Advent woofer driver identification help

[Alibi3767]

Hi, all.

I've been cleaning out my father's home and found this pair of Advent loudspeakers. I could use some help from the community to identify these.



The date on the one tweeter was October 23, 1974, but the other tweeter was not dated. Am I correct that these are the orange fried egg tweeters?



The woofer in the cabinet on the left (stamped "JW" for simplicity) is damaged; the dust cap is torn from (and partially separated at) the bottom of the cone.


In a box labeled, "for Advent speaker" is what I assume to be a replacement woofer. There's no manufacturer information on it, no invoice, no shipping label, no anything else. There are numbers stamped on the back of the replacement woofer: "10-990-536" which I am guessing is the model number, and "2858640" which I am guessing is the serial number?



An Internet search (admittedly, cursory) turned up a bunch of auction site listings calling them Advent woofers, but a couple of threads here on AK seem to indicate they are made by Jensen. Are they made by Jensen for Advent? Can someone confirm?

A closer inspection of the woofers seems to indicate that this boxed replacement is similar to the one installed in the "JW" cabinet and that the two installed in the cabinets do not match. So I'm guessing that was replaced previously as well?

I have not removed any of the existing drivers from the cabinets to try to identify anything further. Will the tweeters and woofers have markings on the back to help me out or just make me more confused?

The cabinets are scratched and chipped to hell and the grill cloths are also in rough shape, so I was thinking of just parting out the drivers for sale and scrapping the cabinets as the drivers would be much easier to ship. Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Marty

 

[blhagstrom]

They look like New Large Advents to me.
Also know as NLA.
Parting them out is a good move if you have no use for them.

They must have made a million of them.
Many still out there playing well.
Good speakers.
Parts sold well when I had spares.

 

[GordonW]

285 8640 means that it was manufactured by Rola, in the 40th week of 1986.

That jibes for a late-production/replacement Large Advent woofer. The early ones were made by Jensen, and some of the later ones by Rola (Rola built lots of drivers under contract, using Jensen designs).

The broken dust cap- I would just carefully remove as much of it as possible. and get a similarly-sized screen fabric dust cap, as the one in the other cabinet. Advent woofers should have screen dust caps, not paper. Doesn't matter if it's a perfect size match- just that it's an open-weave fabric screen material unit- screen dust caps don't really have much acoustic effect, themselves.

It looks like someone replaced the foam surrounds with generic surrounds- this is not a fatal condition though. It would probably sound better with the original-type Advent surrounds (which can be easily identified, as they have very narrow outer flanges, as opposed to the wide flanges on the ones on these woofers. They could be re-refoamed again, with the correct sounds, whenever it's convenient...

Regards,
Gordon.

 

[Pete B]

Those ARE Original Large Advent (OLA) speakers with New Large Advent (NLA) type woofer replacements.
They came new with masonite edge woofers but the replacements are fine.
I say NLA type because they could be NLA woofers made by Advent, or Jensen, or generic replacements.
What do the magnets look like on the woofers that are in the boxes, round or square?
The left woofer looks like a Jensen since they used a paper dust cap.
The right looks like an Advent NLA but hard to say for sure.

The blocks spacing the grille forward, and the wood on the tweeter confirm that they are OLAs.

 

[GordonW]

I've never seen a paper dust cap on an factory original Large Advent or NLA type woofer.

They were usually screen fabric- and the ones that weren't (such as in Dahlquist DQ10s), used a porous-felt dust cap.

Regards,
Gordon.

 

[Alibi3767]

Thanks, everyone, for the super quick replies.

The magnet on the woofer in the box is round.

It would not surprise me that these are NLA woofers in OLA cabinets (or even some other Frankenstein combination). Knowing my dad, if anyone he knew or especially his brother got some NLAs and told him those woofers sounded better than OLA woofers, he would have replaced them immediately. He had to always keep up with the Joneses.

I assume the 1974 orange fried egg tweeters would be OEM in OLAs?

I'll pull all the drivers from the cabinets and look for any maker's marks and see if any of them are even matching pairs.

 

[Pete B]

I've never seen a paper dust cap on an factory original Large Advent or NLA type woofer.

They were usually screen fabric- and the ones that weren't (such as in Dahlquist DQ10s), used a porous-felt dust cap.

Regards,
Gordon.

As far as I know all OLA masonite edge woofers have fabric dust caps, that from memory are 2" across. The NLA fabric is 2.25" across.
The vast majority of NLA s square magnet had fabric dust caps, but I believe that I have seen one that looked original that had a paper dust cap.
The vast majority of round magnet Jensen NLA style woofers have paper dust caps, but I believe that I've seen one with a fabric dust cap.

Most of the Jensen round magnet woofers were used in the later Advent 5002/5012 etc. but my guess is that Jensen also
used them at the end of the NLA production run.

The exceptions are VERY rare, probably just used what they had available or until they ran out.
I was shocked when I found a square magnet NLA woofer with a paper dust cap, who knows?

Look carefully at this pic, the dust caps are paper and these are correct round magnet Jensen woofers:

https://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?media/both-before-refoam.13789/full&d=1519671117

 

[Pete B]

The foam failed on the original woofers and someone bought replacement woofers from Advent - simple.
Not much if any performance difference.

 

[a_retent]

Hi, all.

I've been cleaning out my father's home and found this pair of Advent loudspeakers. I could use some help....

You've had 2 of the 4 foremost knowledgeable Advent people on AK chime in on your question, nice work you guys.

BTW, welcome to audiokarma, hope you stick around longer than getting info for your Father's Advents.