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Newly stacked Advents

Devileyes

Devileyes

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Hello,
At the beginning of winter I found a pair of Original Large Advents locally. Not a big market up here for vintage equipment, so I got them for a very good price. They had been professionally refoamed and had the grill material replaced. They sound fantastic hooked up to my Sansui 990.
Well anyway, a few weeks ago 2 sets of NLA’s went up for sale near me. One set of the Walnut Cabs and one set Utility Cabs. Both sets needed refoaming and had stained grills, but everything else was nice. So I bought them and refoamed both sets. So long story short, I now have stacked Advents! I’m amazed at the sound! My room that they are in (unfinished basement) isn’t ideal, but they sound incredible anyway. I’m particularly impressed with the bass response and how much clarity and detail that can be heard, even at low levels. I currently have the Walnut NLA’s upside down on top of the OLA’s. I would like to find a set of Original OLA grills to match the color of the original NLA grills, as I like the darker more burlap color on these better.
I plan on trying them with my Project/One Mark 1500 soon, but been enjoying how they sound with my 990 so much...I haven’t unhooked them yet.
 
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Hey guys I'm new here and also new to vintage audio. I just picked up a Yamaha M-50 and a pair of Advent 5002's that have been recently refoamed (according to the seller anyway. they look fine to me).

Of course the moment I got home from picking them up in a neighbouring city, I saw a pair of gorgeous 5012's go up for sale for even less than I paid for the 5002's. I'd been reading about the awesomeness of stacking Advents and set the intention to buy another pair and get to it as soon as a pair came up. That was fast.

My question is - Will I achieve the desired effect you get with the legendary arrangement of the top speaker upside down, wired in parallel to create a 4 ohm speaker set, if I used these two slightly different models? I see that the tweeters on the 5012's are centered while the 5002's are off to the side. I believe that the crossovers and tweeters and woofers are identical (correct?), so the positioning of the tweeter should be the only difference between the two really, besides of course the type of material they're made of.

Should I go ahead and get these to achieve the dream, or wait to find an identical pair of 5002's?

Thanks!!

Neil
 
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We had 2 rigs with stacked Advents, one was my kid's with a Yamaha CR1020 and a garage system with a Sansui 9090. We loved 'em. What we did find out later is there's something missing, the cymbals were muted somewhat. I'm sure there's an explanation, the tweeters just don't reproduce them well. There's probably other instruments and frequencies that they don't do well, but what they do has a most pleasant sound. The bass is excellent.
I probably would never have noticed until I hooked up a third pair of speakers, Boston Acoustics A150's, to the Sansui.
 
grillebilly said:
We had 2 rigs with stacked Advents, one was my kid's with a Yamaha CR1020 and a garage system with a Sansui 9090. We loved 'em. What we did find out later is there's something missing, the cymbals were muted somewhat. I'm sure there's an explanation, the tweeters just don't reproduce them well. There's probably other instruments and frequencies that they don't do well, but what they do has a most pleasant sound. The bass is excellent.
I probably would never have noticed until I hooked up a third pair of speakers, Boston Acoustics A150's, to the Sansui.
Click to expand...
That's why E-waving them is somewhat popular. IMHO the Advent woofer has stood the test of time well, the tweeter not so much. But Henry Kloss had to come up with a tweeter able to reach down to where he wanted to cross the woofer and there wasn't much available with those capabilities in that era. That tweeter was given a difficult job and, for its time, did a decent job. The fried egg tweeters fall off drastically past 13,000Hz and since cymbals are so dependent on harmonics it isn't too surprising the Advents fell short of the Boston Acoustics here. Of course there's the possibility the tweeters are damaged, but with two sets of stacked Advents I'm pretty sure you would have noticed inconsistencies in the tweeters.
 
Be really careful if you are stacking mixed pairs of OLA’s and NLA’s.

