Outright Snobbery
Picked up a pair of old Fisher Xp-4's a while back for $20 and one of the dome tweeters had a soft spot and one midrange cone was torn. I wanted to replace the damaged tweeter and had heard of a speaker reconing joint in a nearby City and decided to call them to see if they could repair the original drivers or had replacements, basically to see what they thought was appropriate rather than just immediately replacing drivers. I called the store and the guy says : Come on in partner we have dozens of those drivers laying around and in fact have drivers for that particular model lying around somewhere. I instantly think to myself that this is so cool, having a store nearby that is in to vintage speakers and such so I decide to take the 35 mile drive to check this guy out and see what he had. I get there the next day was greeted by two guy's who said "Your the Fisher XP-4 guy" and I said yup that's me and showed them the damaged drivers, I am looking around and notice many very tall tower style new speakers in two separate rooms and one of the rooms was filled with a mix of vintage gear and a few newer pieces but mostly vintage stuff and all was very shiny and pretty to look at but no consistent trend as to what was being offered.
I asked the older of the two guy's who seemed to be in charge whether or not the dome was replaceable and he immediatley says no, domes cannot be repaired under any circumstances, they are not serviceable! He asks what is wrong with mine and I show him a soft spot just off center approx. 1/2 inch in diameter and he says, yah so what? I said that I thought the soft spot would impair the tweeter's ability to play properly and he says that I was nuts and that I would never ever be able to tell the difference in sound without very expensive test equipment and he then asks if I owned any very expensive equipment to which of course I replied heck no and was just asking. He then says that he would be right back and after a minute or so he appeared with a pair of the very same tweeters in his hand and also pointed out a pair of Fisher XP series speakers that he had on display, one of the tweeters was worse than mine and one seemed to be O.K. and while I was looking at them he started to explain about how he was not really in to this sort of thing (translated : no money in it for him) and how vintage speakers were complete crap and that good sound "just is'nt there" and proceeds to spin around a cube style speaker sort of like an Altec Santana and behind it is this absoltely huge fricken board full of gigantic coils and capacitors the same size as the entire back side and proudly proclaims that this is what he does!!! He says further that he typically deals in custom built speaker systems costing a minimum of $20,000 and up and was basically saying that he has no time for people like me and was asking where I get some of my ideas on sound from at which point I proudly proclaim that I am a member of AK and say that there are many people that have a love for audio in general and especially like vintage gear for it's build quality etc. and that is a great hobby, he says he never heard of AK.
It is at this time that both of these guy's are standing there with their arms folded in very pompus poses that I realize this is definately no place I would ever wish to do business with. He rants on that he is one of the most famous speaker builder's in the world and that his "obviously the largest in the world" crossovers were the best in the world as well. I continued to try to explain to him how us peasants feel that there IS considerable value in vintage speakers and gear and that we are quite happy with our mixed breed systems and frankly do not hear all the alleged difference's between expenditures of under $1,000 in vintage gear versus $10,000 plus for exotic new & custom built systems and yes I told that I have indeed heard many speaker systems priced in excess of $5,000 & $10,000 and almost always was unimpressed. I say to him that none of this is any big deal to me because these were just a cheap pair fixer upper's that I was rebuilding for my 14 year old son for his bedroom to which he replies, well you can buy the one good tweeter for $30 and I politely said no thanks because I was sure that the pair of tweeters which were not considered to be very good in the first place was probably not worth any more than $10 or $15 on epay etc. and that I already ordered new drivers from Parts express (he frowned at this moment). I quickly ask him before I leave about speaker reconing and what his typical charge is to refoam a pair of 15's, he snaps at me stating that there is no typical charge (translated : you cannot afford my services) and that he always replaces the spider & voice coil because they are always damaged and I said, well what if they are not damaged? he says THEY ARE ALWAYS JUNK, so I say inside my head alrighty then, never mind my question I am sorry that I asked. What happened to "You will never hear the difference without expensive test equipment you ignorant fool"
So I left thinking
why is this arrogant man cutting me down and telling me that all vintage speakers and gear are total shit when over half his store is filled with it??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Further more his so called masterpiece crossover's looked more like pile of wire with nothing more than an unquenchable thirst for soaking up valuable program material, I have always heard that best signal path from source to speakers is the shortest and least complicated so
is up with this guy? and guy's like him. I left pissed off and never even had a chance to hear his $20,000 world famous speakers which I am glad I did'nt because I am almost sure that we would have went to the mat after I would have told him that they don't sound any better that my 45 year old shit boxes!!!!!!!!!! well maybe that would have been my conclusion and then again maybe not, he will never know beacuse he never gave me a chance and preferred to pound it in to my head that I was not in his league and therefore not worthy to be in his store, and why in the hell would he be such a dick to a potential customer, he had no way of knowing that I was not one or did not know of anyone that could have been. I wanted to tell him that the round coned drivers still in use today were invented in the 1920's and that he was not doing anything earth shattering that has not been done before to death
That is my
I guess it takes a platinum mastercard and and a roll of hundreds for people like that to be nice to you.
Thanks for reading this far! I had to get that off my chest because I hate money grubbing snobs like that
