Speaker Stands

[Kris Cook]

Well, the stereo was kicked out of our small living room a few years ago. I have a decent sound system in the shop, so nothing lost there. We have been using Sonos speakers in several locations in the house mostly for convenience. I have a Sonos Connect connected to an amp in the shop I use for streaming which works great but I really miss sitting down with a book or whatever and just listening to good sounding music.

My wife and I were at an antique store a couple of weeks ago and there sat a pair of immaculate "Advent Smaller Loudspeakers". $45 later they were in the car. The cone surrounds were shot and for less than 30 more dollars I ordered and received replacement surrounds. After replacing the surrounds, I hooked them up to my bigger Yamaha amp which could handle the 4 ohm speakers along with a CD player. In a word - they sound AWESOME.

Then I looked at my old turntable that I bought from my brother 40 years ago and decided I needed to upgrade. I seriously considered buying a new turntable but the same brother who is a pretty serious audiophile talked me into looking at used. So, I bought a mid-70's Dual player off the auction site. It was in excellent shape but needed a few things done to it. I am waiting on one more part to make the tonearm return functional along with a modern stylus for the 45 year-old cartridge which I decided to keep. I will be into this player for less than a third the cost of a good new unit and this one is made in Germany.

I also ordered another smaller Yamaha amp that will handle 4 ohm speakers. The bigger amp will go back in the box until I finish the upstairs in the shop along with my big Klipsch speakers the wife doesn't want in the living room.

Got my albums out of storage and trying to round up the rest of them my two sons have "borrowed". Will give them all a good cleaning and new sleeves.

Ordered a TV lift for the living room so I can put the turntable on the cabinet we are using for a TV stand and the TV will reside behind when not in use. I would rather not have a TV at all but that is a battle not worth fighting, so this is a good compromise.

So, now I need to build some speaker stands...

[Lisa Starr]

Lucky my husband and I are on the same page. No TV in our home, but a big ol' pair of PSB Stratus Golds live in our living room.

[David Publicover]

Hi Kris,
I had a set of Large Advent speakers years ago which I still miss. Like Lisa, I now have a larger pair of PSB (T2) speakers in our living room. No TV.
Congratulations on your new system. I hope you’ll post some photos on your speaker stands. I need to build another set soon and might get inspired!
Cheers,
David

[Maurice Mcmurry]

Kris, that is fun to read about. No TV in our house either (though we sit close and watch shows on the laptop). Our Hi Fi has been sadly lacking for many years. We had a fire where all of the vinyl and the made in Japan components were lost. I am thinking it is time to upgrade. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

493567

[mike stenson]

Nice. I've literally spent the entire day spinning albums on my empire 598. Sadly, I had to give up on the original tone arm, but a jelco did a great job of replacement. The dual should serve well! Make sure and post the stands!

[Jim Becker]

Advents were "the rage" when I was at Penn State back in the late 1970s. Very nice speakers. Sounds like you got a good find with those speakers and yea...you also got a nice shop project to make some stands. :)

[Kev Williams]

I used to be an audiophile-- still have all the stuff, just ain't in the house :(...
Includes a Dual turntable, forget the model but it's nice-- A first-year (1981) Carver C2000 Sonic Holography Autocorrelator Preamplifier, a pair of Carver 'Cube' 500 watt magnetic field power amps, a pair of Dahlquist DQ-10 5-way loudspeakers, which sat on top of a pair of Radio Shack Mach II 15" loudspeakers, plus a pair of used home-made 12" "studio monitor" speakers that were actually pretty good, those were the time-delay speakers, which were driven by a used Yamaha 120 WPC receiver I bought used from someone- Bob Carver's Sonic Holography works so well that when the speakers were set up correctly, when listening to music with your eyes closed, NO ONE could point to where the speakers actually were. Music literally comes from everywhere in the room. Only problem with the setup was it was so efficient at reproducing stunningly distortion-free music very LOUDLY that the turntable cartridge would pick up the vibrations from the speakers, which of course are identical to the vibrations created by the record grooves, but late, which would start up an endless feedback that would just get louder and louder until it would blow speaker and/or amp fuses if I didn't get to the volume knob in time! I think it was 7 years before CD's came out, which thankfully took care of the feedback problem! (But yes, vinyl does actually sound better!)

