Vintage speakers

[Sunwire]

When making these vintage price comparisons, please take into account the currency inflation.
Setting differences of quality aside for a moment.
It would take almost $500 today to buy what sold for $100 in 1975.

So, one of my favorite "vintage" speakers, the KEF Reference Series 103.2, which had a retail price of $900 in 1980, would be priced at $2880 today, just due to inflation.

I just checked ebay, and it looks like the going rate for them is now about $400.

I wonder what you could get for $400 that would be better?

https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl ... ar2=201802

[VinyldechezPierre]

Marrying old and new works with record players as well, 60 year old turntables with modern arms and cartridges works for me! :D

+1

Working on putting together a Lenco L75 with a Terminator tonearm!

[JoeE SP9]

When making these vintage price comparisons, please take into account the currency inflation.
Setting differences of quality aside for a moment.
It would take almost $500 today to buy what sold for $100 in 1975.

So, one of my favorite "vintage" speakers, the KEF Reference Series 103.2, which had a retail price of $900 in 1980, would be priced at $2880 today, just due to inflation.

I just checked ebay, and it looks like the going rate for them is now about $400.

I wonder what you could get for $400 that would be better?

https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl ... ar2=201802

You're comparing Apples to Oranges. A fair comparison would be a pair of new $2800 speakers with the KEF's. Of course to be completely fair the cost of an overhaul/rehab of the KEF's should be added to the purchase cost. That pretty much takes them out of the bargain basement category.

[Sunwire]

Well, it might be interesting to compare the $400 KEFs to $2880 modern speakers, but no buyer would do that.
And the cost of rehabbing KEFs of that vintage is quite small. The woofer surrounds don't deteriorate, so, at most, you'd be looking at a few capacitors.

[Dualgroove1]

My wife and I were given a minty pair of Rectilinear XIIs last weekend. I am in love with these things! Good tight bass and a sweet top end. They seem maybe a tad slow and a bit on the warm side. They don’t image as well as some (my Rogers JR 149s are champs) but the music comes through. These things are keepers.

[aardvarkash10]

there are so many things in play in these subjective comparisons.

Declaration up front - my preferred source>amplifier>speaker chain is vinyl>tube>fullrange.

My actual is vinyl>MOSFET>Wharfdale 2.1 flat panel

After two days, I cannot tell the difference except that the amp can happily drive the power-hungry panels and they take up less space.

Subjectively, my old alnico-driver 15W two-ways and simialrly equipped FR speakers are "warm". Often treacle-y. Lots of low order harmonics. Bass is neglible, but comfortably tubby when its driven hard ito the lower registers.

I love them. They are not demanding, I don't have to analyse because I can't. It sounds like a Saturday afternoon in the early 1970s.

Drven by tubes at around 8w per channel tops, the speakers handle simple guitar passages and vocals up to two-part admirably. After that, they stay warm but increasingly indistinct. Driven by the MOSFET beast, they tighten up considerably (it has far greater control over the flapping cones) but the speakers run out of capacity just as the amp is hitting its straps. It will go a sh*tload louder with the vintage speaks than the Wharfdales though - you just have to dial back the bass!

The entire set-up hates anything that comes out of a DJ or electronica factory regardless of the amp used. Its all totally beyond the poor low mass, low extention driver's ability to reproduce.

JM2CW

[katana1100]

If anyone knows of a pair of speakers that cost under $20k and sound better than the 30 year old Acoustat electrostatic speakers I got for $600, let me know!

[Sunwire]

$600 is a hell of a good price for Acoustats.
They are very nice.
I prefer QUAD ESL-63s and Anthony Gallo 3.1s, and both would be WAY under $20,000.
But it's a matter of personal preference.

I'm not really up to date on the latest speakers or even most of the ones produced in the last twenty years, but the ones I'd most like to hear are the Linkwitz Labs LX521s:
https://www.magiclx521.com/epages/17940 ... ucts/LX521

Way under $20,000, and cheaper if you build them yourself.
I read a lot of the articles the designer wrote as he developed them, as well as preceding models.
I haven't heard them, but if I feel rich one day, I might order a pair without an audition.
I'm that convinced by his ideas.
Unfortunately, I think they are pretty ugly. :)

[mgl99]

I was wondering if anyone out there is using a pair of Magnaplaners and what your feeling is about the sound quality. I purchased a pair of them about 15 years ago and not yet tried them out. I know, sounds stupid right? There is an explanation, but that isn't really the point. I haven't really gotten any input from someone who owns a pair.

[Sunwire]

I don't own them, but I worked in a store that sold them for a couple of years.
They were not my favorite speakers but they were certainly good.

[katana1100]

Magnaplanars? In theory , they should sound less detailed than ESL because they have the weight of copper coils on the membranes. ESL have no coil, obviously, the membrane pushing the air actually weighs less than the air it’s pushing.
However, I have heard Maggie’s and they sound pretty darn similar to my acoustats. The last pair I head was like four years ago. They seemed to have slightly less detail but a little bit better bass. I could live with them.
I’m sure they also share some less desirable traits with ESL, like what amps will drive them, room placement and narrow sweet spot.
If you like to listen to music while putzing about the room, you might not be impressed. If you like to sit in recliner in the sweet spot , listening to entire vinyls on a Friday night while drinking quality microbrews, then I
Think you’ll be a very happy camper.

[Sunwire]

As I recall, Magnaplanars are among the easiest speakers to drive.
The load is purely resistive.

[katana1100]

Not really.
Maggie’s are very power hungry , I think their sensitivity is around 85db. The pair I last heard was powered by a
NAD 208 which has 250wpc, 1000w peak into 2ohm. I have no idea what impedance Maggie’s are, but that should be considered.
If you have Maggie’s, you need a good amp.
Sanders sells a version of his ESL amp that is specifically designed for Maggie’s and it’s a frick’in beast of an amp.

[Sunwire]

Different models are different impedances.
Some are 4. At least one is 6. I seem to remember that some older ones were 8 ohms, but I could be wrong.
I guess when I think of "difficult loads", I think of complex impedance with resistance, capacitance, and inductance that varies a lot with frequency. Magneplanars are much simpler. Closer to pure resistive.
But yes, I agree they are power hungry. They will need more power than many speakers if you want to play them loudly.

"We can draw a few reasonable conclusions about the MMG W from our measurements. First, unlike most speakers, its impedance is totally uniform at 6 ohms (give or take a fraction of an ohm) across its full frequency range. The impedance phase angle is also almost entirely resistive. This speaker should be very easy to drive, though its low sensitivity (see discussion below) is somewhat demanding. (The same is true of the MMG C, also discussed below.)"
https://www.soundandvision.com/content/ ... asurements

"The speaker's impedance (fig.1) approximates a resistive load of around 4 ohms over much of the audioband. However, there is a slight magnitude peak centered at 1.6kHz, due to the crossover between the ribbon and the midrange diaphragm. The minimum value is 3.3 ohms at 10kHz, which is not going to be problem for any good amplifier to drive, while the increasingly positive electrical phase angle at the top of the audioband is, I assume, due to the residual inductance of the ribbon driver. There is a small wrinkle in the trace between 50Hz and 60Hz, which is probably due to the tuning of the woofer diaphragm."
https://www.stereophile.com/content/mag ... asurements

[Alec124c41]

The thing about Magneplanars is the large radiating surface. This can give a wonderfully open sound.
This effect is not limited to Maggies. My first experience of this impression was a square array of maybe 64 3 inch speakers, packed into a frame on a wall, about 50 years ago. Dispersion sucked, but standing right in front of this was a revelation.

Cheers,
Alec