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I bought a pair of Formula 6s new in 1972 and kept them for 40 years and used them continuously, the last several years with the big tv. i still think they were great speakers. I seem to remember that BIC went bust even though all their products(speakers, turntables and I dont know what else) were popular and selling very well.
Follow Ups:
Yes. They sounded like crap.
that Venturi vent could put out a match!
"The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat" - Confucius
The Venturi principle applied to music reproduction sounded hollow to me.
Cheers
Bill
I always remember they were highly rated in Consumer Reports when I was in high school and college. Then I realized how bogus CR speaker tests were, however, never had a good audition.
Consumer Reports made me audition the BICs. (Perhaps I should have gone for Bose 901s!) There was a Rectilinear 5 by the side and I thought the BIC sounded honkey. But their turntable was supposedly a great new floating design similar to the AR and was being grabbed by youngsters.
Cheers
Bill
Blast from the past! Rectilinear made some fine rock-n-roll speakers! Punchy, sizzly, present. I'd like to have a pair and play some Guess Who or Led Zep on 'em.
:)
In 1973 my roomates brother said he had the best speakers you could buy,these being The BIC (with the venturi port). He came over heard the KLH-Nine/Futterman H-3/Pat-4 system I had and proceeded to sell his BIC the next day.
The Formula 6 had a gorgeous walnut cabinet that held a 12" woofer, about a 4" midrange, 2 biconex horns each pointing at an angle to the right and left and a piezoelectric tweeter with a port stretching across the entire bottom of the speaker. I still think it sounded really good with a solid center channel fill no matter where you were and very fine stereo sound.
Edits: 10/23/14
for volume level on 1st Goodhue back in '77. Lost the volume wars every time. But for music and tonality, the BIC's that my dorm mate ran were bass bloated and midrange congested, as I recall. The Advents sang with a lot more Beauty and Truth.
..also a Carleton grad here.
We used to blast my Circuit City crap 3 ways over Bell field.... :)
Something Fierce, Gear Daddies, Bob Mould, etc (late 80s)
The BIC three ways were driven by a 25wpc Technics receiver and probably 40 feet of 16 gauge wire. Sounded great to me (my dad's system). Turntable was also BIC. I left it at the door of the AudioLab repair shop (Cambridge MA) in 1996 when all the internals froze up irrevocably. By then I had bought myself a Rega clone (NAD) and a $300 AT cartidge which I still have (though the suspension is sagging).
Don't know what happened to those BIC speakers, but I'm looking into getting a pair of vintage JBL or Pioneers just to recreate that 1976-1982 feeling.
Edits: 10/21/14
They look pretty low-end, and probably don't sound all that great, but some of the models have very high efficiency at a very low price. Might be good for headbanger/party systems.
BIC always reminded me of a low-rent Cerwin Vega ;-)
Cheers,
Al
I had a pair of BIC Venturi speakers once (I think a 3 way with a 12" woofer) that sounded fair.
...BIC is still, kinda, sorta, in business. Certainly not like the company we remember. Used to own a BIC-960TT that worked very well.
And yet despite the look on my face, you're still talking.
The cabinets are very sturdy and dead sounding when knocked. The tweeter is a silk dome. Unfortunately due to their surround application, I have never given them a critical listen as the main speaker. They are at least 17 years old now with no deterioration.
Edits: 10/20/14
yes I remember them. a friend of mine had them when I lived in Erie, Pa. same time era too. I don't remember what model but it was a 3-way and they sounded very good.
I googled them and it was the 3-way that said BIC VENTURI along the bottom of the baffle.
what a hoot! I can remember my friend being ecstatic when he got them. we were listening to early Tangerine Dream back then.
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