My New Large Advents


OH MY GOODNESS!! I bought a pair of re foamed Large Advents on Ebay. Just unpacked them and hooked them up to my reference system (MacMini, Amarra, Rotel DAC, ARC SP17, ARC VS60, Nordost Purple Flair, Shunyata Power) in place of my Golden Ear T2s. I can't believe how good these crazy 37 year old speakers are. And no subwoofer!!! Do they image as well? Not quite, but not bad. The highs seem a little bright in extended mode but not bad in normal. If I had bought these back in 1973 when I bought my first system, I might never have traded for anything else. They are really dynamic. Very efficient. My room is 32'x18' with a 20' cathedral ceiling and these things with 60 watts of tube are rockin like crazy.

So has anyone done a mirror image mod on the tweeters and if so, did it accomplish anything?
dfwlistener
Back in the day I had four of these stacked tweeter to tweeter. If I turned them up too loud they'd knock the needle out of the groove. They'll blow that foam apart if you're not careful.
I know the feeling.. I have 2 pairs, one pair from 1972 and a later pair from 1979, I prefer the later set up with the better woofer mounted mid cabinet and the drivers mounted without the earlier very diffracted front recession. I have done a bunch of mods to improve them and they can be improved quite a bit. There is another thread I wrote all about my mods on. Additional internal crossbracing did quite a bit to the bass as did changing internal dampening materials. New set of Kimber caps in crossover helped the mids bloom a bit more also. Take a 100 watt soldering gun and heat up the resin-glued tweeter metal mesh cover and rip that sucker off.. the tweeter will improve without it.
Those were my first pair of (shall I call them high end?) speakers that got me hooked on this crazy hobby back in the 70's. Hooked them up with some Dynaco gear and an AR turntable, life was good.
I'll never forget that wonderful sound they produced.
Back in the day they were the go-to speaker for rockers.
Still all you really need for that.
The Dynaco A-25 was the preferred box for classical fans .
Those will good ears often used KLH-17, which was the cheapest really good speaker around.
Surprise, but I preferred OHM L or H to all those for all kinds of music. They sounded most like the Advents by design. L for similar performance in a smaller package and H for taking things a bit further. C2 was a bit on the bright side for me. Es were a reasonable approximation for less cost at lower volumes but with less bass.
"A lot of people had a lot of fun with those speakers!"

That is for sure.

Then there was the Bose 301 crowd as well.

THey also had a lot of fun. I was always more an Advent sound person though.

...also loved the old Advent 300 receiver. Nice pre-amp and decent tuner, when they worked.
These were my first "serious" speakers as well. I kept them for 15 years and then my brother used them for years afterwards. They went well with my Yamaha natural sound receiver and dual 510 turntable and Shure M95 ED cartridge. Amazing how I can still roll that system right off like it was still 1973! Those speakers could boom a little bit but I fixed that by putting felt covered concrete bricks underneath them. All in all not bad for a girl!
I have always wondered why the "fried egg" tweeter was not used in other designs. I found it to be effortless and very listenable.
I think you may have lost part of your hearing. I had a pair back in the day. Even then they were mid fi at best
"All in all not bad for a girl" ?
I never was taken in by "The weaker sex" scam.
so what happened to Advent?, are they around these days?, I had a pair of Advents way back in the day too, then I got a pair of Bose 601 series two, The Advents were gone after that, the Bose really did not have much deep bass, but over all, for what they costed back then, they did ok with a Yamaha Natural sound top of the line reciever, the R-100, and Yamaha belt drive turn table with top of the line shure cartridge, I remember listening to Heart back then, Baracuda Rocked on that turn table with this set up very nicely for a cheap system, this was very fun, I was a kid, one of my first systems!, 1980 or around 1982?, long time ago, cheers.
I had the large advents for years. They sounded great. If I still had them I would opt for an amp that has a warmish mid range. As I remember the mids were a bit on the lean side.
Those Advents sure had (have) a following. If I remember correctly, the proper speaker stand for Large Advents would be a pair of milk crates. Spent many hours with them.
I have the pair of Frazier Concertos I bought back in the day, got a few other sets of older speakers including original Wharfedale Diamonds.
Most recently picked up a pair of Mission Cyrus 781s ($79)from the late 80s I believe. These things sound surprisingly good with as little as 12wpc, love them.
I'm a sucker for old speakers.