Speakers made from 1984-1992

[brian95240]

My dad read to me (over the phone) that the best speakers were built between 1984 and 1992. He also mentioned that before Henry Klaus passed away, he built a line of Cambridge speakers that can now be found for around $200. Audiophiles had no complaints about it either. Besides these great speakers (which anyone on a budget could afford) which exceptional speakers (during this time era) would any of you recommend to a novice like me?

I have a Harmon/Kardon CDR 20 dual-disk-cd burner and 2 Roland DS-50 reference monitors so far. However, I do plan on solely utilizing a vintage pair of speakers instead. I also plan to get a power amp and to bypass the internal DACs so I can use an external digital processor. Perhaps, A standalone cd player will come into play along with a triple-headed tape deck. All this will be done one step at a time though. I had previously put all my efforts into my music studio and now, I want to enjoy my creations on an exceptional set-up; while being somewhat thrifty yet discerning. Any set-up advice is welcome.

p.s. Sorry that I made reference to this thread in another thread. It makes me sound redundant.

 

[CraigV]

The main thing you need to be concerned about in older speakers is the condition of the drivers - dry rot of foam surrounds, deteriorating of cones & domes and such. Dahlquist, DCM, Design Acoustics, Quad, B&O and many other good brands.

I’m not too sure of the assertion that good speakers only come from that era. There are plenty of worthy speakers which are newer, and still being produced today. Paradigm, B&W, KEF, Tannoy, Def Tech…the list goes on and on.

 

[DD66000]

That's quite subjective to call speakers from a given period of time as the best.
I can give you many examples of very fine speakers starting from the '60 to now.

Two things to consider when using older speakers, and I do, is the condition of the transducers and the condition of the crossovers. Many older woofers used foam surrounds and will generally only have a life span of 20 years. And/or having the woffers completely reconed, if possible.

Likewise capacitors in the crossovers need to be replaced, either because they're leaking, or they were of a low quality, compared to caps used these days. The caps of choice today for crossovers is polypropylene.

One can install small bypass polypropylene caps to existing caps and thus provide a more dynamic sound. But I've found it much better to just build new crossovers using all polypropylene caps. And replacing all iron core coils with air core coils.

And that's not even getting into newer crossover designs that didn't exist 20, 30, 40 years ago, such as Charge-Coupled Networks (JBL TM) that change a speaker system from operating in class AB mode to class A mode, much like an amp that has a class A section.