Electro-Voice LT-12

A three-way twelve-inch driver that Electro-Voice sold for thirty-nine dollars and then dared you to compare against its own hundred-dollar models.

Overview

The pitch ran repeatedly in the hi-fi press, and it was blunt: almost every luxury feature on the company's expensive three-way twelve-inch speakers was on the LT-12, and all you paid was $39.00. That's the price in Audio-Fan (June 1966, p.36) and HiFI-Stereo (September 1966, p.13). Earlier ads in High-Fidelity (November 1965, p.187), Audio (December 1965, p.74), and HiFI-Stereo (October 1965, p.152) carried the figure at $36.00. The price moved. The argument didn't.

Electro-Voice wanted you to compare the LT-12 against its own 12TRXB and 12TRX - integrated three-way twelves selling at roughly $66 to $69 and $120 respectively. The advertising conceded that the pricier units had larger magnets and tighter tolerances, but insisted the difference was "in degree, not in basic design." Each buyer had to decide at the dealer's listening room whether that was honest engineering or clever marketing. Either way, it shows where the LT-12 sat in the catalog: the value play, the entry point into three-way design.

"Three-way" meant a specific architecture here. The LT-12 combined a twelve-inch woofer, Electro-Voice's Radax dual-cone design for the midrange, and a compression-type tweeter feeding the company's patented diffraction horn for the highs. That's three radiating elements in a single frame. The "LT" prefix in the Wolverine naming scheme meant exactly this, and separated the three-way drivers from the coaxial "LS" models. The woofer used a long-throw suspension and a "deep-dish" cone profile, and the advertising credited both with reducing distortion even at high listening levels. A built-in crossover network divided the work between the drivers. A three-position "brilliance" switch let the owner trim the high-frequency balance to suit the room, which counted for a lot when speakers went into whatever cabinet and corner the household allowed.

The frame was a one-piece die-cast affair, finished in what one period survey described as a misty green metallic. The die-casting wasn't cosmetic. The advertising argued that a rigid cast frame assured permanent alignment of every moving part, where stamped frames could twist, bend, or sag and introduce distortion over time. Electro-Voice leaned hard on this point, and the claim holds up. A cast basket is a real structural advantage, and it's one of the reasons these drivers have survived in usable condition decades later.

The Heathkit catalog of the period listed the LT-12 as suitable for the AE-30 and AE-10 speaker cabinets and quoted a response of 40 to 4,000 cps. That's a modest figure by any standard, and it sits oddly against the presence of a VHF driver. Treat the spec with caution. Catalog copy of the era was frequently recycled and loosely proofread, and a three-way with a compression tweeter on a diffraction horn was plainly meant to reach well above 4,000 cycles.

The LT-12 is flexible, which is what makes it interesting to a modern collector. It was sold as a component, not a system, so surviving examples turn up in an enormous variety of enclosures - some factory, many home-built, a few frankly alarming. The three-position brilliance switch helps here: a driver dropped into an unfamiliar cabinet can be dialed toward something listenable without external EQ. Pair it with a period tube amplifier of modest power and a properly sized sealed or vented box, and the LT-12 delivers a three-way presentation for what was, in 1965 dollars, entry-level money.

It is not, and never was, a high-efficiency monster or a wide-bandwidth statement piece. The more expensive 12TRX and 12TRXB existed because the LT-12 stopped short of them. What the LT-12 offers is the Electro-Voice design - Radax cone, diffraction horn, die-cast basket - at the bottom of the range. Collectors chasing the last word in sensitivity should look elsewhere in the catalog. Anyone who wants to hear what a well-executed three-way twelve sounded like in the mid-sixties, without paying integrated-system prices, will find it does the job with a minimum of fuss.