Have had the Tekton Design Electron mid-tower speakers for about a week now and thought I would give my impression of them. I am a lurker on AVS Forum, this is my first post, so many of you can stop reading right now since that would be your clear bias. Others might be interested though if they get past my limited experience, newness to AVS Forum and are interested in my initial impressions.
My background in AV is quite limited. In the late 1990's my wife and I traveled between Seattle, Washington, and Eugene, Oregon to listen to nearly 70 brands/models of home theater speakers, all costing less than $10K. The speakers we absolutely fell in love with for their sound (sound tracks as well as music) were the Linn AV51 series speakers: AV5140 towers, AV5120 center speaker and upgraded Linn bookshelf speakers for surround. We added a Velodyne 12" subwoofer which matched the musicality of the Linns (to our ears at least) and, over time, drove our home theater with an Anthem D2 prepro with Primaire amplifiers. We loved that setup and the Anthem representative and Audio store technician were quite impressed with the in-home sound achieved for the price. We were extremely pleased for many years. We retired, moved to a small town in South Eastern Arizona, technology changed and our retirement income grew limited. The Anthem D2 did not support the newer technologies so we decided to swap it out with an AVR with a bit lesser sound quality, the Yamaha AV3160 which better matched our budget. This new combo sounded decent but several music pieces made the tweeter too shrill and not tiresome to listen to. Additionally, in our new great room (15' x 22' x 9' with one side wall totally open to our beg entry) we were never able to position the Linn towers satisfactorily to optimize their sound. We decided to replace the Linns but had limited dollars in our budget. A lot of research, much through this forum, we thought we would be safe and pleased with either the RBH bookshelf system or the Tekton Design speakers. Tekton Design speakers had great reviews by those who actually have them and I did not find as much info about the RBH speakers. Tekton Design speakers more in my budget wheel house as well. Talking with Eric at Tekton Design, we decided to upgrade to the Electron mid-tower speakers (still larger than the Linn Towers but smaller than the Double Impact Towers which my wife would not have approved of). Have to say that Eric and his staff were very helpful, good to work with, and everything was delivered to us in perfect condition through FedEX. The speakers were easy to unpack and set up.
My impressions of the Tekton Design Electron speakers. The Linn Towers look nicer, the Tektons boxy but not bad. Sound quality a big step up over the Linns. The Linn towers have now become my surround speakers. The Linn center speaker and bookshelf speakers moved to our smaller Home Theater setup in the family room. They do sound much better than the Definitive speakers that they are replacing. First thing that impressed us was the Electron Center speaker. So clear, sound so clean, and dialogue more understandable and more life-like than the Linn Center Speaker, a major upgrade in sound quality that immerses. Second thing that impressed us was the greater musicality of the Electron speakers over the Linn towers. Big upgrade to our ears. Sound stage much larger and more cohesive. Instruments and voices very natural sounding and overall sound not compressed as from the Linns. Until the Electrons are burned in I will not try to fine tune the placement of the Electron speakers. Where as the Linns were difficult to place and did not work as well in our new home, the Electrons are sitting 2 feet out from the back wall, five feet from one side wall and no wall in proximity on the side of the other speaker, yet sound sensational to our ears. Base, mid-range and treble sound cohesive, natural, musical and easy to listen to for hours. Music fed through our James River Media Center are the best we've heard it (if the original recording was decent) and higher resolution recordings sound amazing, almost life-like, something we never achieved with the Linns. I purposefully fed some of the tracks through that had the shrill treble and they were surprisingly tamed when played through the Electron speakers. I love to sit and listen to music of many genres and now have a wonderful smile on my face rather than critiquing the AV system. My wife is a worker bee who is not a particularly critical listener and is usually listening while working through the house. When she first heard the Electron speakers she was in the kitchen and come out to say, "Wow! Those speakers sound really nice." Later she stopped on one of her frequent trips through and told me that no matter where she was in the room or passing by, the Electrons sound so nice and didn't drop off in sound quality like the Linn speakers which had a definite and limited sweet spot. The Electrons seem to have a huge sweet spot. To date, I have only leveled the sound from each speaker. I will do the fine tuning and run the equalizer software when I have the speakers sufficiently burned in. Let me say, my wife and I already love these speakers, think they are a significant upgrade over the Linn speakers which had been our favorites we have heard over the years. I would have loved to listen to the RBH speakers but that was not possible from our location. I would be hard pressed to think they could be any better. Count me as tickled pink with the Tekton Design Electron speakers. Eric did tell me that the Double Impact and Electron speakers would sound great even closer to the wall though 3 to 4 feet would optimize their sound. 2' was the best we could manage and whereas the Electrons sound beautiful to us in that location, it badly impacted the Linn tower performance. One of the big differences was that I never could get optimal base out of the Linns and the Electrons provide wonderful musical base. There is a very smooth transition from the subwoofer to the bass of the Electrons that I was not able to achieve with the Linns despite the crossover setting.
Miscellaneous notes: We listen a tad louder than most but not at wall shaking volumes, we can still converse. These speakers sound just as good at low volume as at our normal listening level. When I moved the Linn towers to the surround position (they are 90 db speakers), I had to up there level nearly 6-7 db over the Electron fronts and center just to level the volume between all speakers. The Electrons seems a highly efficient design. The Linn towers are not a perfect match to the Electrons when I play stereo signals in 5.1 but somehow the combination works and I am so pleased. Tuscon has a limited number of audio stores. We listened to several speakers but the selection was limited. We listened to some $2500 Martin Logans which sounded nice but were not an improvement over the Linns (to our ears), We also listened to some B&W speakers in the same price range. They sounded a bit shrill to our ears on some tracks and overall seemed missing "strength" or drop off in the mid range.
This post is my (and my wife's) honest but totally subjective impressions of the Tekton Design Electron speakers. We were a bit leery of purchasing speakers we had not heard but the AVS Forums helped ease that concern as did talking to Eric Alexander (Tekton Design) who seems a friendly but square shooter with lots of excellent experience in speaker design. We could not be more pleased with our new Electron speakers. I have always trusted my ears over technical specifications (for good or bad). Doing so is very subjective with no right choices, no guarantee others hear/assess any speakers the same way we do. Key thing is to be very pleased with your speakers (equipment) and not wish you had purchased differently. I will say that I was not particularly pleased with the Yamaha A3160 AVR when the Linns were the attached speakers. The Anthem D2 audio performance sounded so much better to us (it is in a different audio class). Now, with the Electron speakers, that dissatisfaction with the A3160 has changed to genuine listening pleasure. We love our setup. I would note my only regret is that I wish the A3160 had additional 5.1 analog input but that was a trade off based on overall budget.