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Cerwin-Vega! sound

I was very happy with a pair of Cerwin Vega 240SE's, that is until the foam surrounds rotted out. That seems to be a problem on all speakers made since the 60's. I now have a pair of 60 year old Jensens that have no foam. They will out live me! If the paper surrounds of my Jensens can hold up for 60 years, why can't they make a foam surround last longer than 10 years? Some posters here seem to actually enjoy re-foaming their speakers. I refuse to do it.

Sorry for the foam rant. I do like the Cerwin Vega sound.

Bobby Dipole
 
Just refoamed some AT-12 last night. I did a quick listen on lunch hour& must say they sound much different-better to my ears -than the RE-30 I had. Lookin forward to giving them a workout tonite...
Robert
 
huh. Inna-resting to find this thread now.

I'm never happy (evidently) and so I got it in my head that I want some Cerwin Vegas, because I'm tired of having to mess around with the subwoofer I have been using with my Axiom M3's. I could NEVER get the sub just right - it just never sounded like it "belonged" to the Axioms...just seemed like this sort of disembodied burping entity over there.

So, I'd been scanning CL for months because I just had this moment where I thought I'm gonna have my bass and all else be damned.

So week before last I found a perfect condition pair of AT-12's.
Paid $100 - I think it was a good deal.

sigh..... except for the lowest bass I'm really not loving them. Within the first few days I realized it was the mid that was bothering me - it seemed just "squawky" sounding. So I go to the speaker repair place up the road and got $18 each replacements that bolted right in. Big improvement!

I'm still not feeling the love tho.

The room is too small... other probs too.

Gonna live with them another week or so before putting them back on CL.

Am trying positioning them differently, etc.

But for now, no joy. I think I just can't sit far enough BACK from them, due to room constraints, to get the sound waves hitting me right.

Trying to remember if I posted in this thread before.....lol. :scratch2:

PS: occaisionally, played in tandem with one of my other (small) speakers sitting on top, I can get them to "sing" pretty nicely, but there's fiddling involved. At least the fiddling doesn't involve crawling around on the floor like with the sub! :)
 
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PPS: so far, my favorite "genre" that I like to listen to with the Vegas, where they just melt my face (in a GOOD way!), is 50's-early 60's vintage jazz. They are great for most tenor sax stuff. And jazz piano and the small combos of the be-bop era.
 
ppontiac said:
I think the "audiophile" speakers with their puny woofers and cone tweeters are cleaver marketing tools aimed at the wealthy audio ignorant. $15,000 for a pair of speakers? Crazy. The mighty Klipschorn has no equal.
Click to expand...

There are other audiophile speakers besides the ones with "puny woofers", that being said, yes, there is no replacement for displacement. Further, everyone has their own taste in sound, and typically, 6.5 woofers (even two of them) won't do it for most people. The Klipschorn's you mention of course, do not fall into this category, they are audiophile speakers with big woofers. Though known to be bass heavy, at least most cv's covered the audible spectrum, that's what you're enjoying.
 
I've owned many pairs of speakers in my life. My last set before these ones were B & W's. I now own a pair of Cerwin Vega CLS-15's.

I love them. Even at low volume I can detect these move serious air. The bass punches you in the gut. This is serious sound. They fill the room with complete unadulterated assertive authority.

Maybe the drivers in these new CLS series are better or something, but I have no issues withdetail, vocals, or coloring. I like cranking these up loud or listening at moderate to low volumes and listening to all genres of music and I have nothing but a goofy smile on my face all the while.

Aunty Em, I always love your posts. That "melt my face" comment made me smile. We've all been there hey?

BTW I have two LAB-500's - one for spare parts and I bought another box of spare parts for it from a dude that parted one out. If you ever need anything for your TT let me know :)
 
I don't consider myself an audiophile, I don't have the money, but having listened to some very expensive setups I can say in my opinion that anything over $15,000 for speakers is a rip off, I have a pair of old pioneer bookshelf's, single 6" speaker, SCS-12 I think is the model, they sounded amazing! until I blew them up, so I replaced the drivers with some from an Australian company (Boyd - Total Recoil) and they sound even better, they cost me $400 a pair, and while not being able to handle massive amounts of power they sound better than sets I've seen sell on ebay second hand for well over $2k

on topic, I wouldn't class Cerwin Vega's as audiophile, but they certainly don't fail at anything, and they in fact excel at being clear and loud, and if that's what you want why look elsewhere.

