ESS speakers "Translinear" Transstatic

I have the only 2 sets of these ESS speakers that I've ever seen like this, there are 4 satellite speaker small bookshelf looking and 1 large bass sub and a satellite power matrix? that says Electrostatic sound systems ... I bought them from the original owner in 1978 and he bought them in 1973 ... While I'm sure there are tons of new stuff to surpass them the sound is really remarkable just a pleasure to listen to ... Anyone else have any experience with these?

I picked up a couple of Translinears several years ago at a Goodwill for fifty bucks, but since I have another high-end system, after listening to them for awhile, I put them into storage. I would like to restore them as a gift for a friend along with a Carver HR-752 and TLM-3600 that also are stored. In case I have to replace the drivers, I need crossover points. Please, help.

Ds1058:

I love this story, especially about the speakers flying off the car roof on the freeway! This speaks to the difference in build quality compared with today's junk, which would have to be swept up instead.

I first ran across the Transtatic and Translinear in 1970 when an Oakland dealer was going out of business. He was selling both at half price, but I could not come up with the asking price then. At the time only the Infinity ServoStatic at about five times the price of the Transtatic, could outperform them among the speakers that I had heard. But the bass of the Transtatic was at the time the best I had heard, nearly causing me to wet myself!

I still remember my one and only audition of the Transtatic l speaker system at a boutique stereo store located in Santa Cruz Ca. in 1972. In their era I think they were the best system by far until the introduction of the Infinity Servostatics which were a whopping 2200 dollars more expensive than the 1200 dollar price of the ESS. My house payment at the time was 145 dollars per month so one can see that these high end speakers of that era were more expensive than 10K speakers today relative to the vanishing value of the dollar.

I've been an ESS fanboy for some 40+ years, still using my amt 1b pyramids I bought from a friend in the late 70s in my main system. He got them from the original owner as trade for some concrete work he'd done, and I paid $350 for them. All I've done since is refoam the woofers twice, and replace the passives once.

What brought me here to this old thread is that I have a chance to purchase a pair of Translinear speakers from an acquantance the next town over. On-line info for these is very lean, and that helps muddy up consideration of their fair market valuation, so I haven't any idea what a fair price would be for the pair.

I heard them yesterday and boy do they sound nice. Huge and heavy, though