Does anyone know about Design Acoustics PS-6a?

Back in the mid eighties, I had a friend who had a pair of Design Acoustic PS 10s with a companion Down firing sub. It was one of the best systems I ever heard. If I could find that combo today I would snap it up. The PS 10s were a smallish bookshelf maybe 8" high by 5" wide with sloped sides to avoid diffraction and had a very open sound. But the sub was the piece d'resistance. Hope this helps.

Billyhung: I don't see any reason why the combo wouldn't work reasonably well, so long as spl and bass requirements aren't a priority. Whether or not you like the sonic results is a matter of personal preference.

Pkaram: Design Acoustics was the first company that i know of to actively promote "space utilization" within a cabinet and take advantage of downloading a woofer. A couple of their models looked to be two-way "bookshelf" sized models but the bass that they produced gave things away. That is, they "snuck" a woofer on the bottom of the cabinet, resulting in both greater extension and output capacity. The first time that i heard one of these models, it was being driven by a little 20 wpc Proton integrated amp. Given the "two way" design ( yes, i too was fooled ) and the "tiny" amount of power available ( another deception with Proton and NAD amps ), the results were quite eye / ear opening. How such a small, simple and inexpensive combo made such nice music was a very pleasant surprise. Sean
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Never heard the PS-6a but .... I picked up a pair of Design Acoustics PS-9 speakers and replaced the tweeters with SEAS. These speakers have the down-firing bass woofer. They have been mated with a Sherwood 7100A receiver from the 70's. Result: wonderful sound with suprisingly decent bass response. I would not hesistate to grab the PS-9 or PS-10 speakers and do the mods.

Many thanks. I have Integra P303 pre-amp and Onkyo M-8000 power amp (50wpc). Do you think they work well with these little speakers? Tung

Design Acoustics was the speaker branch of Audio Technica. These were all sealed designs that made use of mediocre drivers ( like most speakers did back then ). The sum of the parts was much better than what any of the individual parts were worth, showing that the designers had both good ears and talent. For a small system that wasn't expected to shake the earth with high spl's or prodigious bass output, they wouldn't be bad at all. With some simple mods that would cost next to nothing, they could be improved even further.

As a side note, due to being sealed, their bass output isn't going to be nearly as round or "potent" as most current vented designs. If you can live with tight bass that is pretty quick, clean and reasonably accurate down to about 55 - 60 Hz or so rather than desiring a lot of under-damped bloated slop that extends down to 45 Hz or so, these will do you fine. Sean
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I used to sell these about 1992-93ish....they were pretty good speakers. I prefered there larger bothers PS8. Anyway, I think they were around $250-$280 (I'm remembering back a long way). They are light bass, but not to bad. Probably worth $90.

Well, I just looked them up in the Orion Blue Book. Retail $280, Wholesale used shows $43. I doubt you'll find them for that....but that's what the bible says.

hope that helps

Jon