Would These 3 Vintage "Best" Speakers Still Be Contenders Today?

[Digi&Analog Fan]

In a lengthy interview, long time New York City Audio Salon owner Andy Singer whose audio business goes back over 40 years said that the vintage Snell type A speaker of the 1980s vintage is one of the greatest speakers of all time. Sound by Singer was known for its vast product selection (they carried an enormous number of brands throughout the years), friendly mail order business and expert system matching. Their specialty was selling not just individual components, but complete systems. They carried equipment within reach of the common mans finances, all the way up to single ended tube power amps with retail prices around what a house in a better part of town might cost. Anyone familiar enough with this speaker to confirm or refute his opinion?

 

Ohm A and Ohm F Walsh driver speakers. Many people thought these were the best speakers for over a decade, starting in the 1970's. Lincon Walsh passed away before the model F was released to the market. He thought a omnidirectional full range driver, crossoverlless design with perfect phase response would be the ultimate speaker. Anyone familiar enough with the sound of these to confirm or refute, and is there many speakers that would equal or outperform them today?

 

 Yamaha NS1000 and 1000m speakers. The first speakers to use berrylium midrange and tweeters in its design. Because of the health hazards and potential fatality of breathing in berrylium dust, berrylium is a material not legal to use in manufacture in a lot of places. Shure Brothers had to move their manufacturing facility that made their V15 V cartridge to Mexico before calling it quits on the V which had a berrylium cantilever, their best selling & top "standard" model. I remember some people saying the NS1000 was the best speaker they ever heard back in the 1980s. I only heard it once and it sounded pretty boring to me, but then as a teenager back then, I probably was more impressed with splashier sounding products at that stage of my evaluation. Does this speaker deserve legendary status, even today? If you are familiar enough with it to provide a valid opinion please chime in.

[Digi&Analog Fan]

 If there is one vintage speaker I would have liked to have heard it is the original Ohm F or maybe the ESS Transar. The main Walsh Driver technician working for Ohm then was a man from South America. It took great skill making and damping properly the Walsh Driver. He was the only one who knew how to do it well. They were damped with some material on the inside of the inverted ice cream cone shaped driver, which was made of various materials; not paper. Story has it that the older Latin man wanted to retire. The Ohm F went up in price from $1400 a pair to way over $3,000 a pair in a very short number of years, before being discontinued. Years later Ohm came out with the Walsh 2, but it was only a distant cousin. Instead of a full range upside down ice cream cone shaped driver with no crossover needed, it was only a driver that extended somewhat above the midrange and needed a tweeter (and a crossover) to cover the rest of the spectrum. I have a pair in my house. They are not disappointing; quite the contrary, but I am told that they would be compared to the original Ohm F which had a true crossoverless full range Walsh Driver which dispersed sound evenly in a 360 degree arc, like real instruments do. The original F was extremely picky about amplification and placement, and I would guess that very few who heard them, heard them at their fullest potential.

[Digi&Analog Fan]

Re: Andy Singer. I don't live in NYC and have never been to his store or any of the high end stores there, but he used to take out numerous display ads in the back pages of  defunct "Audio" Magazine, advertising full systems and he always sounded friendly and helpful on the phone, but I did not personally know him. Enough people must have liked him enough to make his successful business a success  for so many years before the high end had a downturn. I understand he moved. The only reason I even mentioned him was because of his quote about the Snells, from someone who has probably had just about everything come through his doors. What surprised me was that version of the Snell he was talking about, was a long ago  memory as far as its production run was concerned, when he praised it. With all the more current "newer is supposedly better" stuff he was carrying, it still stood out to him as memorable and exceptional.

[Digi&Analog Fan]

Re:Ohm Walsh speakers. I have the Walsh 2, not the originals with the true full range Walsh driver. It is definitely a warm sounding speaker. Warmth usually is at odds with transparency. It does have the best and most believable depth of any speaker I own, as it is what I would call a semi- omnidirectional due to the absorbent material inside the back of the cylinder cage. People who own both the Walsh 2 and a nice pair of Magneplaners, say the spaciousness is close between the two, with the Walsh 2 having a much wider sweet spot. The highs do not have the kind of purity that tickles you on every note, like some other stuff I have, nor quite the delicacy, but the high end is smooth, non-offensive and impressive enough. The bass is a model of tightness and control, and the midrange is nice enough  and never harsh. A speaker I hook up for a while every so often.

