Buying old speakers

[amolwankhede]

Hello All,

Need your expert opinion. There are some used B&W bookshelf speakers I came across that I am thinking of buying.

However, they are 12 year old. Should I buy them? they sound good but is there any life for speakers?

thanks

 

[TLS Guy]

Hello All,

Need your expert opinion. There are some used B&W bookshelf speakers I came across that I am thinking of buying.

However, they are 12 year old. Should I buy them? they sound good but is there any life for speakers?

thanks

It depends on the speakers. What are they? Good well built speakers should last a very long time.

 

[ohskigod]

should be fine, some will say that age can mess with the crossover a bit, and you want to be wary of foam surrounds (they degrade after about 10-15 years, some worse than others.


saying that, most of my speakers (except the Polk LSi's in my theater) are pretty old.

early 90's ish Carver Platinum Amazings
1979 ish Teledyne (accoustic Research) AR9's
Rogers LS-6

previous used speaks

bozak Symphony(60's?)
late 80's ish Vandersteen 2B (awesome speaker!!! miss them dearly)
so so many more

incidentally, the Cavers and AR9's had foam surrounds and had to be dealt with over the years, the Rogers and Vandy had a rubber surround, and will probably last forever.

used speakers are a great way to get great sound on a budget. doing research on the via the internet to get some insight is easy as well.

 

[tcarcio]

I have a set of B+W 801's from 1980 and they still sound fantastic. If the speakers were well taken care of they should be fine. You said they sounded good so that is the main thing.

 

[Exit]

Seems to me a quality brand speaker will last about 20 years if not abused. My EPI 100s lasted about 20 years before the surrounds rotted out. My Cambridge Soundworks Ensamble speakers are over 20 years old and still sound fine. You can also get the surrounds repaired if you want to keep the speakers longer, or you can get a kit and fix them yourself. My brother did that for a pair of Boston Acoustics.

 

[AJinFLA]

It really comes down to price vs value. Specifically, what speaker...at what price?

 

[amolwankhede]

ok

thanks for all information

They are B&W DM601.

What do you think?

 

[AzN_plyR]

Ahhhh I owned a pair of the 601 S2's. Excellent sound. It depends on how much you get them for though, I probably would not pay more than $250 for a pair.

 

[riker1384]

I just got some DM601, I think S3 but maybe S2, with a Yamaha CD changer and receiver for only $40 from some college girl who got them as a gift and uses her computer now instead. I haven't really tried them yet; I hooked one up in mono and it sound pretty good.

 

[Ron Temple]

I doubt if I'll ever buy a new speaker again. There's too much value in buying well made speakers at a fraction of their original cost, let alone what they would sell for today. If you're careful and know what you're getting of course.

 

[lsiberian]

B&W makes great speakers. I don't think you'd go wrong with a pair of them.

 

[Pyrrho]

Hello All,

Need your expert opinion. There are some used B&W bookshelf speakers I came across that I am thinking of buying.

However, they are 12 year old. Should I buy them? they sound good but is there any life for speakers?

thanks

Generally, there are two things to look out for with old speakers. Foam surrounds and capacitors. As has already been stated, foam surrounds (typically only used on woofers, but sometimes on midranges and even occasionally on tweeters) tend to deteriorate with age, and fall apart. There are some relatively new ones that are supposedly specially treated to last indefinitely, but only time will tell whether that is true or not. With capacitors, if they go very bad, they often can cause the tweeter (or midrange or whatever) to have diminished (or no) volume, making some people mistakenly suppose that the tweeter is bad when it is really just a cheap capacitor that has opened the circuit causing the tweeter to get no signal. If the speakers do not have foam surrounds, and if they sound good, then I would have no problems buying old speakers (and if they have foam surrounds, look into what is involved in replacing the surrounds before you buy, and decide about speakers with foam surrounds based upon what you discover the cost and trouble will be and whether that is okay with you).

With some unusual speakers, there can be other issues, such as old Magnepan speakers having the wires becoming unattached to the speaker membrane, but that is not relevant to your particular question.

A well-made speaker can last longer than you can, if it is not abused.