I was both surprised and pleased to see Bose 901s on your list. They were the first speakers of any kind that I owned and I thought they sounded great! No wonder, as I had them paired with a Pioneer SX-1050 at 120 wpc. The SX-1050 was my first stereo system purchase and I will add that I still own that Pioneer and recently dragged it out of the closet where it had been stored for about 30 years and it sounded so good I had it refurbished and it is now the star player in my TV system stereo.
But there’s a story to my Bose speakers and I hope you will enjoy reading it. It was 1977 and I had just purchased my first stereo gear, the already mentioned Pioneer SX-1050 Stereo Receiver and I needed some speakers. Luckily for me I happened to learn of a group of about 10 people at my company who wanted to make their own Bose 901s. They had engineering blueprints of the speakers and equalizer. One of the ME engineers at the company had taken apart the speakers and the equalizer, drawn up exact specs for both, including a parts list which included names of the companies that Bose used to acquire parts for manufacturing the speakers. I leapt at the chance and my brother and I joined the group. I was the only female.
We borrowed some machinery in the company fab shop where I worked and programmed it to cut the particle board to the exact sizes needed and then to make the many double stepped circular cuts to fit the speakers properly. There were 10 of us making 13 pairs of speakers. That meant we cut 234 holes for speakers! We were chided about the particle board dust that had settled everywhere in spite of our best efforts to clean up after ourselves!
We spent the next weekend gluing our speaker cabinets together and setting the speakers in and wiring them. The following weekend we put the equalizers together. I took two pairs of speakers home with the intention of fitting them with beautiful hardware veneer and selling the second pair, but it never happened. The plain particle speakers graced my living room for more than ten years. I thought they sounded terrific. After all, they were paired with the powerful 120 wpc Pioneer and could handle all the power with ease.
The speakers were finally displaced by my purchase of Quad ESL-63 electrostatic speakers and Quad amp and preamp. The speakers hung out in my garage until about 2000 when I gave them away. The Pioneer went in my closet for about 30 years until I took it out several years ago to use in my TV system. I liked it so much I had it refurbished and it is now running the audio side of my TV system. I wouldn’t dream of giving house room to those Bose speakers again but they did serve me well and I had a terrific time making them.
. If your speaker list weren’t limited to just American made speakers, the Quad speakers would surely make the list of most impactful speakers.
