They are NEAR Soundmast speakers. They originally had a sock for a grill like the Definitive Tech speakers or Vandersteens. They are worth about a hundred bucks and honestly were never that great. Every pair we ever sold a zillion years ago had issues with the surrounds coming detached from the metal cones. They have a really laid back sound…almost have you questioning if the tweeter is even functioning on some music. They used to make really funky looking green outdoor speakers with aluminum drivers that mysteriously functioned without spiders on the woofer cones. They sounded pretty nice if I recall, despite the odd looks and unconventional design. Looks like they might be owned by Bogen now from a quick Google search.
NEAR Speakers Indentification
Hello all,
I recently came across a pair of NEAR (New England Audio Resource) speakers for about 15 bucks…they’re about four feet tall, have three drivers (two 5.25inch woofers and a NEAR inverted tweeter on each speaker) and weigh close to about 50 lbs each. One of the woofers has a tear, but as of right now doesn’t affect sound quality thankfully. But wanting to restore these speakers to their former glory, I am on the hunt for a new driver, but realized that I have no clue what model speaker I own. There is a listing on Reverb from a few months back listing them as “SoundMast” speakers, but I cannot find any evidence of them existing other than that listing. does anyone here have any clue what model these are? At this time I have no plans to sell, as they’re a unique specimen, and I’m more interested in restoring them to the best of my ability.
thanks in advance!
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@10229 Thank you for the insight! It's actually interesting that you comment on the laid back sound, they sound very forward to my ears...though it could be recency bias as they're hooked up to the same system as my Thiel CS2, which have a much more refined sound and present fairly "laid back" to my ears. As for the woofer itself, it doesn't appear to be the MLS variety. NEAR still exists via Bogen's website, and they are producing a form of outdoor speaker with the MLS woofer inside. I read somewhere that NEAR bought Bozak (could be wrong on that) and that a lot of their engineering work was towards improving on the design of Bozak drivers. I actually pulled one of the woofers out to inspect it - it's just a big, bulbous backed driver that weighs a ton in my hand. I know very little of Bozak's driver design, but I have reason to believe that the driver could be Bozak (or based off of Bozak) as opposed to NEAR's MLS design. Whatever the case, the damaged driver does still play at the moment. I have no plans to sell them but would love to clean them up a bit, maybe craft a replacement sock, and then hold onto them as an oddity in my collection. |
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