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Vintage Stereo Speakers


DrB
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For those who listen to stereo what speakers do you like?  I bought a pair of Klipschorns in the 70's for $600.00 each plus change.  They have a home when I want to sit back and listen.  They will never leave, my favorites..

Dave..

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3 minutes ago, BamaBud said:

I've got Klipschorns and several pairs of Heresys.

And some old Bozaks.

I'm old school, too.

Excellent, I like....  I have listened to all the classic Klipsch speakers through the years.  Is heaven to my ears...

Dave

Dave..

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17 minutes ago, RenoF250 said:

I have some Cerwin Vega 15s I like pretty well.  Not that old though, they are ~1997.  Unfortunately old speakers dry out and bad things happen. 

 

I am trying to play with this stuff:

 

 

That sounds pretty flat, distorted and rather harsh to me. How deep do they go while staying linear? I doubt that they delivery anything useful bellow 100 Hz. I can take a $20 mid / low driver from China with some well sized neodymium, a $10 tweeter, calculate a nice, ported double chamber reflex box, and deliver much more punch in a much smaller package. At the end of they day, you will need to move (a lot of) air for low frequencies. That won't happen with such small drivers.

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New England Audio Resource

NEAR 15Ms  -  these really image nicely but lack the bottom octave

NEAR 50Ms - These have the bottom octave, but don't image quite as well.

Before the NEARs....  Phase Linear,  Boston SubSat Six,  Infinity Qbs  and a bunch more that I don't quite remember.

In general, when I close my eyes and it doesn't sound like I'm listening to speakers...  I'm happy.

Sometimes it's like having the Rolling Stones in the living room without the mess.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I used to order 70's vintage McIntosh dual  stereo and mono amps to make Magnetic thin film Hc and Hk testers.  Probably went through a dozen.  They had exceptionally low third harmonic distortion.  Durable as hell!

Edited by janice6
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Reconing is more art than science. Even with the OEM parts when done well they can be lovely...

What I love about reconing is bringing vintage speaker systems back to life that would never have had replacement parts available.

I had a pair of Warfdales from the 60's that my ex killed by putting wet pottery on them. Bummer, they had style points though they were a little flat by modern standards. I still have all the guts if anyone is interested...

 

 

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4 hours ago, janice6 said:

All the stereo buffs in my department went for the "Voice of theater" speakers.  Even then my hearing response was bad so I never appreciated fidelity.

Ah..... Altec VOT's.  Cut my teeth working SR with those.  We had A7's.  I remember wiring the switches in so we could run them bi-amp or xover.   I still have the product brochures of the era around here somewhere.  Those were the days..

Dave..

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It is interesting to hear people talk of the "better sound" from tube amps, when the tubes have a square law distortion if over driven, and Transistors more faithfully reproduce the spectrum, but distort far worse when overdriven.  The square law distortion results in fewer harmonics than the faster transistor switching.

 

I used to use diodes in systems to produce a square law response from a square wave input, when it was prohibitive to produce a Sine Wave response.  Wasn't as pure, but acceptable, and simple to do.

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I have a pair of PROAC's somewhere in my storage....this made me remember..I think they are "bookshelf" size. IIRC they were in the $1200 range.....

Since we only listen to Sirius and the TV music I have not thought about that stuff...probably have about 800 c/d's and still some LP's somewhere....

Unfortunately, no amp, or turntable.....sold off a Dyna 70 (?) years ago...probably a big mistake.... 

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5 hours ago, DAKA said:

I have a pair of PROAC's somewhere in my storage....this made me remember..I think they are "bookshelf" size. IIRC they were in the $1200 range.....

Since we only listen to Sirius and the TV music I have not thought about that stuff...probably have about 800 c/d's and still some LP's somewhere....

Unfortunately, no amp, or turntable.....sold off a Dyna 70 (?) years ago...probably a big mistake.... 

A Dynakit ST-70, maybe?  The original ones go for good $$ on evilBay, and there are several kits based on it currently available.  (The second photo in my post above is a VTA ST-70 I built about five years ago.  It is the main amp I now use.)

-Pat

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