The latest speaker upgrade kit from GR Research (Danny Richie) costs...

[Bruce Morgen]

..."$739.00 – $919.00" -- for a pair of 50 year old four-way Pioneer HPM-100 (the JBL L-100 lookalike featured in those old Maxell magazine ads) speakers: Pioneer HPM-100 Upgrade kit

 

[kemmler3D]

At least he's got a clean shirt on this time.

 

[JSmith]

The price goes up too if you don't want "budget caps"...

JSmith

 

[voodooless]

What did he do? Make it a 3-way? I hope the first polar is the vertical? If not, better flip the box. All in all, not a terrible job, but looking at the original, it’s hard to fuck up worse… it almost looks like one or more drivers weren’t in phase.

 

[Bruce Morgen]

What did he do? Make it a 3-way?

He left that "supertweeter" in, but high-passed it way up there with a series .1 mFd capacitor so it wouldn't clash with the old-fashioned cone tweeter. Overall, the mod itself makes technical sense assuming his bargain-basement measuring gear is reasonably accurate, but it costs more than I paid for my pair of excellent modern (3-way!) powered monitors and doesn't even include the additional bracing he (very strongly) recommends or a printed circuit board for the elaborate new crossover. IOW, despite the stratospheric cost of the kit, doing this mod is DIY to the extreme max! On the plus side, the kit does include some solder and shrink tubing -- not to mention, tube connectors...

 

[voodooless]

it almost looks like one or more drivers weren’t in phase.

Well, seems I wasn't too far off:

Somebody found a similar response:

Does that look familiar?

Here combined:

yeah, looks similar enough to me.

... So, It turns out the mid was out of phase...

Did Danny do this on purpose? If not, why, with his grand wisdom, did he not notice? It's blatantly obvious

 

[Bruce Morgen]

Just for context, he asks even more for a kit to upgrade the old Yamaha NS-1000M (a passive 3-way studio monitor that also had somewhat of an audiophile following back in the day): Yamaha NS-1000 Monitor Upgrade Kit (Pair)

 

[TonyJZX]

i'm no fan of this guy but these companies dont exist in a vacuum

he's probably getting enough requests from owners of these 'classic' speakers for an ungrade kit

and if people want to pay this to 'restore' their old speakers then i'm ok if they feel GR is offering 'value'

 

[Purité Audio]

I would imagine quite the opposite, he generates the ‘issue’ then proposes and sells the ‘solution’.
Keith

 

[TonyJZX]

but these issues would be apparent given these speakers are older than the avg. ASR 'contributor'

for new speakers yeah i get ya

 

[fpitas]

but these issues would be apparent given these speakers are older than the avg. ASR 'contributor'

Well...maybe. People used to be very forgiving of the sound character of vintage speakers.

 

[Penelinfi]

I'm surprised he didn't check the polarity, but then again maybe he was in awe of how bad that response looked

 

[tomtoo]

At the end he says what ASR says. Linear FR on axis and smooth FR off axis.

That is what he does.

Than adds some spices($) with 'high-end' caps, connectors and inductors.

In germany we would say he is a schlitzohr. But not in a bad way.

 

[voodooless]

Than adds some spices($) with 'high-end' caps, connectors and inductors.

 

[3125b]

That wild assortment of surface-mounted drivers will never make good speakers anyway.
Now I wonder though what his mods would do to a properly wired example of these speakers.

 

[voodooless]

Now I wonder though what his mods would do to a properly wired example of these speakers.

Well, it would be exactly the same you throw away the old crossover, so how you wire the new one is no longer dependent on the old one.

 

[Joe Smith]

Amounts to expensive lipstick on a... You know what.

 

[Sonny1]

Can you imagine shelling out this kind of money for speakers with unobtainable drivers that have been out of production for decades? These speakers might have been pretty good in their day (I have no idea) but any well designed modern speaker would most likely be several levels higher in performance, even with the expensive “upgrades”.

I’m not a Danny hater or defender but this one is a little suspect. Does the price include those sweet connectors he hawks? If that’s the case, consider it a bargain!

 

[Bruce Morgen]

Does the price include those sweet connectors he hawks?

Yup, he always includes those "tube connectors."

 

[cavedriver]

He did a similarly expensive kit for the Snell C/V. These speakers typically go for ~$1k or less on the used market (what I paid for mine), and he put together a kit that also costs $1k. Really mind blowing given that even if he used some really chunky coils in the crossovers I still can't get past 300~400 in parts, and of course since he won't give out parts lists or accept returns or publish measurements of the speakers that are trustworthy (or that even look worth the money assuming they are trustworthy) I really don't understand how people can bring themselves to give money to this guy. It's just insulting

to be perfectly balanced here, I will say that while the C/V is a great speaker by most accounts that measured very well for it's day by Atkinson, it is odd that the woofers are in series in the original topology and the speaker's efficiency suffers as a result. Surely the crossover design could be improved given current measurement abilities and knowledge, but then you run into a second problem- 1990's era Peerless polypropylene mids and woofers. Good in their day but with their cone flex and lack of detail is it really worth it to even bother putting another 1k into these things? The wide flat baffles lacking any dispersion control except for some factory applied felt can't compete with modern speakers using computer-engineered waveguides, and it shows in the measurements. It is interesting to think of the C/V as Voeck's prototype for his current towers from Revel. Things like the Performa series basically share the topology of the C/V but with updated components and engineering solutions across the design, and again it shows in the measurements. So best case for GR the question becomes, a pair of new Performa3 F208's for ~$5k or a pair of 30 year old Snell's for $2k plus labor.