I had my Marantz Universal disc player on the used equipment shelf at Hi-Fi Sound Minneapolis about a year. Scott the owner priced it a $550. I thought this too steep, so I was not surprised it had not sold. So last Friday I went to pick it up to give to member Squishman who wanted a better disc player. The Marantz player was 20 years old and did not play BDs, but all other digital discs.
Anyhow I noted he had for sale an
immaculate pair of Quad 57 ESLs.
These were produced unchanged from 1957 to 1985.
I asked why he did not have then hooked up and on display. He told me he did for a while, but that they sounded better than anything else he had for sale and was loosing other speaker sales. He reported that listeners had a strong preference for the Quad, despite being
compared to speakers costing thousands.
Quad electrostatic speakers have always been a hard sell, due to frontal size and the necessity to place them at a distance from room boundaries to allow space for the rear radiation as they are bi-polar speakers. In addition you have to be careful not to overpower them as the membrane can be ruined by a spark and each speaker requires an AC connection for the polarizing voltage.
However, I found it really interesting speakers were coming up short in terms of SQ, despite the Quads being at least 40 years older and despite being designed 70 years ago.
Small wonders these speakers send shock waves though the audio industry when premiered at the 1957 Audio Fair at Hotel Russel.
It also reinforces my view that a lot, if not most high priced speakers are not worth the money. Good speakers are actually comparatively rare in my experience. That is another reason I design my own.
