Advent 1 speakers: Worth refoaming?

Picked a pair of these up at a church sale for $10. One speaker has a few cracks in the foam. The other looks ok. I've heard of Advents but don't know diddley about them.

 

Advent made some fine speakers during their heyday. The Large Advent Speaker sounded great, as did its "New Advent" replacement, the 5002. A similar relationship exists between the "Small Advent" and the speaker you mention. My 5002's have very tight bass thanks to the sealed enclosure, and extended, natural highs from the silk dome tweeter. I have never heard the 1's, but if you can get them refoamed cheaply, I'm sure they would sound very good. Great for a second/basement/youngster's system.

 

I've never refoamed speakers before. I saw some refoaming kits on E Bay for the Advent 1s. I might give it a try. The speakers are quite heavy and solidly built too.

 

It's not hard to do, just take your time.... I sell foams at $11.00 per pair...

Let me know the size of foams you need, I let them go for $11.00 per pair with $4.00 for US mail shipping in USA. If they are over 10" they are $13.00 per pair same ship charge..

 

I think so

While not state of the art or even former state of the art, the Large Advent was a mile stone in audio history. It was/is a very good sounding speaker, that sold for a decent price, and gave people a good glimpse of what audio was capable of. Can you do better? SURE! Can you find a more enjoyable speaker? Maybe! Can you have any more fun than a Large Advent? Not with rebuilding it yourself and haveing fun while doing that and after listening to it.

 

Check out New Foam and for under $20 you be ready for 100,000 miles. Well worth the work.

 

Are you talking about these?

Buy the refoam kit from Rolf, I do. Great price and great service!

Btw, I'm now restoring my 3rd pair of New Large Advents. With modern capacitors of tighter tolerances and better resistors, fiberglass, refoam...these things restored are no laughing joke. They like to be paired with a clean powerful amp, such as a NAD.

I tell people how old they are & how much money I spent on restoring them and I watch their jaws drop once the music starts playing. "That's the East Coast, Henry Kloss, acoustic suspension bass you're hearing", I tell them.

- Sushimaster

 

Thank's Sushimaster! I can help you do the refoam if you have questions.

Thanks.

Whether you obtain them from me or not, let me know if you have questions about the doing of it.

It's just not that hard to do. And is rewarding beyond the satisfaction of a low-cost refurb.

Listening to music on speakers you have rescued from the landfill for the cost of around $15.00 and three hours time is just cool.

 

They do sound nice...I'd say yes most definitely

 

There are pairs of tweeters for the Advent 1 almost continuously on eBay.

They are the same tweeters as for the New Advents with the orange diapragm like the originals but with an all-metal backing plate (no masonite square).

Advent used the same drivers in the New Advent Loudspeaker and the Advent 1 Loudspeaker. The Advent 1 just has a smaller box.

This is unlike the original Advent Loudspeaker and the Smaller Advent Loudspeaker where each had their own dedicated (at first) drivers.

Doug

 

Jerry,

Advent 1 has the same tweeter as that of the New Large Advent. It's basically a smaller, less expensive version of the New Large Advents.

Tweeters pop up on eBay every now and then and fetch around $30-$40/pair depending on cosmetic condition, ect. Here is an example.

The Advent/1 is a new speaker system that replaces the
Smaller Advent. It is a redefinition of just how close we
can come to the performance of our flagship speaker system
in a smaller, less expensive speaker.
The Advent/1 has 2 1/2 dB less response at 30 Hz than
its bigger brother. That is the only difference worth quantifying.
Its overall sound is as close to the New Advent’s
as any speaker can come to another. Its power-handling
capabilities are the same, and its efficiency is high enough
to allow it to be well driven by low-power amplifiers and
receivers. We feel that the performance-per-dollar (and
per-cubic-foot) of the Advent/1 is unsurpassed by anything
we or anyone else can offer in a speaker.

- Sushimaster

 

Refoaming these will bring you great rewards. Earlier this year I did my first refoam on Baby Advents after buying the foams from Rolf. Very happy with the results and Rolf was a great resource in helping to walk me through the process.

You'll love your Advents once they're refoamed

 

I have to take a different road here.

