901 series 2 speakers

I had a pair of AR2ax as my first speakers and they were among the early, great speakers. but in grad school was able to buy the 901I II's.  No comparison for party sound.  The 901s filled the room in a stone house with 2 1/2 ft thick stone walls and in apartments my wife and I lived in.
No accurate soundstage but Great Wall of music sound from anywhere in the room.  Seems to me they cost me $1100.  Used today for $3 - $4 hundred they'll be hard to beat.  Recommended  100 wpc but I never cranked close to that, even in the stone house.
watch out not only for the surrounds but make sure you get the appropriate equalizer.  Bouncing 8 speakers off the back walls required a boost in treble.  Anyone who says no base can't be real, though.  There is even a button on the equalizer to filter out the lowest frequency signals.  Bars and small outdoor venues would make maximum use of their 275 watt power handling turning them around to blast the back 8 speakers directly out.
if you go for them, check the sound with the equalizers.  Just like my B&O 8002 needed a rebuild because of dried out caps, the Bose equalizer needed recapping because of a serious hum it developed. I bought a used equalizer then went to the other extreme with a set of Thiel 2.4 with the Thiel SS1 sub for pure accuracy.  There's no comparison but the Thiel combined for well over $3k used v $300?  Buy the Bose if that's your budget.

I had them.... even heard them on tubes (MC 275)...

One major hurdle ... the equalizer is the destroyer of the sound.  If I were to have Bose 901's today?   I would get a Barcus Berry Sonic Maximizer and chuck the Bose EQ box. I am no fan of the 901 concept today.  But, if you have the right room and good rear walls for it?   The BBE would be a modest investment and should make the speakers sound much better. 

Since you are retired and wanting to keep you 901 Series II, I would suggest recapping your equalizer if you haven't done so already.  Also, I have found my Series II to work better with an older receiver vs modern separates.  And since you have owned them for over 40 years, you probably know that they should be placed according to the owner's manual, I.e. Best on the tulip stands, so many inches from side and rear walks, and not to place any objects in between.  I did all that and the bass was incredible.  I was hearing deep rumble on tracks that I never heard on another system.  I did miss the highs of modern silk dome tweeters.  Good luck.

hiici,
You are entitled to your opinion of Bose 901's, but realize that there are also many people who feel the same way about your Watt /Puppy 8's. Just a matter of perspective.

Lynn...*applause*  Well said, sir. *S*

When it was just our ears, and those of the people we read and trusted, it was a simpler time and the choices seemed more 'black & white'.  As the technology advanced and the means of measuring what was occurring, it all became shades of gray...or grey, if one prefers..

Bose is still the leader of making small 'act large', with their studies on the how and why a enclosure can accentuate the response of a driver.  It can be regarded as art and artifice, but they've certainly remained a Name in things audio...

Audiophile.  A description that can depend on POV and expectations, IMHO.  One persons' jewel is anothers' costume jewelry....

I gave up on chasing zeros to the right of the decimal point.  If I like the sounds I hear, I will call it Good and call it a day.  Others can cheer or jeer as desired; like me, HO....;)

g_nakamoto,

I owned a pair of 901V's.  I liked them, a lot.  They needed power which I had.  Phase Linear 400 was good, the McIntosh MC2300 was better.  They were the only pair of speakers that I had ever owned that could take everything the Mac good give.  (rated at 300wpc, output was a steady 475 when tested into 8ohms).

I used the Phase Linear parabolic equalizer in conjunction with the 901's as was happy with them.  When I began experimenting with systems and got into my Class A phase of life (Levinson ML2's, Krell KSA 50), I needed to change speakers as these wonderful Class A amps sounded terrible through the 901's.

When I did change speakers, I missed the sound of the 901's and the tremendous bass output. (solid, not thumpy)

If you like your 901's, then maybe use the tone control on your preamp to add some sparkle or like me add an equalizer and add a little in the treble area. 

