For those who don't know me from my postings on other AA (perhaps in this case of this Forum, I should spell out Audio Asylum) Forums, and as my moniker foretells, I am a chef and food scholar. As for my interest in wine, I would have to place myself somewhere between an enophile and the guy who, before the Guliani regime change, used to wipe your windows with a filthy rag on the Manhatten side of the Lincoln Tunnel. I have, however, tasted quite a few superlative wines and spirits in my time, and would be happy to share the experiences, if not the actual booze.
To get to the meat of the matter, Beppe, a resident of Turin referred to below, started a string about Tannoy loudspeakers, with which I have had some 40 years of experience. In the immediately preceeding post, I was describing my mild dyspepsia due to overindulgence in pasta e fagioli, followed by a second course of trippa (tripe) in a local storefront restaurant the previous evening, although my unease may have been more related to the fumes wafting over from the dry cleaner next door...
'Prego, Beppe. I'm feeling much netter this morning, probably because my 2 dinner companions were abstemious, and I did not want to open a bottle for my amusement alone, which I would doubtless have felt obliged to finish.
To touch briefly on the subject of Italian wines, I will write someday about my adventures as the private chef in a home with 27 bathrooms. "What shall I tell people who ask me what we do for a living?" I asked my erstwhile employer on the day of my hire. "Tell them we're in transportation," he replied, which in a manner of speaking, with 5,000 trucks on the road, was true, if not the whole truth.
Though he never touched a drop personally, his enotecha, with tens of thousands of bottles and more delivered every day, was by far the finest I have ever seen. One night I was asked on the spur of the moment to prepare dinner for 8 of his closest business associates. "Go into the cellar and pick out something really special."
I chose a 1953 Barolo and another Piemontese museum piece-an ancient Barbaresco, I think-and cradling them like Romulus and Remus, brought them upstairs. When our guests filed into the vast kitchen where we were serving, it looked like a Hollywood casting call for the role of Clemenza. Just before dinner was ready, I wiped the dust from the bottle necks, and gingerly withdrew the corks. (For those of you who are not enophiles, wines of great antiquity, unlike their great-great-great-grandchildren, fade quickly rather than improve when allowed to 'breathe.')
When I offered to pour for the first and most respected guest, he politely declined, citing doctor's orders, and requested acqua naturale. Every other guest, each in his turn, declined the offer of wine, and asked for water. To my everlasting horror, my employer instructed me to pour both bottles down the sink in full view of his colleagues, leaving me no option but to comply.
If the bullet-proof armour on the Mercedes in which I was driven to the market daily made anyone feel more secure, it had the opposite effect on me. It was not long before my employer's luck ran out, and I started my next assignment.
Beppe, my knowledge of Tannoy does not include the models you mention. But as Bare says, many in the world of classic Tannoys prefer the 12", feeling that due to the smaller cone diameter, midrange reproduction is superior to that of the 15". Obviously, others, myself included, disagree. But in any case, the differences are very small, and I'm sure I could be more than content with either one.
In its early literature, Tannoy states that 12" and 15" models work fine together as stereo pairs, so there you are. I personally used a 15" Gold together with a 15" Silver for some time, and were it not for a bad case of audiophilia nervousa, would be happily doing so to this day.