Would you buy a 15 year old pair of speakers?

[leonski]

HiFi,
that's where I was headed.
You need to be able to duplicate OEM. And all the measureable / calculated TS parameters.

That being said? Too bad they won't do or maybe can't.....small drivers like 1" and smaller domes and such. These are perhaps the most vulnerable, having the lowest tolerance for higher powers.

It might also be true that speakers not exposed to 'near-limits' of power handling last longer without degrading.

And agreed, speakers DO change over time. And not always for the better. I sent my Maggies to the home office for rebuild. Came back.....different, but not 'worse'. It took maybe 50 hours to get back to 'normal', some
of which might have been ME getting used to THEM.


The POLK speakers which use the L/R cancelation cable? BE CAREFUL to not connect to a balanced amp. I suspect they need a 'common ground' amp? Is that right?
I'd much rather experiment with the SAME THING by trying the Carver Sonic Hologram, doing essentially the SAME thing as the polk speakers, but at the preamp......


ONE additional thing......
I'll bet that getting drivers rebuilt to such exacting standards is NOT CHEAP.    I would only do so for 'premium' level speakers beyond a certain age.     Certainly many speakers from decades
ago are not candidates.   I'm thinking that anything from Japan from the 70s should simply be donated to landfill if not working.....

[highfihoney2]

Dec 31, 2018 21:35:53 GMT -5 leonski said:

HiFi,
that's where I was headed.
You need to be able to duplicate OEM. And all the measureable / calculated TS parameters.

That being said? Too bad they won't do or maybe can't.....small drivers like 1" and smaller domes and such. These are perhaps the most vulnerable, having the lowest tolerance for higher powers.

It might also be true that speakers not exposed to 'near-limits' of power handling last longer without degrading.

And agreed, speakers DO change over time. And not always for the better. I sent my Maggies to the home office for rebuild. Came back.....different, but not 'worse'. It took maybe 50 hours to get back to 'normal', some
of which might have been ME getting used to THEM.


The POLK speakers which use the L/R cancelation cable? BE CAREFUL to not connect to a balanced amp. I suspect they need a 'common ground' amp? Is that right?
I'd much rather experiment with the SAME THING by trying the Carver Sonic Hologram, doing essentially the SAME thing as the polk speakers, but at the preamp......


ONE additional thing......
I'll bet that getting drivers rebuilt to such exacting standards is NOT CHEAP.    I would only do so for 'premium' level speakers beyond a certain age.     Certainly many speakers from decades
ago are not candidates.   I'm thinking that anything from Japan from the 70s should simply be donated to landfill if not working.....

The reason I was told the techs stopped rebuilding most tweeters & driver's under 8" is that old age makes the rebuilding take so long they cannot pass the labor cost on to customers ,the oldest tech is in her late 70s to early 80s,as skilled as she is she can't stop the arthritis from taking away from her fine motor skills ,I fear after they've all retired there won't be a new generation behind them as their kids are deeply involved in providing Sound Reinforcement & lighting for concerts because that's 99% of their income .

As for those Polk SDA SRS it's been so long searching for an audiogon 8-8.5 pair ,and my line array collection has gotten so big that adding another 6ft tall vintage speaker system is mostly big talk & no action ,when I'm giving away $10,000 speaker systems already it's doubtful I'll ever buy another speaker system ,if I was to score a pair it would be the only reason for me to drag the carver monoblocks out of storage & have them gone through ,and then they'd end up as a garage speaker system ,I just turned down a pair of JBL-L250s 2 weeks ago for $400 because the cabinets have been abused & a pair of vintage Lascalas because the goon recovered them with sub flooring laminate ,I'm down to 3 pair of Mc line arrays now & 2 passive subs so it's highly unlikely I'll let my speaker fetish get out of control again ,it's fun to day dream about gear still lol

[nickwin]

Paradigm studio v3s are still awesome speakers! www.soundstagenetwork.com/measurements/paradigm_studio100_v3/ Freq. response, off-axis behavior and distortion are all excellent, regardless of price. In fact they measure better than any of the v5s and later Paradigm speakers.

To be honest very few speakers made today measure as well as these. I think they sound nice too.

Here are more speakers measurements to compare www.soundstagenetwork.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=16l&Itemid=140

Good luck!

[leonski]

HiFi,
I'm thinking that what your collection REALLY needs is a set of Magnepan Tympani from the real early days of panels.

www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/673mag/index.html

Stereophile link'd article about very EARLY Maggies and indicates improvements which were made and how fast the rate of change was in those days.

So many models and variations in the tympani line that I can't keep track. Maybe Magnepan Users Group has it straight?