I am curious though, if you think that your Mac amp sounds better than your Phase Linear 400 with the Bose?  My Mac had more power, but
it certainly didn't sound better with the Bose, just the opposite.  The Phase sounded better to me at lower volume listening  using the Bose than the Mac did.

Enjoy, they are classics and can be a blast depending on what you listen too.

Norman

I never liked them. They have horrible lower bass and no high end. Consider this: New replacement drivers are $6.00 each. You have 18. That is $98 worth of drivers. The good thing is that they make great PA speakers. Bar Bands used the carpet covered 802s, which used the same drivers. On midrange only music, such as Bose dealers used to demonstrate them 40 years ago, they really put out a lot of sound. If you want to impress someone, play conga and other drum music. In a comparison I saw in Jacksonville back then, 901's were compared to B&W DM14's, another speaker with sonic issues due to not having a midrange. The Bose were blown away, even on bongos and congas. I use my old DM14's on my TV. I could live with these speakers only.  I used stacked pairs, then electrostatics with them. If you want to test the actual theory of the 901 design, take any speaker and turn it at a 45 degree angle facing the wall behind them. BTW, I had a Phase Linear 400 for years. This amp deserves a good preamp and speakers. 

Hi

Back in early 1960's I studied circuit theory under Dr Amar Bose, who built the current BOSE Corp.  He was very bright, energetic, knew his stuff, and was a great teacher.

But he's probably even a better businessman that understood the concept of "face validity" for marketing products to a mass, non-technical market. Under this concept, your product must uniquely satisfy a common sense premise & promise (a unique selling proposition) without having to be rigorously true technically. It must also be reliable, attractive, and perform at least as good as the average product. Thus Gillette's Trac II razor offered a second parallel blade to cut the hair a second time before it pulls back into the skin follicle, since the cutting friction of the leading blade pulled the hair up. If 2 blades were good, now we have 5!

Bose set up an experiment in Boston's Symphony Hall to measure the directions of the incoming sound to a particular representative seat (I don't remember the row & seat location).
He found that 11% of the sound came directly from the orchestra, and the remainder were reflections from the venue's walls, ceiling, floor, seats, baffling, etc - ambient sound. So he developed the 901 speakers to mimic this finding using 9 identical equalized midrange drivers for reliability & big or efficient sound: one on the front baffle and two arrays of 4 each on 2 angled baffles on the rear recreating Boston's famed ambience. The he could say the sound from his 901's matches the sound you would hear in that venue. Who could argue? Face validity!

But when you set up and played those speakers in your room, the sound would also bounce off you room's walls, ceiling, floor, etc, thereby superimposing your room's unique ambience on top of Symphony Hall's ambience.  For some genres of music this produced geometrical distortion or variance from reality. For full orchestral works such Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, this distortion was not bothersome because lots of other things were going on at louder levels and masking this commingled ambience. However, for purer, simpler works like single vocalists (Joan Baez or Frank Sinatra), it would enlarge and slightly smear their images in the sound field. Moreover, their use of mid-range drivers could not reproduce deep bass or very sharp transients in the upper registers.  But the mid-market didn't care.

I listened to them a few times, but never wanted to own them.  In the end it depends on what you want in recreating the music genres you listen to.

Gratefull_ear

...and all things and comments being said, we've proved once again that it's impossible to be everything to everyone.

6$ per speaker....mmm.....I wonder what a 901'X' would sound like with 'better' drivers, even if your only 'yardstick' was $.  Sure, it'd be more $, but it'd an interesting thing to try...select to correct for the perceived shortfalls.

They really demanded to be in a larger than average room, for sure.  Otherwise it was like having your head IN the enclosure with the drivers...'really big headphones'...*G*

normansizemore, the 901 series 5 didn't need a lot of power. the old one's did. as far as which amp sounded better I don't know. but at least with my McIntosh amp I don't have to worry about "dc current" frying my speakers!!

Heard them briefly in the '70's and was not impressed. I liked their look. Diffuse sound stage and bass not defined or strong. There is a lot of useful analysis of their sonic abilities here.