Speakers from last century that you love

[Doodski]

The KEF 105.2. Rolling pounding very smooth bass response with matched tweeters and driver arrayed for best imaging. Great midrange and the tweeters are smooth but sharp and clear.

 

[pablolie]

The KEF 105.2. Rolling pounding very smooth bass response with matched tweeters and driver arrayed for best imaging. Great midrange and the tweeters are smooth but sharp and clear.

Very nice - what do u drive them with? this thread is inspiring me to set up my 90s rig again (with a digital streaming front end).

 

[Doodski]

KEF 107 & 107.2 Coupled bass cavity with dual drivers, matched midrange and matched tweeter array for best imaging and The Cube for adjustments on the fly. Wonderful sounding speakers with deep bass and wonderful highs and mids.

 

[Bruce Morgen]

I fondly remember my E-V Interface "A" speakers, but after multiple cases of woofer and passive radiator "foam rot" over the years I finally gave up on them. I also remember their cheap (SEAS?) cone tweeters being very delicate and not being able to survive a solid-state amp going even briefly into clipping, a problem E-V acknowledged by offering a "tweeter saver" gadget to protect them. All that said, in terms of SQ, they were miles better than than the super-popular JBL L-100, with much more bass extension (mid-30s) and a smoother FR curve that was (rather crudely) adjustable at the high end via the little active EQ box.

 

[Doodski]

Very nice - what do u drive them with? this thread is inspiring me to set up my 90s rig again (with a digital streaming front end).

When I sold gear I sold them and had them in the demo room 24/7/365. They sold very well and then after when I became a tech I requested to be a KEF service depot and was granted the contract and repaired KEF under warranty and got to service all the gear. I requested matched drivers from the KEF factory for a special project I took on for a transmission line tower with the 107.2 tweeters and the midranges using the KEF flat honeycomb racetrack woofers. KEF was gracious enough to me that they indeed sold me the factory matched drivers and I made the active crossover transmission line design tower speakers. Great company and in the 24 years of working with KEF I have not a bad thing to say and in fact I have many very good things to say.

The KEF 105.2 and 107.2 work well with midfi amps but they really excel with very high power high current drive. They really come alive and the bass gets down and deep with detailed imaging, sizzling horns and metallic sounding drum brass. Wonderful speakers to listen to for several+ hours at a time.

 

[restorer-john]

I fondly remember my E-V Interface "A" speakers

An interesting speaker for sure. Never heard a pair, but I bet they sounded pretty good. Love the active EQ.

 

[Doodski]

An interesting speaker for sure. Never heard a pair, but I bet they sounded pretty good. Love the active EQ.

Very unusual woofer design.

 

[Bruce Morgen]

An interesting speaker for sure. Never heard a pair, but I bet they sounded pretty good. Love the active EQ.

Unlike Bose's, the E-V box implemented a sensibly mild boost around 50 Hz that designer Ray Newman said was calculated using a little-known aspect of the (then rather novel) T-S equations. The circuitry was pretty straightforward.

 

[Bruce Morgen]

Very unusual woofer design.

The larger cone belongs to the 11 inch passive radiator. The cylinder in the middle is a motion-damping weight.

 

[Doodski]

The larger cone belongs to the 11 inch passive radiator. The cylinder in the middle is a motion-damping weight.

Ahhhh. Doth seeith now. Cool.

 

[MattHooper]

The KEF 105.2. Rolling pounding very smooth bass response with matched tweeters and driver arrayed for best imaging. Great midrange and the tweeters are smooth but sharp and clear.

Those are the speakers I grew up listening to. No surprise, I came out of it an audiophile.

 

[Doodski]

Those are the speakers I grew up listening to. No surprise, I came out of it an audiophile.

Yes, I was not taken aback upon first listen but over the years of experiencing them I learned to enjoy them and realized they play anything and sound great. What is it called when the tweeter center, midrange and woofers are staggered like the Reference Series does? I forget.

 

[dlaloum]

Yes, I was not taken aback upon first listen but over the years of experiencing them I learned to enjoy them and realized they play anything and sound great. What is it called when the tweeter center, midrange and woofers are staggered like the Reference Series does? I forget.

Do I recall them being called "time aligned"?

 

[Doodski]

Do I recall them being called "time aligned"?

Yes, I think that is it.

 

[Poultrygeist]

The 8" full range drivers on top are Zenith alnico's from 1957. The 16" bass woofers on bottom are from a pair of Sansui speakers left on the curb.

 

[Poultrygeist]

Before I added the Zeniths I used the Sansui woofers as bass support open baffles.

 

[FTB]

My VMPS Supertower III SE/R. All woofers restored, all Focal T120's restored.

Woh, that's kind of a wall of sound !

 

[FTB]

When I sold gear I sold them and had them in the demo room 24/7/365. They sold very well and then after when I became a tech I requested to be a KEF service depot and was granted the contract and repaired KEF under warranty and got to service all the gear. I requested matched drivers from the KEF factory for a special project I took on for a transmission line tower with the 107.2 tweeters and the midranges using the KEF flat honeycomb racetrack woofers. KEF was gracious enough to me that they indeed sold me the factory matched drivers and I made the active crossover transmission line design tower speakers. Great company and in the 24 years of working with KEF I have not a bad thing to say and in fact I have many very good things to say.

The KEF 105.2 and 107.2 work well with midfi amps but they really excel with very high power high current drive. They really come alive and the bass gets down and deep with detailed imaging, sizzling horns and metallic sounding drum brass. Wonderful speakers to listen to for several+ hours at a time.

When we take a look at the performance of the speakers Kef still do these days, it's sure it's a great company.

 

[Anton S]

These 104/2's impressed me enough to buy them new in the mid-80's as my main L/R speakers. They still sound great, but are now faithfully serving duty in the bedroom system.

 

[Chrispy]

Altough i rate new speakers like the ones from Neumann high, i still love vintage speakers also, with their quirks and so. I have these old 1976 Goodman Mezzo SL speakers (grills are removed for inspection) that i use from time to time and they are so good sounding i should use them more. And even after 47 years of age, they are still technically mint (and still decent looking). I only recapped the crossover and replaced the resistor in it also about 5 years ago as the elco's were dried out. New caps are non polar elco's (Mundorf because i could get them cheap and easy), and the resistor is a simple jantzen ceramic one... And i rate these far above a lot of modern ones while i paid (long time ago) about 50€ for them...

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What are the speaker from the past (pre 2000) that you still love?

TLDR but seeing the post title my first response is I only have experience with half that timeline....but my step-grandfather haad experience almost a century old.