Cerwin Vega are definitely the "party speaker" as I had them described to me, and for my needs they suit better than any $15,000 - $80,000 speaker ever could for the price I paid.
 
Grog said:
I've owned many pairs of speakers in my life. My last set before these ones were B & W's. I now own a pair of Cerwin Vega CLS-15's.

I love them. Even at low volume I can detect these move serious air. The bass punches you in the gut. This is serious sound. They fill the room with complete unadulterated assertive authority.

Maybe the drivers in these new CLS series are better or something, but I have no issues withdetail, vocals, or coloring. I like cranking these up loud or listening at moderate to low volumes and listening to all genres of music and I have nothing but a goofy smile on my face all the while.

Aunty Em, I always love your posts. That "melt my face" comment made me smile. We've all been there hey?

BTW I have two LAB-500's - one for spare parts and I bought another box of spare parts for it from a dude that parted one out. If you ever need anything for your TT let me know :)
Click to expand...

I've often wondered about the new current model Cerwin Vegas. I wish I knew of a place locally to listen to them or preview them, although I've never been really able to get a really good sense of a speaker from an in-store preview. So the CLS are the ones with a horn on top? I'd love to experience those.
Glad you are liking yours so well! I'm looking forward to playing with mine some more over the weekend. (and thanks for letting me know about the TT parts, btw!)

An interesting thing is that the person I bought mine from has some real high $$ "audiophile" level equipment, and very carefully thought out listening space, with sound baffles on the walls, real high-end cables etc. But he still seems to be always on the hunt for the perfect equipment, too.

I guess for me, the "Holy Grail" would be finally getting a set-up where I just want to listen to the music, and can forget the "system".
But, I think that's always going to elude some people.
It would be like someone wanting, say, a motorcycle, to get you from pt A to pt B, and then there will always people who will inevitably always have these little thoughts at the back of their minds, that this or that could be better, faster, louder, more attractive, etc - all the while fulfilling the same basic function of moving a person from here to there.

Sometimes, I swear I think the best absorption of music comes from listening while doing something else, like a hobby, or light reading, rather than from plopping down in front of the system and telling it "ok, amaze me right NOW". And I think that, unfairly, I did that with these CVs, to an extent. I challenged them to amaze me right now, right after I'd just gotten home from work, was still crabby and uptight, etc., without the proper mellow-out period that I find makes listening better.

One thing that some people seem to dislike about the CVs is the red surrounds. See, I like that look. It is attractive to me. Reminds me of the redline tires on old GTOs and other muscle cars. In fact the bigger CVs, in general, remind me of late 60's-early 70's muscle cars.
Compared with European road cars or sports cars - no, they didn't handle worth a damn, ate too much gas, were loud and probably disagreeable to many people. OTOH, they supplied the "goofy grin" factor, like Grog mentions, in SPADES.

So maybe you could compare the current model Vega's to the new vintage looking muscle cars... the modern cars that are styled to look like the old ones. Like Challenger, Mustang, Camaro, etc.
So they "handle" (sound) much better but still have some of the look of the old ones.

So yeah, I think no speaker can be (like the Slade song said) "all things to everyone".
:)

PS (starting to think maybe buying these CVs is part of a mid-life crisis kind of thing for me, lol)
 
Aunty Em you hit it dead on with this line:

"I just want to listen to the music, and can forget the "system"

THAT is the holy grail. If you're there, you're done with acquisitions.

I like the red surrounds too. Always have. I had a pair of CV U-351's back in the early '80's. They were my first CV's and I always liked that look.

And your point about good old American muscle cars - I was just explaining that to a friend last week - have you ever noticed when a bad -ass in a movie has to drive something it's always a '60's or '70's muscle car?

Those were the days, before the industry started churning out front wheel drive clones. The 60's and 70's cars had soul.

Those were the days ...
 
