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ADS L300W Speakers

Guth said:
These were rare even when they were being offered. ADS did not make many and the apocrypha says they were specifically for one retailer, Tweeter.

I can still remember outfits like "Pacific Stereo" and a few others back in the day but I don't know that I recall "Tweeter" stores being around where I grew up at (Illinois).
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"Tweeter" was a chain of electronic stores in the Massachusetts/New England area maybe even further afield. I remember that name from when I was living back there back in the 80's. Makes sense seeing as ADS was based in Wilmington which was just outside of Boston.

My first ADS experience was with a variant of the L300, I liked them a lot but I gave them to a friend who was crazy for them. A few years later I was given a pair of L400's that were painted a cream color either by someone else or maybe they came that way from the factory. I stripped the paint and underneath was/is a walnut finish similar to your 300Ws. Cleaned them up some more and I still have them. Great little speakers!!!!
 
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pair of L400s in a metal cabinet. I have 4 pair (2 original and 2 small), and they all have walnut cabs.
 
The "w" variant does appear to be under-exposed in terms of literature, but plenty of them out there... they show up fairly often on eBay anyway.

I did not realize until looking through the only place I do see them (in the 1992 spare parts list) that they used a unique woofer, the 206-0337. I am guessing that's a slight variant on the std. black L300 which might have a slightly different air volume in the metal cabinet. That said, they didn't bother maintaining that differentiation later, as the replacement woofer (206-0403) is spec'd for all of this range, including the L300, cc, and w variants. So, must not have been a huge difference between them.

John
 
@jdurbin1 - Thanks for the additional details, that's an interesting sidenote regarding the woofers.

As to the availability of the L300W — until a few days ago, I personally hadn't seen another pair pop up on Ebay since I bought mine 3 years ago. As mentioned I have browsed the L300 listings on Ebay time and again looking for the brackets that might have been sold with the L300W and would have expected to find the speakers themselves for sale before the associated brackets and I do tend to go through the older "sold" listings as well. Please know that I did not mean to falsely imply these speakers are any more rare than they are. The reality for me is that while I have seen plenty of the smaller L400's with the walnut veneer, that just hasn't been the case when it comes to the L300's.

At any rate, thanks again for posting up the information regarding the part numbers for the woofers, both the originals and the later replacements. It is appreciated.
 
Yeah, I'd agree the 400's show up more than the 300's and they are at least covered in literature (see: 2300 SubSat brochure for instance). It's really rare to see them with the boxes and the L300W designation, typically the W is left off in eBay listings for example.

John
 
Wow, I finally combined the little ADS L300 speakers with a quality subwoofer and the results are amazing. I was happy using them solo, but it's nice to find out that these little guys had a few more tricks up their sleeve.
 
Guth said:
Wow, I finally combined the little ADS L300 speakers with a quality subwoofer and the results are amazing. I was happy using them solo, but it's nice to find out that these little guys had a few more tricks up their sleeve.
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Yes! .... I didn't know much about the L400's when I got them, upon reading some threads here at AK, someone mentioned they were part of a subwoofer Satellite system. I never gave it much thought, but then I found some Ad Literature on sportsbil and decided to hook up my klipsch Sub to them and was really blown away at how much that really improved the overall dynamics of those little gems.

At some point, I ended up hooking them up to my pc and a SMSL Q5 amp with a sub out, and hooked up an 8 inch Logitech sub, then trimmed the gain just a bit. Was a perfect fit! Glad you went ahead and hooked them up with a sub, I knew inside you'd be impressed.

Garry~
 
In my case, the number one goal was to fill in the bottom end as seamlessly as possible. This meant that instead of a sub that plumbs the lowest-depths possible, it instead needed to be incredibly responsive (quick / fast) while also being able to respond accurately and cross over high enough up in the frequency spectrum to match up with the realistic low-end output of these little guys. For me that meant using a smaller, sealed-design subwoofer. As the sub sits underneath my desk with the L300's placed in a nearfield listening configuration this combination is Incredibly deceptive to both the eyes and the ears. Works like charm!
 
Yep, same formula I have used... my L400/c10ps prototype system has those same characteristics, and was very easy to tune the crossover and level settings on the sub to blend it in. I use HT-series subs in my home theater system and although they have far more authority at lower frequency than the C-series, they also require a lot more tweaking to blend them seamlessly. Even when done, I find I have to manually adjust up/down a bit when switching between music and movies.