Even though the NLA’s are officially rated at 8 ohms there are some who say that their true rating is much closer to 6 ohms, or lower, and that they should have been rated as a 4 ohm speaker. If you are running the speakers in parallel off your amp, which is the way “stacked Advents” are classically set-up, your amplifier could be driving a load well below 4 ohms at times.

Make sure that your amp is capable of driving an impedance load that low. Stacked Advents using a set of NLA’s in the mix can put a great deal of stress an amp.
 
nnicola said:
Be really careful if you are stacking mixed pairs of OLA’s and NLA’s.

Even though the NLA’s are officially rated at 8 ohms there are some who say that their true rating is much closer to 6 ohms, or lower, and that they should have been rated as a 4 ohm speaker. If you are running the speakers in parallel off your amp, which is the way “stacked Advents” are classically set-up, your amplifier could be driving a load well below 4 ohms at times.

Make sure that your amp is capable of driving an impedance load that low. Stacked Advents using a set of NLA’s in the mix can put a great deal of stress an amp.
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Good information! Thanks!! I was not aware of this. Do you know of any documentation to back this up?
I’m currently running the stack of OLA’s with the NLA’s on a Sansui 990. I haven’t noticed any issues except a bit more heat generated on the back heat sink. I have not really cranked them up at all yet. I was planning on trying them out on one of my Project/One Mark 1500’s, but I will investigate this further before I do that.
 
Devileyes said:
Good information! Thanks!! I was not aware of this. Do you know of any documentation to back this up?
I’m currently running the stack of OLA’s with the NLA’s on a Sansui 990. I haven’t noticed any issues except a bit more heat generated on the back heat sink. I have not really cranked them up at all yet. I was planning on trying them out on one of my Project/One Mark 1500’s, but I will investigate this further before I do that.
Click to expand...

I was doing the same exact thing as you, stacking OLA’s and NLA’s, until reading a thread about it on the “Classic Speaker Pages” site. The only documentation I have to back this up is reading a thread written by a few contributors to the site about Advent speaker impedance. The folks who contributed to the discussion on the site are fairly respected for their knowledge of Advent equipment. So, nothing in the way of hard documentation, but the concerns of knowledgeable people. For my part, I’ve read the contributions to discussions from these folks. I’ve gotten some excellent advice concerning speaker projects that I was working on, so I’ve come to respect their knowledge of Advent, AR, and KLH speakers. At the very least, I take their advice seriously.

The amp I was using at the time, an HK3490 receiver, was billed as a “high current” amp capable of handling very low impedance loads, but I stopped stacking right after reading the thread. The problem is that from what I know, there isn’t much warning when an amp gets damaged by an extreme low impedance load other than heat damage. It’s not like you can hear the amp when it starts to clip, and then back off. You’ve already noticed the increased heat coming from your amp, so please tread lightly and be careful pushing the envelope much further.

Supposedly, it’s a bit less dangerous to stack 2 sets of OLA’s. Their nominal impedance is closer to 8 ohms. But the NLA’s, while rated at 8 ohms, probably should have had a rating of 4 ohms due to their propensity to drop down to 4 ohms, or even lower under certain conditions. Recall that “The Smaller Advent”, the similar speaker produced by Advent right after the OLA and before the NLA, was rated at 4 ohms. You still need to be careful stacking OLA’s, but throwing a NLA into the mix is much, much dicier.
 
Devileyes said:
Good information! Thanks!! I was not aware of this. Do you know of any documentation to back this up?
I’m currently running the stack of OLA’s with the NLA’s on a Sansui 990. I haven’t noticed any issues except a bit more heat generated on the back heat sink. I have not really cranked them up at all yet. I was planning on trying them out on one of my Project/One Mark 1500’s, but I will investigate this further before I do that.
Click to expand...
If both receivers have a 'pre out' you might consider using both through a preamp so that each pair of speakers is run by different amps.
 
I used to have double Advents back in the day. Big soundstage.
(Btw, the top Advent should be upside down so both tweeters are next to each other, to replicate the M-T-M driver configuration)
 
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