WWW.CARAUDIOMAG.COM
MOREL IS NO STRANGER TO THE
PAGES OF
CA&E
.
Moreover, the company
is no stranger to praise. Since the brand
reinvented itself stateside just a few years
back, we’ve had the opportunity to run sev-
eral of the company’s products through our
daunting tests only to report back to with
enthusiasm. Heck, we liked one set so
much that it landed Morel a spot in our cov-
eted “Best Of” for 2005. In retrospect,
though, all that praise by our evaluators was
for products in the upper echelon of Morel’s
lineup, such as the $500 Supremo tweeters
and component sets retailing for a wallet-
cleansing $900 and $1,150. So I guess the
question needs to be asked: “Can Morel
build an affordable system that performs?”
I was recently sent the Morel Dotech
Ovation 6 component set; a set I hope will
answer my question. With a price tag con-
siderably lower than those aforementioned
Morel components at a mere (by compari-
son) $499.95, there’s no doubt I’m interest-
ed to hear them. So let’s get to it.
MSRP: $499.95
TEXT & PHOTOS
CASEY THORSON
IMPRESSIONS
Morel really knows how to make an
appearance. The box for the Dotech
Ovation 6 is simple, artsy, and sophisticat-
ed with its natural, light brown exposed
corrugate packing. A 1” x 1” Morel logo
adorns its topside while the front, rear, left
and right panels get a 1/2” x 4” (approxi-
mately) imprinted paper badge with the
system’s model number. There is nothing
cheap about the looks and, at this point, I
would hope that’s an indication of the
product inside.
After running my hand over the corru-
gated box a couple of times, I lifted the lid
and started pulling out the components.
The Dotech Ovation 6 is your typical 2-way
system using a pair of 6 1/2” woofers, a
couple of 28mm (1.1”) tweeters, and a
crossover duo. Also found was a pair of
modern, highly unique woofer grilles
stamped out of a nice thick-gauge steel
with half-oval cutouts adorning one large
circle in the center and a goody bag of
mounting hardware and accessories that
even includes gaskets for the woofers.
Morel took a giant leap in the crossover
design for their products, at least in terms
of cosmetics. I’ve been told that they look
like little spacecraft, but personally I think
they have a more alien-being appearance,
resembling giant eyes with the two clear
acrylic oval windows snapped into the top-
side of each crossover. The case itself is
nearly a half oval made of black injection-
molded ABS plastic and furthers the
impression of an alien. But that’s where the
sci-fi ends. Protruding from the straight
edge of the case is a red masked pcb
holding the crossover components and
barrier terminal strip. The woofer gets a
good size air core inductor making up the
-6dB filter, and the tweeter side uses a
smaller iron core inductor and Mylar
capacitor for -12dB filtering along with two
resistors for tweeter attenuation. The
tweeter level can be selected b3,
0, and –3dB by removing the left window
to access to the jumper.
In their own right, the 6 1/2” woofers in
this set are just as unique as the
crossovers, but not as foreign in look.
Somehow the engineers at Morel figured
out how to stamp a basket out of steel to
some serious depth. Honestly, I can’t recall
ever seeing metal stretched in a manner
such as this — the frame fully encompass-
es the motor! Sure, you can cast a basket
like this, but this was once a flat piece of
metal, and a thick gauge at that! Morel
calls it a unified one-piece chassis and
claims it was “aerodynamically designed to
reduce sound reflection distortion and
mounting depth.” Behind the cone are
nine semi-circular holes punched through
the metal and perforations on the bottom
to vent the motor.
Under the hood, so to speak, horse-
power comes from a double-magnet drive
motor. This creates the force to move the
large, yet lightweight 2 1/8” diameter
Hexatech aluminum voice coil that’s
REVIEW
COMPO-
MOREL
DOTECH
OVATION6
WHEN PERFORMANCE
SURPASSES PRICE
ELECTRONICALLY REPRINTED FROM MARCH 2007
