Quatre Speakers

[atrac]

Picked these puppies up today from the local Thrift for $11. These Quatre Speakers are HEAVY -- at least 30 lbs each (seriously). Very solid build quality. The 8" drivers are going to need refoaming. Interesting ported design.

There is some kind of rubbery/glue substance all over the face, covering the edges of the drivers. I have already started carefully removing it from one of the 8" to make sure I can get the thing out to refoam it! Is that substance for sound dampening?

I've hooked them up and played them quite softly to make sure all of the drivers produce sound -- luckily they do.

I've found very little info on these. I believe they are 4000's but the label on the back does not confirm that.

When I first saw them I thought they were RSL Speakers (also from the glorious area of SoCal!).

Does anyone have any experience with these? Thanks!

 

[mikeybc]

Cool...and mirror imaged too

 

[tubed]

Very nice.
Quatre was one of the many So Cal start-ups that produced a fine product then seemed to disappear. The speaker you have were TOTL and were very good sounding. Quatre operated a (very)small shop in Santa Monica and was going up against the likes of Pacific Stereo and Rogersound Labs.
The pair I heard was sold to a friend in 1980 and packaged with a Nad reciever and like I said, sounded very good for the time. the word audiophile comes to mind so I thought the Quatre designers knew a bit about making speakers. Refoam and Enjoy!

 

[stickman]

Quatre was a very popular boutique brand here in Los Angeles back in the mid to late 1970's. They were mostly known for their "Gain Cell" amplifiers but the speakers were highly regarded as well. I went to an Audio Fest at the Hollywood Paladium in the late 70's and many of the dealer exhibits featured the Quatre products at that time. After that the brand name just sort of faded away, just like the G.A.S. Ampzilla products.

The cabinet face doping must have been to damp resonances. They should have stuck foam to it to damp diffraction effects as well! If I stumbled across a pair for cheapsies, I'd grab them too just for old times sake.

 

[atrac]

Got the replacement foam for these last night so went immediately to work on them. After pulling away the black rubbery material, I discovered that the drivers were apparently glued to the cabinets -- no screws to be found. I did not want to destroy the cabinets so I went ahead and did the refoam with them installed. Not that difficult since the original foam was attached the the top of the cone. If it had been glued to the bottom of the cone, it would not have worked (unless I decided to go against spec).

At any rate -- these sound amazing and was quite a find. I definitely recommend them to anyone who may come across these!

 

[webbb]

Yes, a very good speaker that just faded away. I helped a friend buy a pair, don't know what might have become of them in the last 30 years.... Accurate Audio was where we got them, in Santa Monica.

 

[hifitommy]

the designer was Guy Hickey who lived in the Van Nuys area. the speakers were a computer-aided design and were very good in sound. he had a shop on Van Nuys Blvd close to the 101 Fwy where he demoed them and one of the speakers in the display was the Dynaco A35, larger than the A25s I owned with a smaller diameter tweeter. the low end of Dynacos was very tight and detailed. Hickey refused to demo the A35s for me for some unknown reason.

another shop he opened a few years later on Roscoe Blvd in Canoga Park where one of my memories is that of seeing a Mayware Unipivot tonearm on the turntable. the sound was always good. somewhere along the line, a friend of mine acquired a Quatre BOD-1 preamp which sounded VERY good, so good that I bought it from him so he could buy a GAS Thoebe/Ampzilla combo. the Quatre failed decades later and I had to move on, which I didn't want to do.

i wish I could remember what the Quatre loudspeakers sounded like.