The Large Advents

[tesseract]

Happened across a pair of these last night, swooped in to pick them up today from the owner of Zealth Audio.

The NOS tweeters have basically no hours on them, he checked the crossovers and three position tweeter switch and I checked the newly foamed woofers for voice coil rub. All good and they sound great!

Also thrown in is a walnut veneer stack, which I'll have a cabinet maker apply for me. I'll need to replace the fabric on the grilles, which is an easy fix and will complete the restoration. Now I just need to get some speaker cables with little spades on the speaker end and bananas on the amp end for easy swaps.

 

[tesseract]

The Advent Loudspeaker

After a number of years of equipment reviewing, one gets rather blasé about "compact" loudspeakers. The appearance of yet another one that looks like hundreds of others and embodies no radically new innovations to pique one's curiosity is likely to be greeted with a passionate Ho-Hum.

www.stereophile.com

 

[Sonnie Parker]

Haven't seen any of those in years... like probably 40 years or so. It was back in the late 70's early 80's when I was doing mobile disco for a fellow who owned a pair that was setup in his home. Always thought they sounded great and coveted a set for myself.

 

[Flak]

Very nice @tesseract !!

I was the Advent distributor for the Italian territory and I liked them almost as much as the Powered Advent Loudspeakers,
while Advent Loudspeakers had been a huge success the latter didn't sell much... the market wasn't ready for such an innovative active speaker with an active crossover, built-in amplifiers, and EQ!!

Flavio

 

[Mike Rivers]

I have a set of Large Advents from 40 or more years back that I don't use much any more (location, location, location). When I discovered that they had no bass output, I removed the grills and found that there was practically no surround suspension left on the woofers. Got a couple of kits and, though I've never done the job before, successfully replaced them, and now they're probably as good as new (though also probably somewhat different sounding than new) and ready for another 40 years of service.

 

[GLBright]

On my pair the original foam lasted 20 years. Re-foams since then have lasted only 10. But hey, they're still pumping out the sound after 49 years.

 

[tesseract]

Very nice @tesseract !!

I was the Advent distributor for the Italian territory and I liked them almost as much as the Powered Advent Loudspeakers,
while Advent Loudspeakers had been a huge success the latter didn't sell much... the market wasn't ready for such an innovative active speaker with an active crossover, built-in amplifiers, and EQ!!
View attachment 42260

Flavio

The previous owner stumbled onto the pair I have when going back east to pick up a pair of powered he is going to restore.

Here is one of the amps.

.

 

[tesseract]

Had to order some adapters so that I could plug in banana-terminated cables, finally got to hear the in my dedicated room. One sounds really nice and polite, the other is brash. The contour switches are at neutral, so I think it is time to rebulild the crossovers.

 

[marklg]

I'm happy with my stacked large Advents. I had them refoamed quite a few years ago now. They are somewhat frankenspeakers, old enclosures, newer non masonite woofers, new 2nd gen tweeters, modified crossovers to match with new 8 + 5 = 13 uF Solen Caps and .33 mH Solen Perfect Lay inductors. Replaced the inset fabric grill cloth with more transparent black grill cloth from Madisound stretched over a frame. Driven by Hafler DH-220s. Two of the speakers were originally mine, so those are over 40 years old. Amps have been recapped with much higher capacitance, lower esr main caps, but over 40 years old too.

 

[tesseract]

@marklg , sounds like a fun system. I might look for another pair as stacked intrigues me. My brothers inherited my love for Hafler, one has a white XL600!

 

[Flak]

The previous owner stumbled onto the pair I have when going back east to pick up a pair of powered he is going to restore.

Here is one of the amps.

View attachment 42352.

Nice project, I can't remember the purpose of the"special- see owner's manual" switch though... it might be interesting