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The "search your area for hidden gems" thread.

T

Thefyn

New Member
Hey guys. Love this forum. I've used it for ages and just dodged a bullet and avoided buying Onkyo s44 speakers (I was about to buy a pair before reading up on quality warnings on here).

I'm obsessed about audio quality and I'm always on the lookout for vintage speakers but I don't have much experience. So I thought we could start a thread to help people like me out.

It's simple: You say your area and what you are looking for (studio monitors, 7.1, general listening, outdoor speakers etc) and the forumites with experience can search craigslist, ebay, letgo, Facebook local garage/barter/marketplace for bargains or quality gear.

For instance I can pick up speakers between west palm beach and treasure coast. (WPB, Stuart, Port St Lucie, Fort Peirce)

So you guys search the usual online sellers and suggest great quality speakers.

I've bought a LOT of supposedly good speakers and they sound like garbage. Eg kenwood LS9070. They retailed for $1000!? but recently for $40 I picked up a pair of Jensen 3080 speakers and they sound fantastic. So I'm wondering what other bargains are around me that I am missing out on.

I have grown out of my Berhinger b3030a studio monitors (don't laugh they are actually pretty good ribbon speakers) but I need more detail. I picked up some paradigm speakers (two bookshelf and a sub) but they need need new foam surrounds.

So what do you think? Good idea for a thread? If it gets big enough we can sticky it. I think it will help a lot of newcomers find high end audio. It's a buyers market right now.

I can edit this post to take out my requirements and just put the rules here. I'm sure you would like to know this lot are searching your area for bargains right? Not just speakers, we can recommend amps too.

This is my first post. I'm a musician and try and recreate famous albums using budget gear. Here are some examples:




So like I said I'm looking for vintage speakers that can double as studio monitors, but I'm also concidering upgrading my 7.1 system. So anything audio/music is on the table if people want to search my area. Cheers!

I think it's a good idea because speakers are usually too big/fragile to ship so it's a localized issue trying to find good ones.
 
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Well there is problems with what your trying to propose and if you read the site rules you'll know why.
There is no buying or selling outside of Barter Town.
 
elitopus said:
Ah another Floridian. Welcome to AK.

All CL, eBay, etc links must be posted in dollars and sense
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Hi. It's not really for people selling though. It's for people telling us the town they are in, and to see if the community can find good gear close to them. There are 100's of speakers for sale in big cities, that's a lot of crappy gear that may look good the the suraface and have high MSRP prices but are more gimmicky than good. Like the kenwood atrocities I listed. Haha. Through a toilet tube bass.
 
hey there I'm just north of you, your in a target rich environment down where your at, keep a eye on sarasota tamp and naples are too. the key is get out there and hunt for em. also learn what the good ones are here, like AR's JBL's ADS's Klipsch's so for what your looking for can come with a price but if your out there thats where to lucky deals are. But god forbid if you have to drop 350 bucks on a ADS 710 or a JBL 4310. as for the other stuff you cant polish a turd and expect diamonds. research the heck out of the speakers and gear and sort out the junk from the high side of decent and go from there. Also the friends you make here Just might have a fricking pile of speakers and if they like you you might get some good gear for a decent price. Sounds like you might like the JBL's from what you like to do. They make some great studio Monitors. and there is a small but loud crowd raving the sonic bliss for ADS. And there are some Great AR's floating around,
 
Finjima said:
hey there I'm just north of you, your in a target rich environment down where your at, keep a eye on sarasota tamp and naples are too. the key is get out there and hunt for em. also learn what the good ones are here, like AR's JBL's ADS's Klipsch's so for what your looking for can come with a price but if your out there thats where to lucky deals are. But god forbid if you have to drop 350 bucks on a ADS 710 or a JBL 4310. as for the other stuff you cant polish a turd and expect diamonds. research the heck out of the speakers and gear and sort out the junk from the high side of decent and go from there. Also the friends you make here Just might have a fricking pile of speakers and if they like you you might get some good gear for a decent price. Sounds like you might like the JBL's from what you like to do. They make some great studio Monitors. and there is a small but loud crowd raving the sonic bliss for ADS. And there are some Great AR's floating around,
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Thanks!

I have noticed a lot of JBL's locally. I'll keep a lookout for the ADS etc.

It is true there is a surprising amount of good stuff around here. Recently I picked up a load of quality speaker wire and sound treatment. Since people retire here a lot of garages get filled to the point where they just want things gone.

My fear is i may get caught up in the " expensive is good" And I am not experienced enough to know the quality expensive gear vs the gimmicks. I know all about guitar speakers, not so much general audio. Plus the audio world went through a lot of gimmicky phases which never sounded good. It only looked cool or saved space. Like sound bars, micro hifi etc.
 
The Years week out the pretenders, I know a lot of what I thought was good speakers when I was younger turned out to be low end junk sold at best buy. I seen people tell just glowing reviews of their speakers and amps based on the past perceptions because of branding, and then there is Sansui, lol
My rule tend to be watch for pre 1980, but there is a lot of good 80's stuff, I'm finding that I'm revising my rules about pre 80 and now lerning how to weed out the stuff from the 80's cause it did start getting thick in some sopts then
 
Hi Fyn, and welcome to AK.

I'm so glad you posted your Beatles recreation video. You did an admirable job, and I can only commend you for the efforts you made to get it right. And then to learn that your father was a member of Badfinger just blew me away. Two groups that had a profound effect on my life, and you are connected to both. Thanks for allowing us a peek into your life.

