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How bad do white van speakers sound?

brickbuster said:
I'M still waiting to be approached by these guys and take em for a loop see if i can't BS a BS'er
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Me too.... I watched the videos here, and can't wait to act like I am interested as I slowly f them over till they get into their van and leave.
 
BrocLuno said:
Yes you can after enough time. They become mineralized (coprolites) and can be polished like stone :)
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Touche'
Actually, I remember watching a documentary about some tribe in Africa who floored their huts with compressed and polished water buffalo (IIRC) dung.
Maybe I shoulda said "you can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear".:D
 
I actually got to confront some of the white van guys back in the early 90's. They parked an all-white truck (about the size of a midsize U-Haul) in the parking lot in front of my retail store (which was known as The Speaker Shop). A customer came in and told me there were guys selling speakers in my parking lot. Acoustic Monitors. I went out and told them to get the heck out of there or I would call the police. I got a BS reply that they were doing business just like I was, competition is what business is about, and this is a free country so go ahead and call the police. My response was, they were conducting business on private property that they didn't own or weren't renting, and they were conducting retail sales without local and state sales tax licenses. They weren't happy when they left, but it only took about a minute after I walked back into my store for them to leave.

True rip-off artists. I had a number of folks bring their WV speakers into my store to fix or replace blown drivers. As soon as I saw what the speakers were, I could quote almost verbatim the sales pitch used by the sellers when the poor souls bought them. The line they were using here was, they had just completed a nightclub installation of a new sound system, and they over-ordered speakers for the job. You could get a pair of speakers for $400 that were worth $800 each. I'd say the average price paid by the uninformed buyers was about $250/pair. None that I talked to paid less than $200.
 
Bob Orme said:
I actually got to confront some of the white van guys back in the early 90's. They parked an all-white truck (about the size of a midsize U-Haul) in the parking lot in front of my retail store (which was known as The Speaker Shop). A customer came in and told me there were guys selling speakers in my parking lot. Acoustic Monitors. I went out and told them to get the heck out of there or I would call the police. I got a BS reply that they were doing business just like I was, competition is what business is about, and this is a free country so go ahead and call the police. My response was, they were conducting business on private property that they didn't own or weren't renting, and they were conducting retail sales without local and state sales tax licenses. They weren't happy when they left, but it only took about a minute after I walked back into my store for them to leave.

True rip-off artists. I had a number of folks bring their WV speakers into my store to fix or replace blown drivers. As soon as I saw what the speakers were, I could quote almost verbatim the sales pitch used by the sellers when the poor souls bought them. The line they were using here was, they had just completed a nightclub installation of a new sound system, and they over-ordered speakers for the job. You could get a pair of speakers for $400 that were worth $800 each. I'd say the average price paid by the uninformed buyers was about $250/pair. None that I talked to paid less than $200.
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The Speaker Shop near Youngstown?
 
Interesting thread. A few thoughts...

Since these speakers are ONLY designed to rip people off, not to make music, they are all about "expensive look" without any consideration for actual quality. Beyond that, they have to actually make some sound, so if they are caught selling them, it's difficult to prove actual fraud (although selling without a license, not paying sales taxes, etc... might still apply). They are quite profitable at the "discount" prices they are actually sold at (since the guys behind the scams have grown rich doing this for decades), and their selling channels are actually not that cheap (despite not paying rent), so they must cost a lot less than that to produce. OF COURSE they sound like scheidt.

You COULD build good speakers inside their shells and have excellent-sounding speakers that looked like WVs, but why bother?

What would be fun is a thread brainstorming ideas for "scamming the scammers". Any way to get these guys suckered in so that they waste time and fork over both cash and product, and end up being arrested? While it might be a bit risky (most of these are professional criminal types, so you'd better know what you're doing), it sure would be sweet to see a "scambaiter" job pulled on them!
 
Are Kirsch k-803 Prodigy's white van speakers?

