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atlantis oracle 3's, know anything about these?

imready

imready

it's good to be the king!
a couple of years ago i bought a pair of atlantis oracle 3's at the humane society garage sale. i had two offers on them before i got them in my truck. i got them home ,checked them out , ordered some surrounds , patiently waited for them to arrive , installed the new surrounds (woofer and passive) and presto! i had speakers! i thought i remembered seeing these in the late 70's early 80's. they are 4 way speakers with the lower mid, upper mid and tweeter mounted on top of the boxes. speaker cloth all around the top enclosure with glass tops. i 'd take a pick but i haven't figured out how to get pictures to upload on this site yet. anyhow, my search on the web turns up nothing and i've never seen any for sale on the auction site. i haven't listened to them for a while but i remember there were times i thought they sounded pretty good. think i'll fire them up again if i can find a place for an amp, they are sitting in the middle of the floor in the family room, i think they are staring at me wondering when they will get to produce sound again.
 
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I bought a stereo at a garage sale in the 70's. It was a Rotel receiver and Atlantis speakers with a Garrard table. I had just relocated and sold my little stereo before I moved, which was Altec Capri bookshelf speakers, a Marantz 1060 (I think) integrated with a Pioneer table and that 15 dollar garage sale stereo with the Atlantis speakers clearly outperformed my previous unit. I'm glad somebody mentioned Atlantis...I never see them mentioned anywhere.
 
the guy who installed my satelite dish said they looked like the pair he had back in the 70's. he also suggested he paid quite a bit of money for them. in my ears , the verdict was still out and i couldn't pin down what i thought of them. there were times they sounded very good and other times average. i swap equipment around a lot so it may have been the right or wrong combination at times. seemed they were much better reproducing some types of music but it has been a while since they've been in the lineup. one of these days when my wife is at work i'm going to set up another system in the family room . our house it packed full of stuff and it will take me a while to figure out how to move stuff around in a way that will make her happy.it's better not to ask first, she never likes my ideas until after they're done.
 
I can relate...

I haven't had mine since probably 1979 or 80. So I really only remember that I liked them way back when.
 
Could you post a picture of the logo -- oh wait, you said you have difficulty posiing them. But a description? Fairly early on in my involvement with AK there were a series of posts asking about a speaker with a logo with a wave and palm tree, in light blue on silver. I may have missed the answer, but I have seen two pairs myself, and never known what they were.
 
I'm pretty sure that the Oracles weren't the speaker I had which was a smallish bookshelf speaker. They were already pretty well used when I bought them.
 
they are definately mid fi speakers and i have thought about using the cabinets and upgrading the drivers and x-overs. i liked the arrangement but i remember not liking the upper and lower mid range drivers in some circumstances but there were times they sounded pretty good. i like the cabinets and i have some speakers around with thrashed cabinets so maybe a little speaker bashing will happen to these. i have some jbl L100's that look awful but the drivers are perfect...............hhhmmmmm
 
Oracles III

The Oracle III is a Private label speaker that was made for Team Electronics, a Midwest Retail Electronics Company. I managed the Iowa City, Iowa location for Team. They were designed by an engineer employed by Team, but I have forgotten his name now. They were designed to emulate an esoteric British speaker line called the "Quad". They were manufactured by a company called Becker Industries in New York State. The open placement of the drivers on the top of the box was to eliminate the "baffle" effect common in the speakers of the day. It opened the sound beautifully. The bass was a passive radiator (one active one passive cone). They were far and away the best Private label speaker ever sold by Team. The line also included the I, II, and IV. The only down sides were their size and they needed at least 75 watts per channel to drive them cleanly. Other cheaper speakers Team sold were made by Winona Industries in Minnesota but don't confuse those with these. Also there is a little device on the top of the cabinet called an Auto-stat, which will open and shut off the speaker if they are being over drivien. (Looks like a clear Christmas tree light). If this shuts them down too often, you can jump the connection to solve that problem. Put a 100 watts behind them and let em fly they are very very clean and well balanced.

Brian D
 
Doyab01 said:
The Oracle III [...] They were designed to emulate an esoteric British speaker line called the "Quad". [...]
Brian D
Click to expand...

It is said the Dahlquist DQ-10 had the same goal...so has anybody heard Quads, Dahlquists, and Oracles?

Thanks
 
i have a pair of these and mirrored image them at least the upper section not a bad speaker.:banana:
 

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Atlantis Logo?

Nat said:
Could you post a picture of the logo -- oh wait, you said you have difficulty posiing them. But a description? Fairly early on in my involvement with AK there were a series of posts asking about a speaker with a logo with a wave and palm tree, in light blue on silver. I may have missed the answer, but I have seen two pairs myself, and never known what they were.
Click to expand...

Without knowing any of this, I've been searching for info on a set of speakers with exactly that logo. If you check my other post, you will find a photo of the logo.
Do you know if THAT logo is indeed an Atlantis logo?
Thanks!
Andrew.
 
Now that I think about it, shouldn't a logo with a palm tree be for a Pacificus speaker?
 
I will check my Atlantic Oracle IV's which I'm currently refoaming and see what the logo looks like. And I did think it was Atlantic not Atlantis, but I could be wrong on that too. The IV's look very much like angel mercado's pic above but they have a 10" woofer and 15" passive on the bottom. I'm planning to redo the crossovers, and am wondering if the not so great sound someone mentioned had to do with aged caps. I have never applied power to these yet. They certainly LOOK worth the time.
 
I looked at the labels inside mine and the logo is an A T L followed by Atlantis. No palm tree looking thing. The grille cloth has been replaced on these, and there are no grille badges, not sure if there ever were any or they got separated in the cloth replacement.
 
Oracle III

I also worked at a TEAM Electronics store in the late 70's (Cedar Rapids, Iowa). I remember the Oracle line very well. True it was a house brand, but it was built to an unusually high standard for that sort of thing. The engineer who was the primary designer was a fellow named Jim West, (as best I can recollect- it was 32 years ago). I believe he came from Altec. He actually visited our strore and was very engaging. Jim told us he was trying to emulate the DQ-10 in sound (makes a lot of sense if you look at the design). Oracles, especially the II & III, were quite good. The IV was a too bassy for my taste. We also sold bigger Tannoys (Arden & Berkeley), Altecs (Model 14), Bose (901, etc), and a variety of long gone brands. The electronics and sources were very much midfi solid state (Sansui G-3000, AU 717, 919, big Kenwoods/Pioneers) With that in mind, I couldn't stand the 901s, the Altecs were super dynamic/fun, and the Tannoys imaged well. The Oracle III was heavily built with a smooth,open sound and good bass response-a very competive design. Other Atlantis products were more typical of house brands- their ADS style minimonitor was a joke compared to something like a Visonik David. My tastes have changed over the years, as well as my memory, but these are my recollections.
 
Great stuff, thanks for sharing! And welcome to AK, I see this is post #1.

Finding history like that on an obscure piece of vintage equipment is one of the great things about AK. I wonder what ever became of Mr. West.

I find the IV's a bit boomy too, would really like to see a freq. response curve on them. I got some advice on how to tinker with the passive radiator (here at AK of course) but haven't got around to it yet. I think it's tuned a bit high, so you get a bit of a boom. I was going to try tuning to a lower frequency by increasing the weight. I haven't figured out a way to increase the mass that's reversible. Anyway, I do like the way these are built, still listening to them months later in the living room after getting them restored.
 
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