GeeDeeEmm
 
gdmoore28 said:
Hi Fyn, and welcome to AK.

I'm so glad you posted your Beatles recreation video. You did an admirable job, and I can only commend you for the efforts you made to get it right. And then to learn that your father was a member of Badfinger just blew me away. Two groups that had a profound effect on my life, and you are connected to both. Thanks for allowing us a peek into your life.

GeeDeeEmm
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That's great to hear. That was a labor of love. Proud of the old man :-)

I'm currently trying to recreate Stevie Ray Vaughn. It's mission impossible. Getting close though.
 
This post seems somewhat pretentious, or maybe I am reading it wrong.

It almost feels like if you are not willing to do your own research this is a thread where you can mooch of the knowledge and experience of members here most conveniently.

I could be wrong, and totally off base, but it has that feel.

If you want the gurus here to help you, just ask, but most people start their own thread stating their exact requirements. Things like what gear they will be using, what kinds of music they like, what SPL they are hoping to achieve, etc.

I have seen many individual threads for this purpose, but I feel that most of the work should be shouldered by the person looking for speakers. If you really are lost, inexperienced, or otherwise disadvantaged, we are a very helpful lot, enabling many to acquire vast hoards of good gear. :)
 
Finjima said:
The Years week out the pretenders, I know a lot of what I thought was good speakers when I was younger turned out to be low end junk sold at best buy. I seen people tell just glowing reviews of their speakers and amps based on the past perceptions because of branding, and then there is Sansui, lol
My rule tend to be watch for pre 1980, but there is a lot of good 80's stuff, I'm finding that I'm revising my rules about pre 80 and now lerning how to weed out the stuff from the 80's cause it did start getting thick in some sopts then
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Yep it seems to be the same with guitar gear. Early 80's and previous tends to sound better. I love mid 70's celestion 12 inch guitar speakers. The black backs. That's why I was interested in the Jensen stereo tower speakers. And they worked out great.

A friend of mine told me it's all about the metal etc back then. There was less pot metal in the casting of the rims so they were more rigid/less reactive to heat/corrosion.

The coils were more pure and the general construction dimensions were moretrue/less rub. He even hinted that they used a lot less manmade material like animal based glues/doping etc that are illegal now. So every small link in the chain, the cone material etc resulted in better tonality.

So my guitar 4x12 cab I had designed was based on the old stuff. Marine quality birch cab, sealed/drum like knock, steel handles then loaded with the vintage celestions. I used to use vintage Belden but swapped to evidence audio solid core speaker wire.

So I'm not surprised the audio world was arguably better in that era. It's certainly the case from a guitar standpoint.

I collect guitar speakers. I have an ISO box filled with a dozen different vintage celestions, Jensen, CTS etc speakers.
 
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gdmoore28 said:
You did an admirable job, and I can only commend you for the efforts you made to get it right.
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Yeah good ears, music ability and the knowledge of electronics to make it all happen.
Thefyn said:
That's great to hear. That was a labor of love. Proud of the old man :)
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I'm sure he's as proud of you and what you have become, you have some special talent as well.
 
faber12 said:
This post seems somewhat pretentious, or maybe I am reading it wrong.
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Yep, I think you've misread the post, Faber. What Fyn is proposing is nothing more than members helping members to find the gear they are seeking. The motive is nothing more than that. He's simply proposing that each of us function as watchdogs for those of us who can't be everywhere at once. That would be all of us. It'd be very cool if something like that could be formulated. Post what you are looking for and wait for somebody to stumble across it. Shouldn't be that hard.

GeeDeeEmm
 
Thefyn said:
That's great to hear. That was a labor of love. Proud of the old man :)

I'm currently trying to recreate Stevie Ray Vaughn. It's mission impossible. Getting close though.
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Ooooo, that's a tall order!

I'm in the New York City metro area.
I was like you when I first joined AK. I knew of the good well known brands to keep an eye out for regarding speakers, BUT, there were so many more I had not heard of. I did a lot of reading here. Gaining knowledge from everyone's scores, restorations, re-capping crossovers, sources for parts. There is an overwhelming amount of information here. Then I started looking for speakers first. Looking in S.A., G.W's, garage and tag sales. I live in a fairly affluent area so there's a lot of good gear out there. Mostly its lucky timing in the thrift's, but at yard sales, I always ask about old stereo equipment if I don't see anything out in the yard or garages. I've been pretty lucky, but I attribute it to what I learned here.
When looking at a set of speakers, one of the first things to do is pick them up. They should feel solid and heavy. Cheapo speakers are fairly light, thin walled cabs.
Speaker brands to look for:
There's to many model numbers to list here.
Acoustic Research aka AR
KLH
ADS
JBL
DCM
Advent
Warfedale
Rectilinear
Some early Bose
Allison
Vandersteins
Paradigm
Mission
Design Acoustics
RTR
Cerwin Vega
Klipsch
Ohm
Dalquist
Magneplanners
Infinity

Receivers/amps: Everyone has their favorite brand, but here's some to keep an eye out for. Keep in mind this is vintage1980 or earlier, which was the heyday for the power, features, low distortion wars. Some brands will be pricy, but great deals can be found.
JVC
Pioneer
Kenwood
Marantz
Sansui
Onkyo
Yamaha
Technics
Concept
Realistic
Luxman
McIntosh
Sony
SEA
Toshiba
Proton

Hopefully this list will help out when you find something that looks promising. Also, if you're unsure, google it while you're at the sale. You'll find answers more quickly, than posting in AK.
 
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