightening the woofer fasteners. Everything is in fabulous condition. Grill clothes were cleaned and inspected for holes or snags. I normally have to replace one or both of these. While they were totally impregnated with dust from the rotted headliner, they turned out to be in perfect condition after a through washing so they were reused. The grill were reinstalled and correct original OEM badging was then applied for a finishing touch. So…. On the the question you must have been waiting for: How do they compare to the TW1s? Well, I happen to have a pair of TW1a to directly compare them to. I am going to quote a scene from Star Trek Out of Darkness to express my feelings here: Kirk: why did they need you!? Kahn: because I am better! Kirk: better at what? Kahn: everything! Specifically- Bass: they have a 6 1/2 inch and an 8 inch woofer with larger magnets in a much larger, longer transmission line. The speaker cabinets are also so far heavier and better damped than the TW1s. The biggest noticeable difference is how the bass feels - it just hits you harder and deeper than the TW1s. Imaging: unlike the TW1s where the tweeters are mounted below the woofers, the tweeters in the TW3s are mounted coaxially to the woofers for a point source configuration similar to the higher end Time frames and CX line). This means you get no change in phase/ frequency response at different listening hight, so the image is rock stable even if you move out of the sweet spot. Also one of the three user controls is used to adjust the balance between the direct and ambient sound fields. This allows the listener to tune the imaging for their preference and compensate for non-symmetric room placement of the speakers. Midrange/treble: the use of better woofers, tweeter and crossover components/design vs the TW1s is quite evident here. The woofers have bigger magnets and the tweeters are custom Vifa soft domes. There are separate user controls to fine tune midrange and treble levels and dispersion. The crossover is a masterpiece: there are 10 inductors, 10 film capacitors, 4 high quality electrolytic caps, 9 resistors and 6 potentiometers in each speaker. All this is used for frequency division and time/phase compensation ( ie time windows). It is vastly more sophisticated than that found in TW1s- and is individually factory calibrated for the specific drivers used in each speaker. These raise the bar for the Time Window’s reputation of being almost holographic sounding and balanced from the very lows to the very highs. These are a matched set with consecutive serial numbers.