The whole setup got put in storage 16 years ago when we sold our last house, and has been there ever since.
The reason it never moved back, the wife suffers from chronic migraines...
But I still miss it all-- like the moment Steve Tyler sings "...Janie's got a-uh gun-nnnn...... jah BOOM :D --
that drum smack would literally rattle your pants... and the windows...

[Thomas McCurnin]

Well, the stereo was kicked out of our small living room a few years ago. I have a decent sound system in the shop, so nothing lost there. We have been using Sonos speakers in several locations in the house mostly for convenience. I have a Sonos Connect connected to an amp in the shop I use for streaming which works great but I really miss sitting down with a book or whatever and just listening to good sounding music.

My wife and I were at an antique store a couple of weeks ago and there sat a pair of immaculate "Advent Smaller Loudspeakers". $45 later they were in the car. The cone surrounds were shot and for less than 30 more dollars I ordered and received replacement surrounds. After replacing the surrounds, I hooked them up to my bigger Yamaha amp which could handle the 4 ohm speakers along with a CD player. In a word - they sound AWESOME.

Then I looked at my old turntable that I bought from my brother 40 years ago and decided I needed to upgrade. I seriously considered buying a new turntable but the same brother who is a pretty serious audiophile talked me into looking at used. So, I bought a mid-70's Dual player off the auction site. It was in excellent shape but needed a few things done to it. I am waiting on one more part to make the tonearm return functional along with a modern stylus for the 45 year-old cartridge which I decided to keep. I will be into this player for less than a third the cost of a good new unit and this one is made in Germany.

I also ordered another smaller Yamaha amp that will handle 4 ohm speakers. The bigger amp will go back in the box until I finish the upstairs in the shop along with my big Klipsch speakers the wife doesn't want in the living room.

Got my albums out of storage and trying to round up the rest of them my two sons have "borrowed". Will give them all a good cleaning and new sleeves.

Ordered a TV lift for the living room so I can put the turntable on the cabinet we are using for a TV stand and the TV will reside behind when not in use. I would rather not have a TV at all but that is a battle not worth fighting, so this is a good compromise.

So, now I need to build some speaker stands...

Kris, you and I on are the same wave length. I restored two sets of smaller Advent Speakers and use them with an Adcom power amp, all vintage stuff. The Advents need to be at ear level, so hanging them from the wall or using speaker stands would be a good idea. Alternatively, get some 4-5" speakers, just a single sealed speaker cube, and hang that at ear level and use the Advents for bass and midrange. Usually those tweeters blow before the foam surrounds, so make sure you give those a critical listen.

[Kris Cook]

Kev - that's a bummer you can't enjoy that equipment. Maybe some good quality headphones? Hopefully you will be able to resurrect the system at some point.

[Kris Cook]

Kris, you and I on are the same wave length. I restored two sets of smaller Advent Speakers and use them with an Adcom power amp, all vintage stuff. The Advents need to be at ear level, so hanging them from the wall or using speaker stands would be a good idea. Alternatively, get some 4-5" speakers, just a single sealed speaker cube, and hang that at ear level and use the Advents for bass and midrange. Usually those tweeters blow before the foam surrounds, so make sure you give those a critical listen.

Tweeters are good. The two speakers I bought have the numbers 1 and 4 written on the back. Likely someone's quadrophonic setup, don't know. They sound good in the shop with the new Yamaha S301 amp. Should be plenty of juice for our tiny living room. Don't plan on blasting for the most part. I have a separate system I will install in the "office" above the shop when it is complete. Then the neighbors will probably hate me.

Installed the TV lift yesterday (temporary install) it is awesome and very quiet. Just need to get my stands done for the speakers. Also a couple more pieces of trim in the LR (another not quite finished project) to keep my dear wife on track with the plan...

[Michael Schuch]

I really miss my Magnepan III's and Threshold 400a (my favorite Nelson Pass amp) for music. Home theater is far less demanding in my experience.