Last night I was enjoying the Cerwin Vega's quite well, in combo with this small pair of JBL's sitting on them.
But then I was asked to "turn it down" - lol! imagine that!

So I switched to cans, and, what can I say - THAT enabled me to completely immerse in the music, even though I'd been enjoying the speakers.
:)
 
stuartk said:
I had the S1. It had a 12", a 4 or 5" mid cone driver, and a horn-loaded phenolic dome tweeter.

I don't honestly remember the S2 though. Was it larger or smaller than the S1?
Click to expand...

The S2 Premium has a 15" driver. It'll beat your brains out!
 
6thumbs said:
super dutys came in two compression ratios and 3 carb configurations depending on year produced ,,single 4 barrel 61,62.63 ,,,3x2 61 0nly... 2x4 ,61,62 .63 all three years had different heads i could go on for hours used to know interchangability of pontiac engine parts from 58 to 63
Click to expand...

I'm a Pontiac gearhead. Any Pontiac up until GM killed off their V8s. To me, an old Pontiac doesn't need a radio, just good pipes!
 
stuartk said:
I was never into Disco, and never went to any Disco clubs.

I just found that the CV speakers weren't very subtle. That's why I sold my C-Vs and moved on.
Click to expand...

Why would you want subtle? Live music need live speakers. Why disassociate yourself from the music?
 
Aunty Em said:
I've often wondered about the new current model Cerwin Vegas. I wish I knew of a place locally to listen to them or preview them, although I've never been really able to get a really good sense of a speaker from an in-store preview. So the CLS are the ones with a horn on top? I'd love to experience those.
Glad you are liking yours so well! I'm looking forward to playing with mine some more over the weekend. (and thanks for letting me know about the TT parts, btw!)

An interesting thing is that the person I bought mine from has some real high $$ "audiophile" level equipment, and very carefully thought out listening space, with sound baffles on the walls, real high-end cables etc. But he still seems to be always on the hunt for the perfect equipment, too.

I guess for me, the "Holy Grail" would be finally getting a set-up where I just want to listen to the music, and can forget the "system".
But, I think that's always going to elude some people.
It would be like someone wanting, say, a motorcycle, to get you from pt A to pt B, and then there will always people who will inevitably always have these little thoughts at the back of their minds, that this or that could be better, faster, louder, more attractive, etc - all the while fulfilling the same basic function of moving a person from here to there.

Sometimes, I swear I think the best absorption of music comes from listening while doing something else, like a hobby, or light reading, rather than from plopping down in front of the system and telling it "ok, amaze me right NOW". And I think that, unfairly, I did that with these CVs, to an extent. I challenged them to amaze me right now, right after I'd just gotten home from work, was still crabby and uptight, etc., without the proper mellow-out period that I find makes listening better.

One thing that some people seem to dislike about the CVs is the red surrounds. See, I like that look. It is attractive to me. Reminds me of the redline tires on old GTOs and other muscle cars. In fact the bigger CVs, in general, remind me of late 60's-early 70's muscle cars.
Compared with European road cars or sports cars - no, they didn't handle worth a damn, ate too much gas, were loud and probably disagreeable to many people. OTOH, they supplied the "goofy grin" factor, like Grog mentions, in SPADES.

So maybe you could compare the current model Vega's to the new vintage looking muscle cars... the modern cars that are styled to look like the old ones. Like Challenger, Mustang, Camaro, etc.
So they "handle" (sound) much better but still have some of the look of the old ones.

So yeah, I think no speaker can be (like the Slade song said) "all things to everyone".
:)

PS (starting to think maybe buying these CVs is part of a mid-life crisis kind of thing for me, lol)
Click to expand...

Right on Aunty Em!

Listening to C-V's & Klipsch while distracted at others homes is the way I got introduced to them. Works well with other speakers, too. I used to tape up the speaker names on many of my speakers when my self proclaimed speaker expert friends would come over and find out they're always full of BS.
 
What I'm saying is if you're focused on a name brand, or biased against a certain type of driver, horn, dome, etc, you let let that bias interfere with your critical listening. Sometimes, If you don't see the speaker you're hearing you may hear something you like.
 
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