I restored (x overs) and refoamed two pairs of Original Advents, and when finished they looked and sounded like new.

BUT.....I could'nt stand the sound of them!

The bass is for lack of a better word "Wooly". Its somewhat scratchy, indistinct and booms on certain things. It is NOT the tight, controlled bass that I'm used to hearing from good speakers.

The highs were many times harsh and shrill, and even piercing.

As a DIY project, it was fun, But as a speaker I could not listen to them for more than 5 minutes. I gave them to a friend who lives next door.

Food for thought before you invest time and money into these....do you really want to be stuck with a speaker that you may end up hating?

 

First off, I will have my g/f take a few pictures of the speakers. I will admit I'm not all that up on the lingo of speaker parts etc. One speakers foam has 3 good sized cracks in it. I'm sure that the right thing to do is replace BOTH foams.

The speaker cabinet size is 22" tall by 13 1/4" wide by 9 1/4" deep. The tweeter is not positioned exactly like the one pictured on the Stereophile link. I measured the foam on the one speaker from the outside edge and the diameter is 9". I'm assuming the raised portion is the foam.

As far as who I will buy the foam kit from, well OF COURSE I will buy from here on Steve Hoffman. Why buy from a stranger on E Bay? Lol! I cleaned off the cabinents with some cheesy furniture polish and they look really nice.

The ID on the back says Advent/1. Serial numbers are HH 107011 and HH 107023. One was inspected by JG. The other is hard to decipher. I'll try to get pictures uploaded by tonight. Thanks for all the help from everyone so far.

 

Your firend is very lucky.

- Sushimaster

 

That's unfortunate. I've had the exact opposite results with my 5002's (basically an update of the Large Advent with a silk dome tweeter). The bass is always in the pocket, nice and punchy without ever booming in the least. The highs are clear as day, but never too bright. DSOTM was the first thing I played on them. During the guitar solo in "Time" I had always been accustomed to hearing some harshness in the upper register on cheaper speakers, but the Advents presented a perfectly detailed, natural sound with plenty of room for rockin'. They are certainly not high-end, but I consider them my "gateway" speakers. They got me hooked!

 

That has not been my experience at all. I refoamed the woofers and rebuilt the crossovers (not expensive at all) and they sound great, I will admit that with certain remastered cd's they do tend be a bit harsh and shrill to me, but overall a very good sounding set of speakers.
Even Steve is complimentary of how good these speakers sound.

 

In answer to Jerry's other question about whether the Advent/1 and the Large Advent are the same speaker, no they are not.

In fact, there never was an Advent called "The Large Advent Loudspeaker." Advent never used the word "large" in any of their model names. This adjective was cooked up later to differentiate between the Smaller Advent and the original "Advent Loudspeaker."

The first speaker Advent made was "The Advent Loudspeaker." It was available in a walnut veneer model and a utility model covered with vinyl. These have the masonite-ringed woofer and fried egg tweeter set out from the baffle on a masonite square.

Then they produced "The Smaller Advent Loudspeaker" which had the famous "spitball" dust cover on the woofer. This was added to increase the mass of the cone to bring the resonance down to where Kloss wanted it for the same bass extension as the original Advents. The tweeters were basically the same as the larger model but with a smaller magnet structure to match the efficiency to the woofer.

In 1978, "The New Advent Loudspeaker" replaced the original "Advent Loudspeaker" being pretty much the same size but with slightly different drivers and having the woofer moved up to about the center of the cabinet. The tweeter was still the fried egg design but mounted flush on a metal backing plate instead of on a masonite square and then on a metal plate.

At the same time, the "Smaller Advent" was replaced by "The Advent/1" which used the same drivers as "The New Advent Loudspeaker" but in a smaller cabinet.

In the first releases, the bass extension of the smaller version was NOT compromised but the efficiency was.

In the second releases, the bass extension of the smaller version WAS compromised but the efficiency was not.

Doug

 

Here are the pictures

 

Check out this thread on how I recapped the crossover/refoamed my Large Advents.

- Sushimaster

 

also check out www.abtechservices.com for parts and info.

 

Yes, very much worth refoaming. Very fine speaker which plays everything well. I own The Advent Loudspeaker and love my pair.