John
 
jdurbin1 said:
Yep, same formula I have used... my L400/c10ps prototype system has those same characteristics, and was very easy to tune the crossover and level settings on the sub to blend it in. I use HT-series subs in my home theater system and although they have far more authority at lower frequency than the C-series, they also require a lot more tweaking to blend them seamlessly. Even when done, I find I have to manually adjust up/down a bit when switching between music and movies.

John
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Hi John, When I had mine connected to the Klipsch, I think ... if memory serves me, I adjusted the crossover at 100hz then turned down the gain. But it's been a while. When I hooked mine up to the 8 inch logitech, I dont recall any of the settings, I just kept trimming until it sounded balanced and blended right. In both cases, I had a huge smile on my face. The L400's just never get the love they deserve.

Garry~
 
The NAD D3020 class D integrated amp that I'm using to drive my L300's has a few interesting features that work particularly well with the L300's that really allows them to shine. While it is only rated at 30 wpc into an 8 ohm load it has a surprisingly high amount of headroom needed for dynamic peaks and is very comfortable with the 4 ohm load of the L300's.

While the D3020 does not include any tone controls, it does incorporate a simple "Bass EQ" feature that provides a 7 dB gain at around 80 Hz that I actually found useful when running the L300s on their own. This tended to be more desirable at lower volume levels. However, the D3020 also has a subwoofer out that incorporate it's own low pass filter. From NAD's white paper on the D3020:

System evolution is made easy by the inclusion of a Subwoofer Output complete with an electronic low pass crossover filter. Adding a powered subwoofer dramatically elevates the system performance. The power hungry bass frequencies are enhanced by a dedicated amplified woofer.

Now I am not exactly sure what is going on in this case. The wording above would seem to imply that this amplifier is preventing the full signal bandwidth from reaching the speakers when used in conjunction with a subwoofer. What I do know is that running a subwoofer allows me to disable the Bass EQ feature which really cleans things up quite a bit a higher volumes. While the little JL Audio Dominion 8" sub is seemingly more than capable of head banging volume levels, I would not quite say the same of the system overall. The fact is that super high volumes aren't really needed in my nearfield setup. The bigger challenge is filling in the void in the bottom end of the scale at low volume levels so that it still comes across as balanced and involving (this is my home office setup and I'm mostly listening while working so high volume levels are not of the utmost in importance to me). Again, this system handles this need in quite the convincing fashion. Good stuff.
 
One of these days I'd really like to hear a set of L300's. I've never heard an unkind review of them.

Garry~
 
ADS must have sold quite a few of these over the years (somewhat surprisingly so as these were not exactly cheap during their time) as there are still plenty to be had these days. For me their beauty lays primarily in their small size, especially given the amount of music that they produce in return. Perfect for my application.

office01.jpg
 
Guth said:
ADS must have sold quite a few of these over the years (somewhat surprisingly so as these were not exactly cheap during their time) as there are still plenty to be had these days. For me their beauty lays primarily in their small size, especially given the amount of music that they produce in return. Perfect for my application.

office01.jpg
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Nice set up! Yeah, I do think they were quite popular in the day. Where as I see them listed upwards past a couple of benjamens, I've seen several here in the Dallas area hovering over one benjamin.

Every time I see an audiophile grade speaker of the same size for sale locally, I have to ask myself why I'd even look as I'm so satisfied with the L400 I have.
 
Spiceman50 said:
Every time I see an audiophile grade speaker of the same size for sale locally, I have to ask myself why I'd even look as I'm so satisfied with the L400 I have.
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I think that most of the time it comes down to how the speaker is being used. Years ago (2005?) I purchased a highly regarded bookshelf speaker that was thought to present great value for the money — the Epos ELS3 ($300/pair at the time). The little Epos really are great speakers and are surprising performers given their size and price. The Epos ELS-3 speakers are much better at filling up larger rooms with music than the ADS L300 speakers are. But in the case of a very small room like my home office where I have the speakers placed in a nearfield configuration the ADS L300's really shine. I'll likely hang on to both sets of speakers for a long time yet to come because of this.
 
I picked up a pair of 300c's a couple years ago and use them on my desk at work. I added a sub, and it's a pretty amazing setup. I'm an ADS fan, and they def remind me of how my bigger models sound. I keep my eyes open for another pair, but the ones I find tend to be in rough shape, overpriced, or both. I've been working from home for the past three months, and I keep wondering if I should go bring those speakers home to use on my desk here; I miss them!

Here's one of mine on an obviously homemade stand. They are very stable and are at ear level, which really helps. The holes on the top and bottom are 1/4" threads, so all-thread screws into the bottom of each speaker and is bolted to the bottom of the stands.
Stand 1.jpg
 
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