Found a pair of New Large Advents*

I found a pair of Advent A3 today for $25. But the foam around the woofers were rotted away, so I didn't buy them. Otherwise they appear to be in okay shape. Are these speakers any good? I already have a pair of AR4x which I really enjoy. So I'm not sure if these old speakers are worth my investment in purchasing and repairing if they not going to sound as good as my AR's.

- Sushimaster

 

Oh well, I just went back and bought them. They were designed by Henry Kloss of AR, no?

-Sushimaster

 

Probably. I had a pair of Large Advents BITD, and the A3s look similar.

 

I'm sure any questions about Advent will be found here at this excellent site:

AR and its New England Progeny > Advent

Though unfortunately, any speaker sold after Kloss left Advent, IIRC around 1977, doesn't get much discussion, I think because some members don't believe Advents designed after that time are "real" Advents. Personally I think Jensen, their eventual owners, did a good job carrying on his philosophy: low price for what you got; a very smooth yet still quite detailed sonic personality; furniture-like styling that was nice to look at but especially good for the audio enthusiast, made them an easier sell as far as their S.O. was concerned ; but especially, their continued use of the acoustic-suspension system, all the way up to their (spiritual) demise in 1995 when Recoton bought them and IMO trashed their product line , when pretty much no one else used that woofer configuration despite its IMO cleaner/richer quality compared to a bass-reflex.

And the final blow to Advent's reputation among some fans was probably when they introduced their first 3-way model, the Advent 6003. Maybe there was market pressure involved, but there is also the fact that with a 2-way design there is only so much power its tweeter can deal with before you have to compromise the system's midrange output by raising its crossover point. So I believe Advent's engineers thought it was time to move forward for the people with larger listening rooms and design a three-way but using a decidedly Advent way of thinking. That came in the form of its special "donut" midrange made of polypropylene. Its shape was basically identical to Kloss' design he used for the first Large Advent's tweeter, many times referred to as the "fried egg" tweeter. It combined the lower-crossover point of a cone driver with (much) of the wide dispersion of a dome tweeter. This model was later renamed the Maestro when its enclosure was redesigned to resemble the Baby Advent, the first series of which I owned myself for 14 years.

 

Tooks some pics.










- Sushimaster

 

Taurus, Thanks for the info/link. I'm going to check them out.

I need to refoam these babies....and probably replace the caps, resisters in the crossover, and then give them a listen.

Interesting thing I noticed is that these speakers are stuffed with foam instead of fiber glass. There are printed dates on the magnets of the speakers that read Dec 15, 1977.


- Sushimaster

 

You will not be disappointed!!! A very good sounding speaker. I have a pair and listening to Kingfish on them now. Do replace the caps along with surrounds, after a short break in period, you will be very pleased with what they can do.
Also check out AudioKarma.org for more information.

 

I have a pair of Advent 5002 I paid $399 for them around 1984. That was some of the best money I ever spent, and I was poor, married with 2 children, and made $5.25/hour. My daughter uses them today with her Fisher tube amp. My pair has the parabolic dome tweeters that came later than these pictured here. I have heard very good things about the earlier tweeters though. The bass response earns these speakers their fame. Within modest listening volumes these speakers are wonderful. The bass response is deep and the woofers will distort under heavy bass loads at very high volumes. If it weren't for my frequent need for very high volumes, I'd have never bought my Klipsch Forte II and powered SW10 subwoofer. I'd be perfectly served with the Advent 5002. I once considered running multiple pairs of Advents to see where that would take me. But where would I put the couch?

I had to have one woofer reconed in the 80's when my transistor amp (capacitorless amp) shorted an output chip sending DC to the voicecoil. I can still remember seeing the smoke roll out of the grill. What a bad day. That's when I investigated tube amps with transformers and never went back.

Regarding the various opinions of people in the old Advent camp, I remember my horror when Jensen purchased Advent, and it was confirmed the day they rolled out a 3-way speaker. Today I still could never buy any newer Advents. Some wounds never heal.

 

So after some research, I discovered that what I have are referred to as "New Large Advents". Two way, Acoustic Suspension speakers with a 10" woofer and tweeters that resemble the original Advent's "fried egg tweeter".

So last night I refoamed them. This morning I give them a initial listen & took some pics.

Overall, the sound is very, very clean and smooth. The highs are clear, extended. The bass is tight and goes much lower than my AR4x, and with more authority. Right now it looks like they are going to permanently replace the AR4x in my bedroom!

I still probably need to replace the caps because one of the speaker sounds muted when set to normal high frequency control. So I have them both set to extended high frequency control, which is a tad bright for me.

If you've never had these and stumble across these New Large Advents, or even Original Large Advents for cheap, I think it's safe to say definately grab them!






- Sushimaster

 

Can mods please change the title of this thread to: "Found a pair of New Large Advents" ? Thanks.

- Sushimaster

 

Mine would not have been comfortable on stands like those, though.

 

The first HI FI stereo speakers I bought in 1969 were the AR4AXs driven by a Dynaco Stereo 80. I later bought a set of Baby Advents, but trying to drive both pairs fried my Dynaco. I had it repaired and sold the ARs, then later gave the Baby Advents and Dynaco to my sister when I bought a Yamaha 1020 receiver and pair of original Large Advents in 1978. I have been using them continuously since, refoaming them about 15 years ago. It may just be familiararity, but I have had a hard time finding anything reasonably priced that I really think I would prefer. I love the cabinets on the model you got, mine are the veneer.

Yours would look great in a system with a walnut McIntosh or Dynaco tube system and AR ES-1 TT.

 

You really should recap those puppies. It is not difficult and the caps can be found at Parts Express, it will make a noticeable improvement with some burn in time.

