My first Hi-Fi speaker had a 8" driver with whizzer cone and a tweeter that was about 3" in diameter. It was in a ~ 12w-10d-18h box with a non-removable grill. They cost me like $25 each; it was all I could afford with my paper route money. See I had just bought a receiver from Montgomery Wards, it was on clearance. But what to do about speakers? So a week or so latter I bought those. The cheapest speakers I could find. WOW did they sound good, serious. I could not even drive at the time.
Then I saved for good speakers. I looked around, my criteria was the biggest woofer and the SPL rating had to be at least 90db. I bought some Technics Sbl-70 11" 3 way speakers. OMG did they look good and play nice and loud with decent base. Don't ask me about mid-range smoothness? What is that? No one talked about it back then. Read the literature. Selling points were smooth, big, nice looking, big woofer, lots of power handling... even look at JBL adds. Anyways my next receiver was a Technics 50wpc WOW... my Mom drove me to go get it. I found it on clearance someplace kinda far. I bought this because I blew my first receiver by touching the back speaker breakers I did something really dumb and blew a channel, my fault it still might play today if I did not do that. But hey I really enjoyed the Technics 50wpc. It had so much more power and could really push those 11" drivers.
But I was not happy with the speakers when my friend two doors down bought some Realistic T-70 towers. They had an 8" woofer in a tuned labyrinth (small) tower 29"t, 10"X10". And just blew mine away for BASS that's all that counted, how loud could they play and how much and deep you could go. Those towers also had a 1" softdome tweeter and I could hear better sound. We would ride our bikes to Radio-Shack just to look at the Mach Ones and big receivers and wish... well I saved and did it. When I turned 16 and could barely drive I bought some Mach Ones on sale for $125 each. I brought them home and they blasted the bass like I had never heard before. I was shocked at how much bass they had. My friend left in big disappointment... there was no contest.
Now somethings I have learned, Yes the MachOnes must be on the ground near the corner (or just on the ground) and the tweeter and mid controls must be at +3dB to bring it up to the woofer. I knew this 30 years ago. Trying to make them sound like hi-end speakers at the shops putting them on tall stands was not effective. I had to leave them on the ground, I as (most) everyone played them with the bass and treble controls all they way up. Or lots of folks used an EQ with the smile tone level on all speakers EQs were big sellers back then, wonder why? I never used an EQ except for the bass, the RS EQ was for bass. I set it all they down to about 45Hz and this gave me much better sound as I was only boosting the bass around the region as a tone control would boost if from 500hz down! This little box may have given me an advantage, it also allowed the MachOned to play down to 40Hz at room shaking volume, thats not bad! That (bass EQ) box was superb!
After this the rest is history, I moved around but never lost track of my MachOnes. For a few years I did not have them with me but they were back at Moms... From there my Hi-Fi budget grew larger and I have stated the rest. So those are my memories of them. Do they sound good now compared to a Definitive Technology BP10? No! Not at all... but my ears have changed, I am older now (mid-forties) and Paradigm and the NRC brought good sound to all of us. Back in the day there was worse speakers than the MachOnes thats all I have to say... well no I will say more but...
I really enjoyed the MachOnes and have a soft-spot for them in my memory. As I said they sit there the most abused speaker I have ever seen, and they just sit there with no blown drivers. I want to keep them for life.
Everyone's experience is different. Some may have listened to them and found them the worst speaker ever and have charts now to back up how good they are at listening...OK (the original M1 Fz measurment). I knew 30 years ago they were not the smoothest speaker in the world in fact that's what a mini review said of them. I had a magazine that reviewed almost all of the speakers out in that day (wish I kept it) in price segments. The reviewer said and I remember because I read it so many times "The MachOnes may not be the worlds most accurate uncoloured reproducer of sound, but if your looking for maximum volume for the buck don't over look them". This was written 30 years ago. Believe me 80% of speakers back then were not accurate but voiced for a sound the seller wanted, you had the east coast sound west coast sound. This was before the NRC.
If the Mach Ones brought you no pleasure so be it. If they did good for you (as me). We all knew they were not designed for classical stuff back then but to blow a hole in the wall as one of my friends said... :thmbsp:
