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All Advent questions answered


Guest gkentsmith

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Guest gkentsmith

Doug,

The reason we read the caps with our meters is that when you removed that hard substance covering them (you know the goop that's on everything, especially the screw heads for the binding posts?) there was nothing left of the markings that you'd expect to find!

Silly Advent and their "seat of the pants" approach. You'd think HK never expected us to be mucking about in his stuff over 30 years later - lol.

Kent

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  • 3 weeks later...
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Guest Ski Peru

OK, here's a couple for you:

- On the early Large Advents (fried egg & masonite), what's the offset in millilmeters between woofer coil and tweeter baffle, for the purpose of time alignment? I've bi-amped a couple pair of LAs, and have recently replaced my analog xover with crazy digital device, and this is one of the many experiments I'm playing with right now. My ear tells me it might be right around 76mm, but I'm very nearly deaf, so you never know.

-Also - what's the precise xover frequency of the LAs? I've seen it stated in any range from 1800hz to 1000hz, and even read an article touting 100hz (!). Any idea?

thanks a pile

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Guest One-Shot Scot

>OK, here's a couple for you:

>- On the early Large Advents (fried egg & masonite),

>what's the offset in millilmeters between woofer coil and

>tweeter baffle, for the purpose of time alignment? I've

>bi-amped a couple pair of LAs, and have recently replaced my

>analog xover with crazy digital device, and this is one of the

>many experiments I'm playing with right now. My ear tells me

>it might be right around 76mm, but I'm very nearly deaf, so

>you never know.

>

>-Also - what's the precise xover frequency of the LAs? I've

>seen it stated in any range from 1800hz to 1000hz, and even

>read an article touting 100hz (!). Any idea?

>

>thanks a pile

There were two series of Large Advents. Each model had different cabinets, woofers, tweeters and crossovers. I have only included the information below to help in the identification of each model.

The first was called The Advent Loudspeaker. This speaker had a Masonite ring around the woofer and the woofer was about 2 inches above the bottom of the cabinet. The crossover frequency of this Advent model was 1000hz.

The second was called The New Advent Loudspeaker. This speaker had no Masonite ring around the woofer and the woofer was about 6 inches above the bottom of the cabinet. The crossover frequency of this Advent model was 1500hz.

I'm sorry, but I don't understand your question about the offset between woofer coil and tweeter baffle.

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Guest aj_chicago

Hi Kent. Thanks for volunteering the knowledge and time. Just picked up a pair of Advent Prodigy towers w/ 8" woofer and 1" soft, plastic-like dome, ferrofluid tweeter and am beginning to restore them as best I can (refoam and push out compressed tweeter dome and a woofer dust cap then refinish the cabinets). Done quite a bit of fruitless investigating into the specs of these speakers. Can you tell me the specs of these and what the tweeter dome and base are made of. Any manufacturer propaganda on them that you might be able to scan and send would be appreciated. I plan to keep them for now. They sound great (even with the disintegrating surrounds); they look great, and they fit into smaller rooms nicely. Thanks!

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Guest gkentsmith

Hi aj,

First item of business: DO NOT PLAY THEM IF THE SURROUNDS NEED TO BE REPLACED. You can cause damage to the voice coils. Fortunately, the woofers are not that hard to replace, but better safe than sorry. ALWAYS take care of the electronics before doing cabinet work.

Having said this, I used the Prodigy I Tower as my second set of primaries when I had a two location work schedule and needed to have tunes 500 miles apart and didn't want to move my main stereo system monthly. I found them pleasing enough. I didn't keep any of the manufacturers literature (They are made by Jensen who bought the Advent name years before).

I was astonished to find the insides of them nearly empty. a small amount of fiberglass in the vicinity of where the wiring passed the woofers.

I'm sorry I can't shed more light on them, but my first sentence has all the info I have that is important.

Best Regards,

Kent

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Guest Alsped

just bought a pair of Advent 4002s one woofer is blown and the other one has been replaced wiyh a new generic brand otherwise they are in great shape. Are woofer probs typical in these older speakers and about how much would it cost to replace with the exact woofer it came with? Is it even worth the trouble?

Thanks

Eddie

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Guest phantom power

Hello,

Please inform me about the "other Advent Loud Speaker", including model and component part numbers.Awhile back I picked up a pair, and though, after initially being taken in by the 'futuristic' design, found them less than satisfactory and eventually discarded them. Recently, I have had dreams about them.

Thanks,

Mark

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Guest gkentsmith

Mark,

There are many possible speakers that you may be referring to. In the event you are not up-to-date on the Advent chronology let me give a quick overview. The Henry Kloss founded Advent lasted for years after he left sometime in 1974. The company went bankrupt around 1980.