[Digi&Analog Fan]

 I bought the Walsh speakers used from a local guy who was raising money to help his elderly father. Being used speakers, I paid around half of their original list price which was around $900 when they first came out, and then the price went up significantly as time went on. They must have been in production for more than a decade, as a store in Washington which sold new equip.only had them playing on display around 1990. I have noticed that the price on the used market for these seem to have climbed a bit also lately. The guy also threw in some 4 inch high wood stands he made for them which increased image height and prevented the output from the  bass port on the bottom from going directly into the carpet. One thing I failed to mention in my first description is that in addition to the Walsh speakers being known for their great boxless imaging, they also sound very seamless and effortless, even though this follow up model to the famous Ohm F Walsh speaker does have a crossover.

[Digi&Analog Fan]

What I said (to refresh your memory) or you can go back to the beginning of this thread and see for yourself, is that as a teenager back in the 1970s, one had a choice of spending $100 and getting a decent bookshelf speaker without much bass extension or saving an extra $100 and getting a much more exciting speaker with deep bass and a bigger sound. So "$200" was the the magic number back then: NOT $100.

 

 Your choices back then around $100 were usually something like EPI 100's on sale, or various Jensen models, KLH, etc. If you could go to an extra $100( or around it) or somewhere in between those 2 amounts, SOME SPEAKERS could get you 30hz. response. NOT ALL SSPEAKERS, BUT SOME. There were models from Synergistics, KLH, TSI , etc. The Ohm Walsh 2,  which Didn't even come out anywhere near the 1970's, it was still the Ohm models A and F back then; the Ohm Walsh 2, when it did come out, already nearing 1990 was not just any speaker and one would not buy the Walsh 2 for bass extension. You bought it for giving you at least a taste of the unique room filling, disappearing  imaging act of the original famous Ohm F Walsh Driver, but with better efficiency, reliability, and a sense of seamlesness etc. NO, NOT EVERY SPEAKER YOU SAW in the later 1970s had 30 Hz. bass response for $200 a pair retail, but some did and not that uncommonly. Even though there could be an occasional weird exception to the rule today; when someone thinks " speakers that will get me 30 hz. bass response without the potential synergy problems with subwoofing, people are picturing in their minds thousands of dollars because that's usually the case, although I'm sure there could be some exceptions for a bit less. But generally nowadays we are talking thousands of dollars.

 

 I do think that because of improved midrange and tweeters and the fact that the midrange performance is the most important thing about a speaker, quite a few of today's speakers on the whole, are actually pretty good for the money in that way. For the equivalent of $200 back then, lets say $700 retail price today, there are many speakers that have really nice midrange and highs; just Don't expect 30hz. bass response to come with it at that price.

 

 

 

  

 

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[Digi&Analog Fan]

As the original poster of this thread "Um , ok, is what I thought too. All anyone has to do, is go back to the beginning of this thread and take a look at what I  said. Its a bit hard to misquote someone "believably" when its all there in black and white for those who have memory issues. Not looking to argue, like in the Monty Python skit, where a guy knocks on an office door.

 

 "Come in, may I help you?"

 

"Yes, II'm here for an argument."

 

"That'll be 50 pounds for a half hour, or 80 pounds for the full hour."

[Digi&Analog Fan]

I once heard Line Kansas described as the ultimate speaker for rim shots. I think the Line Can I is the preferred version of its many versions. The KEF Reference 101 has similar drivers to the famous LS35A. The going rate on used  LS35A's used, is usually over $1,000. The Reference 101, about $450 often. 

[Digi&Analog Fan]

Line Kans.Not Kansas. "Wonderful" spell check got me again.

[Digi&Analog Fan]

The preferred version is the II. It got me on that also.

[Digi&Analog Fan]

Linn of course. Most can figure out what happened there again, Spell Check changing one of the best known companies.

[Digi&Analog Fan]

Linn came out with versions of those up to series V or so didn't they? Were they all inferior and going downhill compared to the first series? Why, and why would they have come out with all those different incarnations over the years if there weren't improvements;  like evolution in reverse? That doesn't't sound like Linn, who is a very subjective listening before coming out with anything company, but maybe you are correct. The Infinity Infinitesimal series I was supposed to be the one to get after many subsequent incarnations like the Kan, but Linn, it would be very surprising. What happened? Its like Wilt Chamberlain once scored 100 points in an NBA game; what happened there too?

[Digi&Analog Fan]

I do not understand your last statement; your abstract way of expressing yourself puts me in mind of a reviewer at 6 Moons Audio, who goes on about everything under the sun during an equipment review and after 6 excruciating pages and 100 paragraphs of taking up peoples time he finally gets down to it and writes a paragraph about how the subject of the review actually sounds. This is not a criticism of you, but just something that I am reminded of. 

