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My Used Speaker Buying Experience


Peter P.

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Caveat Emptor, my friends.

 

I'm getting together the parts for a stereo system for our shop where I work. Fact is, I'm a road tech so I'll get little chance to use it but I think it will be a great improvement over the bluetooth job box radios our shop personnel currently use.

 

So I'm hunting for speakers on craigslist. I see a great ad from a guy with a huge selection of bookshelf and floorstanding speakers.

 

We meet and he's the nicest person; we chatted for over an hour. I picked up a pair of Avid 100 speakers- 8" woofer, 3" tweeter, with a selector switch for tweeter level. Simulated woodgrain vinyl cabinets are beat as are the grills, but they're not for show and they'll be up and out of the way once installed. I remember the brand back in the '70s when I bought my first stereo.

 

Seller even pointed out in advance one of the tweeter cones had a good 2" tear in one of the 3" tweeters.

 

$60 for the pair; I can't go wrong and they demo just fine. I take them home and remove the damaged tweeter; I'm gonna ******* the tear with silicone caulk, hopefully from the rear.

 

Removing the tweeter one of the spade connectors broke but that's no big deal to replace. But looking inside, I start to see "the rest of the story"-the tweeter is not original and there's A TON of fiberglass in the cabinet for fill. I mean there's no airspace for the fiberglass to do its job. So I decide I'm gonna remove it and replace it with the proper volume of polyfill. I remove the woofer to pull out the poly fill and I see the connections to the woofer are not OEM, AND the woofer is a Realistic model, not OEM. Can't wait to see what's inside the other Avid!

 

By the way; while this speaker was well reviewed in its day, the only crossover component was a single capacitor to the tweeter-talk about high tech!

 

Hey; for the price they're worth it and the speakers do sound good. I'm not upset at all. I also picked up from the seller an 80W/ch Yamaha R-V98 receiver, 100ft. new spool of 16ga. wire, a new bluetooth adapter, and 300-75 ohm balun, all for a paltry $200 as I expected to pay $400-500 for a system.

 

I'm not disappointed at all, and I didn't feel the seller was being deceptive-he wasn't a detail oriented audiophile who might likely disclose all the speaker's faults, but it makes me think sometimes we as buyers have to pay more attention to what we're buying.

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^I'm the same, unless I really want something I never pay full price, I always buy stuff used, open box, clearance or on sale. The only thing I paid full price for was my Audioengine subwoofer which i've never seen go on sale

Those speakers sound like throw aways to me so it sounds like the seller was the winner in that deal, even if they were in mint condition i'm not sure they'd be worth $60 but if you're happy with them then I guess that's the important thing

I think i've had less issues buying used than new. I recently picked up a pair of Castle Knight's for $80/pair CAN from a thrift store, they're in mint condition and they retailed for $500/pair so I think I got a good deal. I also recently picked up a Martin Logan Dynamo 500 sub, also in mint condition for $50 which retailed for $550 new

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Update: I replaced all the internal wiring and used the proper sized spade connectors. I replaced the tweeters with factory-style replacements. And I learned on line that all that fiberglass insulation inside WAS original and the correct amount. But since I had already removed it, thrown it away, and replaced it with 1/2 polyfill, I bought more polyfill. Last, I replaced the torn and beat grill cloths.

 

Interesting thing: They do sound great at home; solid low end, decent vocals and the highs are present. But installing them off-axis, high on shelves in such a large install bay really reduced the quality of the sound. Edit-after having a chance to listen to them in their permanent location as I pass through the shop, I'll say they sound a lot better than my initial impression, and tons better than the job box radio they were using. There's more of a fullness to the sound, clear vocals, and no boomy bass. With the speakers evenly spaced along the wall, the sound, there's no need to turn up the volume to hear music at the far end of the bay. Consequently, they don't play it as loud as if it were just a single speaker.

 

It was a fun little project and the speakers were definitely worth the money and effort. I can't wait to have a chance to play the system for myself!

 

 

Speakers - 1.jpeg

Speakers - 2.jpeg

Speakers - 3.jpeg

Speakers - 4.jpeg

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5 hours ago, Peter P. said:

Update: I replaced all the internal wiring and used the proper sized spade connectors. I replaced the tweeters with factory-style replacements. And I learned on line that all that fiberglass insulation inside WAS original and the correct amount. But since I had already removed it, thrown it away, and replaced it with 1/2 polyfill, I bought more polyfill. Last, I replaced the torn and beat grill cloths.

 

Interesting thing: They do sound great at home; solid low end, decent vocals and the highs are present. But installing them off-axis, high on shelves in such a large install bay really reduced the quality of the sound.

 

It was a fun little project and the speakers were definitely worth the money and effort.

 

 

Speakers - 1.jpeg

Speakers - 2.jpeg

Speakers - 3.jpeg

Speakers - 4.jpeg

 

That space is huge for those speakers, I think. Plus there is no floor, ceiling or corner, which usually amplifies the low frequencies. You should add a subwoofer to this system. Just my 2 cents.... 

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2 hours ago, OO1 said:

Looks good , but it aint gonna piss of the neighbours unless you use klipsch speakers 

I actually thought of that! I considered swapping the Avid's with my kg 2.2's only because the 2.2's were lighter and I was concerned about the shelf support. The Avids weigh 24lbs. and the 2.2's are 4 lbs. lighter. But 4 toggle bolts through the drywall seem pretty sturdy. Surprisingly, the 2.2's have a wider bandwidth and greater efficiency than the Avid's, a good reason for me to NOT share them at work!

 

Now I have to wait and see if the crew in the install bay piss off the office workers with loud tunes anyway; they were doing a pretty good job of it using their boom boxes!

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