[Jim Becker]

which sat on top of a pair of Radio Shack Mach II 15" loudspeakers,


Those speakers were beasts! I sold a lot of them in the 8 years I worked for the company. I never bought them, opting for some towers with passive radiators (Optumus 300 or something like that...they are long gone) but the Machs were "fan favorites" because they sounded decent and looked "yuge" and impressive. :D

[Jack Frederick]

Sadly, I just gave away my big system speakers. I had a surround package from Cambridge Soundworks. the sub-woofer could move the house off the foundation. I have two remaining speakers that will go in the new two car garage shop, The Sonos connect and my amps that drove the big system. The vinyl is long gone and now we are faced with what to do with the CD’s. The 300 disc Sony carousel gave out a couple years ago after yeoman’s service of 20+ yrs and the cd’s went back into the jewel cases. A lot of great music and I just can’t bear to part with them so I guess I’ll give up some shelf space for them in the new place.

[Kris Cook]

Sadly, I just gave away my big system speakers. I had a surround package from Cambridge Soundworks. the sub-woofer could move the house off the foundation. I have two remaining speakers that will go in the new two car garage shop, The Sonos connect and my amps that drove the big system. The vinyl is long gone and now we are faced with what to do with the CD’s. The 300 disc Sony carousel gave out a couple years ago after yeoman’s service of 20+ yrs and the cd’s went back into the jewel cases. A lot of great music and I just can’t bear to part with them so I guess I’ll give up some shelf space for them in the new place.

Jack - I drug out my 6-disc CD player when I was testing the refurbed speakers and was planning to put it in the house with the phono and amp. Then yesterday I realized I don't need the CD player. I posted about this on another thread about shop music but I burned all my CDs to a Sony Walkman NW-A40 which allows one to maintain full audio quality. I used FLAC. There are other formats that can be used as well. It has Bluetooth and a headphone jack. I haven't tried it but I imagine the headphone jack could be split to RCA plugs and input to an amp that way as well. I believe there is a newer version but I bought the A40 based on reviews. These "high res" audio players can run the gamut in cost into the $1,000s I guess for people with better ears than mine. I paid around $150 for this thing and the sound is excellent.

Anyway, I have my CDs put away again but have access to all their content on a gizmo smaller than a cell phone.

[John Ziebron]

You guys are bringing back memories of my audiophile days. I still have my Perpetuum Ebner turntable with the most expensive Stanton cartridge back then buried in my storage room. I don't recall which amp I had but it had vacuum tubes. And my very first woodworking project was building a pair of Voice of the Theater speakers with the Altec Lansing 15 inch woofers and their large horns. They never really sounded that good in my small living room but their full output potential and great sound was realized when I took them to some outdoor parties and in a large hall where I supplied the music for a friend's wedding.

[Kev Williams]

So, speaking of turntables, anyone of you guys remember, or had, an 'Accutrac' turnable? They had (IIRC) a red LED laser that would scan your vinyl for the shiny-spot between songs, so you never had to drop the needle yourself, and you could program it to play only the songs you wanted, in the order you wanted? Since I was always a "2 or 3 song per album" listener, I really wanted to check one out but never got the chance! -And again, when CD's came out, there went my need for an Accutrac! ;)

OR, anyone ever lucky enough to own the King of all Loudspeakers (just my interpretation, lol), the huge Klipsch Cornerhorns? Me & my friends dreamed of those :D

[Derek Meyer]

I have a 5.1 set of Atlantic Technology speakers. They used to be in the living room, but after I got married they got moved to the basement. Our living room TV now has a soundbar with a small subwoofer. We are in process of installing a gas fireplace and new TV above it, and will be upgrading the soundbar to a much better one, but it still is not a dedicated surround system.

I have a pair of Klipsch reference bookshelf speakers that sound great. I'd love to have the big ones!

I once told my wife I was going to set up a dedicated theater room in the basement and put a Gotham sub in there. She asked me what that was. When I told her, she said "Absolutely not! Do you want the neighbors calling the police complaining about noise?" I guess she has a point.