Persistence sometimes pays off

I thought i would add a note about my good fortune. I recently purchased a pair of L1290 ADS speakers from a seller in Florida.

The L1290s were advertised as NIB by the auction seller which was hard to believe since my bet is these speakers were manufactured in the early 1980s.

I bid and followed the sale til the last day and decided to do my best to win the speakers even though it appeared that there could be no way these speakers were New In Box.

I currently own a pair of L990s which I am the original owner. Like a lot of people my age, I was very cash poor in the early 80s, in the middle of university, with absolutely no money for anything but school. I decided to eat a lot of Top Ramen and took the plunge and purchased the L990s and today, while the L990s are in rough shape, they still sound great.

When i purchased the L990s, my eyes were on the L1290s. At that time I almost purchased the L1090, but purchased the smaller speakers as I didn't want to go hungry for to too long. But my heart was really set on the L1290s, but they were not to be...

So back to the Future, I bid more than I should on the L1290s, $850 for the pair, plus a boat load for shipping (these things are heavy).

The boxes arrived with no visible damage, the boxes are the ADS originals, a very good sign.

I opened the boxes and to my great relief, the speakers are truly in Like New, almost NIB box condition. The only marks of any kind I can see are a few minor scratches on the underside of the speakers from what looks like someone removing the speakers for inspection only.

I connected the speakers to my old Denon 3802 reciever preamped out to my Emotiva XPA2 amp, the right L1290 bass speakers did not work.

I winced and rechecked the biamp switch and to my wife's relief, I found that I hadn't pushed the switch far enough to the right.

Further inspection reveled that one of the biamped speaker terminals red knob is missing, but still works.

Unfortunately one of the tweeters is not working so i am off to the store to replace the fuse. I believe that i need a 3AG 1.6 amp fuse. The good news is that other than that, everything looks like I picked up the speakers from a HIFI shop.

I have often boasted about my original ADS speakers, saying that I would need to spend over $2500 to $3000 in current speaker technology to replace the L990.

I am not a HIFI expert by any stretch of the imagination, but these L1290s sound as good as the B&W 804S which are about $4000 a pair even with one tweeter not functioning.

In the end, it appears that I am a very fortunate in finally getting what I really wanted, just 25 year later.