Im a truck driver and bought a pair in a rest area primarily because they looked nice, had high power capacity specs, were cheap and I had a set of Advent Heritage towers ( from MonkeyWards in the 80's for similar reasons) I thought might have damaged cross-overs but wasnt sure. I have trouble with no test gear or "known good" components in troubleshooting a hum/intermittent rumbling in my yester-year JVC high-end system I'd blown my Tangent TM-1 crossovers many times with. Well the hum-rumbling did not change so I changed out the amps with a cheap Sherwood with no phono-inputs or MC pre-pre-amp. I could crank with no hum till uncomfortable for me with no distortion but uninspiring definition. I bought a Carver receiver on Ebay as it was a gorgeous piece for a receiver in my mind with more power output than my cherished p-3030/m-3030 (currently on the blink) and sent the Sherwood to the shed. I then tried to splatter the Kirsch k-803 with the Scorpions 1st album and the 150W rms Carver. Imaging is off and the bass though undistorted is slightly muddy but the upper end definition was inspiring. Most likely that was a quality of the Carver not the Kirsch but it came through at volumes that were very high. Im not saying these speakers are the greatest but they'll do me ok for a set of spares till I can save up for a set of KEF speakers, and if I had a party or event and wanted something that sounded fairly good at high levels Id sure rather have someone barf or fall on one of these than the KEF's :)
 
similost said:
I'm still looking around trying to get a pair of them dirt cheap.. hoping a pair will show up at my local thrift so I can: A) give an honest review of them, and B) find out what a few hundred to 1000 honest watts will do to them... I'm hoping to see some smoke from cones :yes:
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Check your local Craigs list, that seems to be the new happy hunting ground for the WV speaks. I wouldnt bother with the "sound check" but smoking them might make an interesting U-Tube or something.



Russellc
 
KentTeffeteller said:
Hi,

The university I work for (I'm a contract broadcast engineer) tested a pair of Kirsch speakers. Frequency response range: 120-12,000 Hz (plus or minus 3 db). Bass and treble was judged by our listening panel as "shrill, peaky, has tubby bass almost non-existent". Makes a certain well-known name of speaker actually look superb by comparison. That name begins with B.
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That's BETTER than Bose. Bose's Acoustimass satellites have a frequency response of 280 Hz to 13.3 kHz at ±10.5 dB. The "subwoofer" has a frequency response of 46Hz to 202Hz at ±2.3 dB.

People, if you are reading this and are thinking of buying Bose, DON'T!! There are much better speakers out there for the money. Bose is not an audiophile company, their marketing department just makes you think they are.
 
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how do wv speakers sound?

they go some thing like this....bing, bing, crackle,crackle,fizzle,bing, bing, bing, bing.
those of you who heard them may be able to interpret what those sounds designate.
 
MRX37 said:
I've heard alot about the white van scam and how the speakers are junk and how they sound like crap, but I haven't heard many details on exactly how they sound. Usually I hear things like "Sounds like a clock radio"... Okay... some clock radios sound okay and some don't...


I have a pair of 12 inch Acoustic Monitor woofers. They have translucent plastic cones. I got them out of a pair of Acoustic Monitor cabinets that were literally falling apart. I put them into some good cabinets that already had mids and tweets in them, and they sound all right. I wouldn't crank them due to the woofers having small magnets and voice coils, but they don't sound bad.

Has anybody ever run across a pair of these speakers while they were playing? If so, what did they sound like? Did they sound too boomy? Too shrill? Cabinet resonence? Muddy sounding? Lack of mid or high frequencies?

I'm just curious as to how bad they really are.
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Why would you bother taking the risk? I heard a pair of Denmark speakers and they were really bad. The seller worked with a friend of mine and he had me over to listen to them. Looked OK but sounded like crap. No apparent midrange, terrible balance. I got him a pair of Jamo speakers for a similar amount and he's very happy with them. I needed about 5 seconds to hear what hte others needed and that was to go back to the seller.
 
ekmanning5 said:
Here's what my local thrift does; prices the white van crap at about $100pair, prices the good vintage stuff i.e. Allisons, Dynacos, Bowers & Wilkens, for anywhere from $5 to $20 a pair. :thmbsp: I just try to keep my mouth shut.
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HAHA, Same here, the manager is a young guy, that thinks he knows everything. When he asks me anything, i just nod my head in agreement. Yeah those genesis media labs are really nice, lmaooo.
 
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