 

 You claim to be a psychiatrist and I have no reason to doubt it (or believe it). I am a General Semantics expert, which has much to do with psychiatry and peoples emotional reactions to symbols (usually meaning words). There is one thing I always wanted to ask if you are truly a psychologist. Psychiatrists are supposed to be in the practice of making people better adjusted and happy, and yet they themselves (at least in the U.S.) as an occupational group, always seem to have among the highest rate of taking their own lives; which certainly is not well adjusted or happiness oriented at all! If there is anything in the world crazier or more contradictory than this, I do not know what it could be. What says you?

[Digi&Analog Fan]

Re: Irving. Yes I guess it is straying, but then again I am human and it is my post. I did like, appreciate and respect your answer, and that is what I think also, and actually the only thing that would really make sense and explain it. People thinking they know what is going on in someone else's mind, better than they themselves do, has always been a little suspect and creepy to me. Like the "Big Guess" disguised as a science. At its best it probably is a science, but way more often I'm afraid, its the type of practitioner that you described.

 

 Anyway, the Snell Type A III is a speaker I would have loved to hear. One of my earliest speakers as a teenager was the Polk model 10. I bought it without much of an audition based on a faulty review, claiming "its definition is on par with the Magnepan." No. It was a fairly wide speaker and it taught me what cabinet diffraction is, and it had too much of it I realized after a while. It bothered me enough that at some point I actually preferred the limited bass Minimus 11 from Radio Shack. Ever since the Polks I have stuck with slim minimal diffraction speakers. Does your A III suffer from cabinet diffraction at all, being so wide? 

[Digi&Analog Fan]

I think curvature of the front panel prevents much of that. You are lucky to have them. They are often available on ebay but you gotta be close. Not too many people wild about shipping A III speakers.

[Digi&Analog Fan]

Sounds like the kind of speaker that would put a permanent expression of confusion on the faces of the "newer must be better" audiophiles.

[Digi&Analog Fan]

What we once thought was good we sometimes look back and realize it wasn't that great. I think  drivers are better today "overall", but among the crowd back then were some exceptional performers. which were real beauties whose performance would still surprise today. I can think of some seas, audax and focal midrange drivers in particular. I think tweeters might have made the biggest gains, but again "overall" I would say. Certain versions of the Heil tweeter and Infinity Emit tweeters are still great today if you know which ones to look for. There are others too. I think what we have today is more consistently good drivers but the greats from yesteryear are hard to beat by much. I seek out exceptional vintage stuff because its cheaper and I think I end up with the same result pretty much, but saving thousands, or even tens of thousands.

[Digi&Analog Fan]

The older KEF bookshelf speaker that was pretty good was the Reference 101. They used LS3/5A drivers and sounded more accurrate than the legendary LS3/5A. But neither one was a speaker that you could play anywhere near loud in a medium size room. Even the LS50 I heard on Steve Guttenbergs video is more of a nearfield listening speaker. Not a speaker that excels at filling up a room according to him. I have enough different speakers to play around with and drivers. I have some current midrange drivers that you would not see in any speaker under about $8,000. I sometimes screw them in somewhere. Most midrange drivers sound and work just fine with most tweeters, if they are roughly the same efficiency. 

[Digi&Analog Fan]

Better still I hear, was the Yamaha NS 2000. They were above the NS 1000 in the line, but dealers in America had to special order them. A pair popped up on ebay within memory for around 3 grand.The Japanes sometimes made something unavailable to people in North America. Audio Technica decades ago made a model 180 cartridge, but in America you would have thought the top of the line was the 170, since they didn't export their top model the 180, to America, but did export it elsewhere.

[Digi&Analog Fan]

I had a pair of circa 1979 top of the line Technics SB 7000A as a teenager. They were phase and time aligned and had a 13 inch woofer, competing in timing with a small open space staggered mounted midrange and tweeter. They did have something about them that was kind of special in that way, but upon hearing some speakers that were more natural sounding, I soon realized what Japanese coloration was all about. I hooked them up to a second system using a Sansui G series receiver and a turntable with a Micro Acoustics electret phono cartridge. Still in my mind, one of the worst combinations ever. I couldn't  even stand that combination and sound. Although the Technics speakers I enjoyed in my youth in another system, which didn't make it sound harsh and analytical. Tell me more about those.

[Digi&Analog Fan]

I agree. The best speakers of decades ago are still great speakers today (some). Everyone doesn't fall for "newer is better." Sometimes its "they dnot make'em' like they used to."

[Digi&Analog Fan]

Thanks for the info. Has anyone heard a speaker with much more realistic vocal reproduction than LS3/5A? A lot of people don't get what's so special about LS35/AA's and their cult following. Almost all of these people have never heard one. They sound like the designers spent 2 years making micro adjustments getting the vocal range just right. The rest of the range is formidable too. Its apparent also what nice quality drivers they had that far back in the 1970s.