 

Very nice pick up!
You have what are known as 'Bullnose' NLA's, btw.
Have you visited www.Audiokarma.org ? Lots of Advent lovers, tweakers and modders over there.

 

awesome..love those speakers...!

 

Yes, absolutely. You can buy a new foam surround kit from New Foam for about $30. New replacement woofers are available from http://www.abtechservices.com/welcome.html

I still have a pair I got for free off Paulding County FreeCycle.com, reworked the cabinets and they still sound amazing. $3 worth of paint and 99 cents worth of grill cloth and they look like new.

I'm sure they were replaced by some speakers that fit in the palm of your hand. Hey, for most people sound doesn't really matter anyway. Amazing the stuff people give away or throw away.

Buy them and enjoy. Refoaming the woofers is not that hard.

Good Luck,

Jim

 

If I remember those boxes are nice and solid.

 

I bought a pair of Royal speakers from Zodys I think in the early 70's. OK for my first real pair of speakers but the cabinet which I used with different speaker combo's till the late 90's were solid walnut. Very, very heavy for either a large bookshelf or small floorstanders. Tweeners.

 

I am trying to do new surrounds (refoam) on a pair of Snell 8" woofers that are made by Peerless. Aside form having no luck getting what remains of the originals off of the outer metal basket rim (the adhesive Peerless used is NOT what wore out) I have been warned that is is almost impossible to get the cone properly centered (so it does no scrape on the voice coil) when you glue up the new surround by hand. Can any of you comment on this?

 

Tony,

Here are detailed instructions which I used, included with my refoam kit which addresses your concerns (specifically steps 4 & 8).

- Sushimaster

 

It's not that hard to do..

I have done many hundreds of woofer re-foams.

First, I use a dull knife to scrape off all or nearly all old residue and get bare metal on the basket or as near as is practical. You just want a solid surface to glue to.

Same for the cone, but do it carefully, if fingers fail, use the dull knife blade.

When prepped, set the surround foam against the cone and basket to check fit and learn the "lay" of the parts, become familiar with how they align.

Then place adhesive around the rim of the cone and do the cone first, this is important to do in correct order. Basket last.

Now place the foam on the whetted cone, and move it to align it evenly around the edge. Let it dry and cure.

Now for the coil alignment work. This is accomplished with a signal running into the woofer, with some bass content to move the cone. Hook up an amp and play some music, better yet if you have access to sine-wave tones..

You will hear if the cone is mis-aligned due to harsh and terrible distortion unless the coil is centered in the gap. Adjust the edge of the foam around the basket rim-flange so that no scraping noise comes from the woofer, just normal movement from 30 hz or 40 hz signals, either music or pure tone.

Tack down in 4 quadrants when you think it's aligned, and test if the cone is in good position by pressing lightly around the edge while music or tones are running. If you get no scraping, glue down the rest of the rim. If not lift off and re-align until all is good..

Let cure and your woofer is ready to rock. Rolf Erickson.

 

Hey Sushimaster,
Those are indeed a pair of the "New" Large Advents. They're nice speakers and fun'n'simple to rebuild! You've done a very nice job to resurrect them!!!
I rebuilt two pair of the same "New" Advent Speakers two years ago. Here's a list of the crossover components I used:

Crossovers are completely re-built with high-quality 12uF film and foil polypropylene capacitors and two 0.47uF bypass caps

Inductors are replaced with 0.33mH copper foil inductors.

Treble switches ware replaced with DPDT heavy-duty toggle switches.

Resistors (1.0 Ohm and 1.5 Ohm) resistors were replaced with high-quality wire-wound Mills and Axon resistors.

An additional wire wound resistor cluster (3.3 Ohm and 2.2 Ohm in parallel for a resistance of 1.32 Ohm) was added to the tweeter circuit after the switch to help smooth out the direct and off-axis response of the new tweeters.

The crossover change dramatically improves the smoothness and detail of the tweeter as well as balances out the output levels between the woofer and tweeter.

12 AWG pure copper wire replaced the original wire and gold 12 AWG female connectors replaced the originals.
Dayton BPA-38SN HD satin nickel binding posts are used. All contacts were joined with silver solder.

The 25th Anniversary Advent tweeters replaced the original orange “fried egg” tweeters. On-line research shows that these tweeters out-perform the original. Also, one of the old tweeters was no-longer functioning.

Dayton DFFC-0.47 uF 400 V By-Pass Caps
DPDT Heavy Duty Toggle Switch
Mills 1 Ohm 12W Non-Inductive Resistors
Mills 1.5 Ohm 12 W Non-Inductive Resistors
Jantzen 0.33 mH 16 AWG Copper Foil Inductors
Dayton PMPC-12 12 uF 250 V Precision Audio Caps
25 th Anniversary Large Advent Tweeters
I originally replaced the "fried-egg" tweeters about 6 years ago with the 25th Anniversary tweeters. I did have to, however. cut the baffle to fit the tweeter.
I kinda went whole-hog, you could easily save a few bucks and use wire-wound inductors!

Parts Express is a good source:
http://www.parts-express.com/home.cfm

Look for the crossover schematic at this site:
http://baselaudiolabs.googlepages.com/ADVENT_LA_XO.html

Here's a good AK thread on identifying old Advents:
http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=126376

Source for the 25th Anniversary tweeters, if you choose that route:
http://abtechservices.com/adventspeakers.html

I apologize, I never too any picture of this re-build project. The speakers are living a happy life up in Cedar City Utah at a friends house!
Mike

 

Here's an old review by J. Gordon Holt of Stereophile

Thanks mjalazard for the info/links. I'll look into them.

- Sushimaster