Trying Vintage Speakers

I had a pair of these back in the early 80s that I bought new. I went speaker shopping with my heart set on the Large Advents but couldn't afford them. Also looked at the Polk 10b but couldn't afford that either so settled on the 7b. They served me well until my ex took them at divorce time.

Maybe the OP could look at the Polk Audio 5b.

 

Not to hijack the thread, but I have a question. I have a set of Alon 4 speakers, built maybe in the mid 90's. I've had them re-foamed and they sound as good as they ever have, but I'm wondering if they would need to be recapped?

 

I have a set of fully restored ar4s and ar6s. The 6s are not much bigger but have much more bass. They would work much better in a 10x10 room.

 

AR 4x is an 8 inch as well. In any case, never heard of a woofer being too big.

 

Great suggestion Tim, the Monitor 5 is a very good sounding speaker in a smaller package! I tend to prefer the "frown faced" Peerless tweeter to the later SL2000 (silver dome) in the 5b, but most people probably would never know there is a difference.

 

Sure...in a small room the bass, being lonnnggggg wavelength, can bounce all over the place and cause weird sound-things to happen. It's just physics. Best to not go too big in small room. I'm trying to move up to a 6" from 4". Me thinks 8" would be too big.

 

Mid 90's aint vintage lol.

 

There was the AR8B (edited for clarity), with a 6.5" woofer. Great little speakers. I also second the AR18 suggestion too. A single 8" woofer, run full range. Only a single capacitor for the tweeter. Not too much to go wrong there.

The EPI's of that vintage are very good too. Maybe a little brighter than the Roy Allison designed paper cone tweeters in the AR's, but very good. Look for EPI L100's. Like the AR18's, an 8" full range woofer, and a 6dB per octave single cap crossover on the tweeter.

Another classic, is the ADS L520. Another small(er) 8" 2-way design, with a coated soft dome tweeter. Very good bass snap and timbre. Very musical.

Good luck.

 

If the Dynaco 10 don't make the grade, I'll check out the Polk Audio 5b as well as the 6" Wharfdale's.

 

Alon's are great speakers though. Worth a recap, if needed. Use good capacitors. Mundorf E-Cap or Bennic NPE's. Or good polypropylene's, if you want to spend a bit more?

 

Ar8 was 10"
AR Speaker Specifications

 

Sorry. I should have been more specific. I was referring to the AR8B; a 6.5" 2-way.

Thanks.

 

I've recently begun to get back into my old Bose 201s, which perform fairly well. Big enough to move some air, but not so much as to disturb the neighbors.

 

Great recommendation. And cabinet only 15" tall. I'll look out for these if the Dynaco doesn't work.

 

I use 8" and 9" woofers in a 9 x 10 ft room and they sound great. JBL 4301b and Smaller Advent's. Also used 10" and 12" in a 3way enclosure and never had a problem, the smaller 2 ways are best for me.

 

The Spica tc50 was a well regarded vintage bookshelf.



Also the Celestion SL6

 

My nephew has a pair of the Spica's. Perhaps they are in need of a re-cap, but I've listened to them several times and they sound somewhat "thin" and perhaps "grainy" to my ears.

 

I heard the Spica TC50's, at my local dealer, when first released. Very impressive imaging. Somewhat weak dynamics, and they seemed a bit fragile. I don't think they'd take much power. But, considering how phase accurate they were touted to be, you had to keep your head locked dead center. Any left-to-right head movement caused the sound to dramatically shift too. Like you were moving outside the sound bubble they threw, and sound dropped off as such. A strange experience. If I didn't know better (and I didn't check), they actually sounded out of phase to me.
The same stop carried NHT. The new NHT Model 1's sounded better.

Speaking of NHT, NHT Super Ones would be a great speaker for the OP to check out as well. Well built, decent looking, and balanced sound. Good for most any genre of music.

 

My experience has been somewhat similar, but has changed recently.

I act as an online resource to owners (buyers, sellers, fans, etc.) of the Koss CM line of speakers (1977-1984). I own and have had several pairs refurbished. My experience had been that by now, about half the speakers will have at least one cap that has drifted out of tolerance. My advice had been to check and replace as need be. (All of the original resistors should be changed.)

Earlier this year I took a refurbished pair back into the shop as the treble tweeter and tweeter on both pairs sounded very off. It turned out that all of the caps, which had checked out ok several years ago during the first refurb, were now out of tolerance - some by a factor of two. It seems that when they reach old age there's no longer a fairly linear rate of failure, but rather an exponential one. So my new advice to all Koss CM owners is to replace all of the original caps as well as the resistors, when doing a refurb. The incremental cost of parts is relatively small compared to the cost of labour in doing a second refurb. Such a refurb (resistors and caps) should last 25-30 years.

That recently refurbished Koss CM/1030 sounds incredible (ie. like new) again. I've gone through an extensive comparative listening test with my other five refurbished pairs in my main HT and to my ears they all still sound identical, but I'll be more diligent to do such a comparative listening test once a year to catch any that might still have original caps that are on their way out.

Jeff

 

I've just posted a short video of my Wharfedale Denton original upgrade.

Parts and advice from Falcon Acoustics. I used ClarityCaps to keep with the British vibe.

Cost me less than £100 including speakers!

Enjoy :

 

I used to have a pair of AR M1's. Little 6" acoustic suspension woofer. Quite capable. I gave them away. They are pretty rare but excellent.

 

I have had AR-4x speakers in my offices for 34 years. I like an 8 inch woofer and tweeter combination but I listen to no jazz or classical and in a 2015 vintage review Hi-Fi News said Diana Krall sounded distant on them. Great for me maybe not goof for you. A badly matched pair with an obvious flaw got a 84 from them. Mine were restored by the late Carl Richard with his crossover and well matched. I have no plans to change.

 

Thanks for the reply. The reason I asked in this thread is that speaker guys would be here and would be able to answer. I guess the object here is to match the values of the old ones? I would suppose caps have a large effect on sound. I appreciate the info.

I'm generally of the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" school, but I am curious.

 

Back when I was playing around with vintage speakers I ran across the website for Human Speakers which you may or may not be interested in. (While I haven't heard the speakers themselves I did end up spending a fair bit of time looking around the website.)

 

I had my AR 6's restored to factory specs. New caps, rebuilt by Vintage AR pots, and reconed. New caps clean up the sound by restoring the correct crossover point(s).