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For my 400th post I'd like to pose a simple question: What speakers have you never heard that you would like to hear?
I'll start off: QUAD ESL57.
Follow Ups:
The MBL Radialstrahler.....
Meat; It's the right thing to do. Romans 14:2
All Western Electric... big and small.
I don't get out much either, so I would love to hear most of the one's mentioned in this thread.
I lived w a pair of Tannoy Golds for a few years and now live w a two way consisting of 1950'ish Altec/Jensens in a DIY cabinet. So... I'm not a complete neophyte on the "vintage sound." Meee likey!
Top of the line speakers from Theil. Also, the Altec 19 and Wilson Alexandras and Focal's Grand Utopia.
The list goes on - it's tough to pick just one or two.
I want to see if they are as good as they are reputed to be.
Dave
Those are the unique ones I've never heard the likes of, though to be sure, I'd love to hear some of the big electrostats as well, like the Dayton-Wrights et al.
I sold Acoustat in the 80's and have heard quite a few other brands, but the RCA's have so far eluded me. I love the sound of Quads but don't have the money or the room!
Dave
That would be cool.
"The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat" - Confucius
Finally, a stereo with balls!
Dave
They look incredible, and I'm sure their reputation is well-earned. But I have never heard a pair!
Quad ESLs? Sure.
Acustat? Yup.
Sound Labs? You betcha!
But never yes, the IRS! Hmm...
Dman
Analog Junkie
I heard them at a show. Even in that environment they sounded spectacular! I think I was fairly young and went with my father.
Dave
,
Edits: 01/19/15
I actually would like to hear the first or second versions of the XP 10 Consolette's,the XP 12's,the XP 15 Consolette's & last but not least the XP 18 Consolette's All made for The Fisher company,when Avery still owned them !The XP line of speakers in general seem to get a lot of bad reviews from most folks But most(not all!) of the ones I have heard,I did not mind while listening to big band music,such as Lawrence Welk,Glen Miller etc.!
KLH Nine and Apogee Scintilla (or any full range Apogee)
ESL-57s, that is -- any time. Well...call first ;-)
To answer the question -- I guess I'd like to have heard the Hill Plasmatronics.
all the best,
mrh
Every version of the Patrician from the 50's to the 80's. Great stuff.
High sensitivity, wide dynamic range, low distortion, and smooth frequency response. Pwk
THE Klipschorn
Klipsch Lascala
Infinity IRS
Original LS3/5A
Magnepan Tympani
KLH Nine's
Altec Valencia
Any Alison speaker from the 70's
Any field coil speaker....
Never heard the LaScalas? They will blow your mind. I use to use a "pro" pair (200W instead of 100w) for live sound in a PA system. I added two folded horn subs, and the result was a system that could rock a 300+ crowded room at concert levels and only pull about 2.5-3 amps from the wall. The vocal clarity was mind-boggling, the mid horn seems to have been tailored for the vocal range. I did over 100 live shows with those. What awesome speakers... Oil caps in the crossovers, big hefty coils. Stupidly efficient, like 120db or something.
Did you mean to contain the replies to only vintage speakers? If so, I'd also say the KLH Nines, since I owned a pair of the Quad ESL 57s (although I wish I could have heard double Quads, or the fabled The Levinson HQD system.
If you meant any speakers, then I'd like to hear a pair of the big Sound Labs, and also the Avantgarde Trio.
Ever hear Dayton-Wrights? JWC of The Absolute Sound replaced double 9s with a pair in the mid 70s. Nelson Pass would demo his Threshold amps with stacked pairs.
I found them more satisfying than the HQD system. And my current U-1s over either. :)
I did, several times. I even put a down payment on a demo pair at a dealer in Toronto. I was young, and the spec. sheet said 50 or 60 watts minimum, and I had a 70 WPC receiver, so I thought I was good to go. Then a local Dayton-Wright dealer in Buffalo set my naïve ass straight about watts not being watts. I got my deposit back.
I ended up with a pair of Ohm F, then Dahlquist DQ-10s. I seemed to gravitate toward power hungry speakers back then.
...and I had a 70 WPC receiver, so I thought I was good to go
They did need more power, but their reactive load was legendary requiring amps with beefy output stages.
That is one of the reasons why Pass demoed them as the Threshold amps were a perfect match. The dealer who I worked for in the 70s originally used a Dunlap-Clarke amp (with no less than Dan D'Agostino as rep) then discovered Threshold and stayed with that line. First used an 800A then a Stasis 2.
That's what I get for posting at 3AM.
What I meant to imply was that I didn't understand speaker loads, impedance curves, etc. back then. 70 watts might have been OK with an amp which could handle the difficult load the Dayton-Wrights presented. My Scott (or was it Harman Kardon?) receiver certainly didn't qualify!
Yes, vintage. The ones you heard a lot about over the years but never actually heard.
Thanks.
...not sure how I've managed not to hear them, but have read enough on how good they are that I'd really like to hear a pair.
Dean.
reelsmith's axiom: Its going to be used equipment when I sell it, so it may as well be used equipment when I buy it.
JBL Paragon.
I have heard the Hartsfield, but never a Paragon
We sold them... rather we sold one. Had it in a big room driven by a Mac MC2300, C28, Thorens 125, Shure V15 (whatever the 1972 version was.) So pretty to look at, so awful to listen to. No bass. Almost no mid-bass. Overwhelming mids that hinted at greatness. Complete listener fatigue in five minutes, tops. The only speaker that sounded worse was the Bose 901. There was a huge spif on the R/P, and still it took forever to get rid of it. Maybe the somewhat dull-sounding C28 robbed the R/P of its goodness and left the annoying; I donno. As I heard it, it was aggressively awful.
But... we had a big spif on another impossible-to-sell speaker, and that was the KLH Nine. It was 1972, and $1,140 for the Nines, or $1,830 for the R/P was really hard to imagine.
(Sidenote: the Nines, driven by a pair of MC3500s, playing the Shchedrin Carmen Ballet on Angel/Melodiya, has to be one of the greatest demos ever.)
Still, there are people spending fortunes for the Asian recreations of the R/P, so maybe that hint of greatness could have been turned into something good with better sounding gear upstream.
WW
"A man need merely light the filaments of his receiving set and the world's greatest artists will perform for him." Alfred N. Goldsmith, RCA, 1922
Ditto.
How about a pair of Hartsfields in the corners and a Paragon as a center channel. As long as were fantasizing me might as well go all the way!
Dave
IIRC, the Paragon was JBL's answer for stereo, because a pair of massive corner-loaded horns was difficult to place in most homes. It's been many decades since I heard either, but I do remember the cabinets being quite handsome. For reasons I can't fathom, the shop keepers in Westwood and Santa Monica were always willing to fire up EV Patricians or Bozak Concert Grands for us kids who were unlikely to be able to afford them. Of course, we always carried along our copy of Toscanini's Pictures to audition.
db
I have that record, and quite a bit more Toscanini! Did you ever get to hear the Paragon? Not everybody liked it.
Dave
How cool would that be!
Beveridge Model 2. Hope to remedy this situation soon.
Good one! How about EV Interface D that wasn't used in a college town bar. : )
KLH Nine electrostatic
Infinity Servo Static
Rectilinear III
Hartley Concertmaster
Electro-Voice Patrician 800
and lots more
Heard the KLH 9s at a guy's house in Baltimore in the 1980s. They gave me the illusion of actually being on stage with the musicians. Awesome speakers.
somebody living within five miles of me was selling a pair of EV Patrician 800's on Audiogon a few years ago. I was so very tempted to be rude and ask for an audition even though I had no intent to buy.
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