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Thanks for your very informative post in the earlier advent clarification question. I checked the speakers and they say "advent loudspeaker" and have masonite "rings" on their front and the tweeter is orange with a stiff metal grill covering it. With this information can you place the speaker in the advent family tree. Thanks and once again, great earlier post. Norm
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And to think, Henry Kloss threw these things together in a weekend to have something to sell to fund his projection television research. I've been listening to a pair of Cambridge Soundworks Model Sixes since Thanksgiving and have pretty much determined that he had good ears twenty years after that weekend he made history.It would have been nice if Henry could have worked up a Tivoli Advent Loudspeaker...
I'm sure fine tuning the voicing took more than a weekend, and there are some really tricky things going on with both the woofer and tweeter designs--so tricky that building suitable clone replacement drivers has proven close to impossible, even for companies intent on pursuing exactly that.Building a speaker that sounded as good or better than his former employers AR-3a esp in the deep bass was the ulitimate put down of Kloss's former employer and marked the end of AR's dominance in the bookshelf (if you can call a 3a or an Advent bookshelf) sealed-box speaker market.
Part of my frustration with the whole higher end DIY thing is that I thought I would easily run into designs that were so clearly superior to the LA that I would quickly want to toss my Large Advents out on the curb and replace them with either a DIY design, KIt or semi-commercial design. Hasn't happened. Don't think it's gonna happen. The vast majority of DIY and semi-commercial units I have heard seem balanced all wrong for my ears, with a rising and overly-exaggerated top end and nothing even remotely comparable to Advent woofer bass. I'm happily seated in row 15 of the concert hall, not seated among the musicians! Some of the cloth dome tweeters seem to have a bit better dispersion that the LA particularly above 12 KHz, but very few of them will operate sucessfully as low as the Advent tweeter, and the DIYers struggle to get even an 8-inch woofer to work in a modern 2-way design, let alone a 10+ inch woofer. And good commercial cone-dome Mid-tweets that would work like a LA tweeter are nearly impossible to find any more. I'm close to quitting my DIY and kit-building efforts entirely and go back to my Advents and EPIs, where I'm happy.
David,You're certainly right about the process taking longer than a weekend. Andy Petit was working for him at the time, and I know from an anecdote that Kloss sent him home over a weekend with an equalizer and suggested he play with it and the speakers. The result of that was some small changes to the voicing.
The Advent was clearly a follow on to Kloss' work at KLH, notably the cabinet and woofer of the Model Five, the voicing of the Five and Seventeen, and extensions of the work on tweeters in a two way format started with the Six and continueing on with the Seventeen.
Even so, I'd guess that at least three and perhaps as long as six months were involved in the R & D, prototyping, and the setting up of production. If you look at the timing, you can get some idea of the time involved. I believe Kloss left KLH in late 1968 or early 1969, and the Advent appeared in early 1970. Burhoe left KLH a little earlier to found EPI. He had followed Kloss to KLH when he and Anton Hoffman left AR in the late 50's. Despite the differences in voicing, the technical aspects of the EPI's are close to the Advents and the predecessor KLH's.
As for my own DIY in speakers, I've about had it there as well. I will get back to the Polks and attempt to roll off and smooth out the highs before I throw in the towel. The first and easiest will be a page from Kloss' notebook: a double layer grill cloth. I'm also going to remove the Solen film capacitors in one of the speakers and try non-polar electrolytics.
As a result of this and a slightly earlier post, I went back and looked at some of the notes I've kept over the years. Back in the early 70's, I had noted that the first series of Bose 501, KLH 17 & 5, and the Advent (in that order) were particularly natural sounding and accurate on voices and orchestral instruments as compared to anything else I had heard. At that time I had not heard the EPI 100, but later comparisons with the KLH 17 convinced me they were not as good as the others on voices, but more convincing on a jazz ensemble or popular music (rock mostly). The JBL L-100 being the King of that genre, but not particularly accurate on voices. I later found the Double Advent to be a couple of steps up in vocal accuracy, placing it ahead of the KLH 17. It would be interesting to make the same comparisons again today with my current electronics and using CD's as source material. Back in 1970, most of the comparisons were with LP's, but some were done with live voices and a Neumann vocal microphone.
Yes! You've got the good ones! Not that they aren't all good but the Originals are the most respected. Just give them some good clean power and listen to them roar! They really just cry out for a nice vintage amp or receiver. I tried in the post below to give a link giving the history of Advents but it won't link now. It says you're unauthorized to go to that site. But do this ...Try the link below then go to "discussions" at the bottom of the page, then under "Advent" look for the post about "Advent Model History". It is a good history lesson on Advents. Yours of course are the great grandaddys in the line. If you Email me I can send you a copy of the Advent brochure for "The Advent Loudspeaker" Best! Franksta
..the most valuable and sought after. You need to take good care of those Do they have the vinyl-wrap cabinets or the real walnut veneer?
the walnut veneer. Norm
Norm,I've got a couple of pair of those and a little experience with them. I posted a series of "articles" called "Advent surprise" at least 6 episodes. You might want to do a search on this Forum for them. They were mid-summer this year.
But in a capsule, I found that soldering up all the slip-on connectors on the speakers (I cut the connector off the wires and soldered the wire to the speaker terminals) and soldering all the wire nut connections made a noticeable difference in clarity and speaker to speaker matching. Then I replaced the little knurled nuts on the back with internal tooth lock washers and wing nuts so I could crank them down tighter. Just regular hardware from Home Depot. Thread is #8-32. I personally do not recommend "upgrading" the capacitors. Tried it, didn't like it.
Set the speakers on or close to the floor, that's what they were designed for, and also close to the back wall.
If you replace the grill fabric, be sure and maintain the two layer construction that the original uses.
Nice speakers, and a classic. Henry Kloss' masterpiece.
Jerry, I do recall some of those posts. thanks for all the information and I will do as you suggest. You and many others have made this a wonderful forum for the enthusiastic but not necessarily adept inmates ( i.e., me). Have a good holiday season and thanks again. Norm
My pleasure. Have a Merry Cristmas and a Happy New Year.
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