The name Advent was then bought by Jensen who continued to manufacture many models of Advent (the Laureate, Heritage, Prodigy, Prodigy Tower I & II, Legacy I, II, III, Maestro and some of the smaller models I won't detail here). These were, generally, solid MDF painted black with Pecan wood tops and kick plates or even entire front panels. Jensen was eventually bought by Esmark corp and produced some real trash under the Advent name but looking much as the Jensen models.

At some point the Advent name became the property of Recoton, who is currently producing some matal & rubber, futuristic looking things called Advents but which bear absolutely nothing in common with any of the iterations before them.

I hope this rather long dissertation has been helpful.

Kent

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Guest phantom power

Kent,

Thank you.

What I didn't tell you was that before I tossed them in the can, as it were, I pulled the black metal enclosure that houses the two 1 1/2 inch high frequency driver out of the fiber glass and metal cabinets.

At this moment I am holding one from the pair in my hand. On the back of each driver there is a date stamped in ink which reads "SEP 27 1974".

Also, the grills were a Kent,

Thank you.

What I didn't tell you was that before I tossed them in the can, as it were, I pulled the black metal enclosure that houses the two 1 1/2 inch high frequency driver out of the fiber glass and metal cabinets.

At this moment I am holding one from the pair in my hand. On the back of each driver there is a date stamped in ink which reads "SEP 27 1974".

Also, the grills were a Kent,

Thank you.

What I didn't tell you was that before I tossed them in the can, as it were, I pulled the black metal enclosure that houses the two 1 1/2 inch high frequency driver out of the fiber glass and metal cabinets.

At this moment I am holding one from the pair in my hand. On the back of each driver there is a date stamped in ink which reads "SEP 27 1974".

Also, the grills were a aluminium mesh.

However, The low frequency drivers were the same model that was used in the "...small advent", same vintage. And, as happened to be the case with these particular drivers, the foam surround had deteriorated. And, as I recall the design and construction the crossover was recognizable as being the same one that were in my pair of "the small advent".

Are we getting closer?

Thanks again.

Mark

However, The low frequency drivers were the same model that was used in the "...small advent", same vintage. And, as happened to be the case with these particular drivers, the foam surround had deterioated. And, as I recall the design and construction the crossover was recognizable as being the same one that were in my pair of "the small advent".

Are we getting closer?

Thanks again.

Markmesh.

However, The low frequency drivers were the same model that was used in the "...small advent", same vintage. And, as happened to be the case with these particular drivers, the foam surround had deterioated. And, as I recall the design and construction the crossover was recognizable as being the same one that were in my pair of "the small advent".

Are we getting closer?

Thanks again.

Mark

post-102257-1168615553.jpg

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Mark, we heard you the first time! :+ Just kidding.

What you had were Advent/2s in the white plastic cabinet. The tweeters are in one housing and are at different angles, right?

I never heard these so I can't comment on that.

Doug

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Guest phantom power

Doug,

Oh yeah, please forgive the, however unintended, format.

But, hey, Thanks a lot.

So, they weren't referred to as the "other advent", but as the advent/2, huh.

Yes, I would avoid them, or at least avoid hooking them up to an amp.Nice to look at though, for awhile.

Take Care,

Mark

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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest gkentsmith

Hi,

PMJI, but I've found that wetting the dust caps first then applying vacuum cleaner suction straight from the hose in small steps sometimes works.

If it makes matters worse, sue someone else - lol

Kent

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btw: Recoton declared bankruptsy several years ago and Audiovox bought the Advent AND Acoustic Research names at that time (and Jensen too).

http://www.audiovox.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/advent.jsp

http://www.audiovox.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ar.jsp

AR isn't *total* junk IMO, but bears no resemblance to its former self; according to their site Advent has been reduced to selling mobile video gear. :^( Those weird looking home speakers, supposedly rebadged speakers from a German manufacturer, AFAIK aren't on their site anymore.

As bad as sales for home audio components have been the past few years, as much as part of me hopes, I can't see Audiovox devoting any time/money to resurrecting even a respected name like Advent:

1) only people @35 years old and older will even know what Advent was all about;

2) the biggest group of listeners/buyers of music are people younger than @25;

and (here's the clincher)

3) from what I've seen, most people under 25 think anything larger than an iPod is "old-fashioned". I think if they were shown a typical console stereo system from the 1960s, they would need a jolt of oxygen to stay conscious: "Oh....my.....gawd......that thing is HUGE!!" :^)

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Guest 16th and mission

Hello to all:

I am new to this forum - I just found it today. I searched the forum before I decided to post my question and I found a similar post from 2002 and it had not been answered, so I thought there would be no harm in posting a similar question in hopes that somewhere here could help me out with some information.

I have a pair of Advent Laureates that I purchased used in 1993 (serial # 3046514072). I really like these speakers because I think they sound lovely, though I'm hardly an expert. I do prefer acoustic suspension designs because I prefer bass response that is tight and accurate and not overwhelming, and I've always preferred two-way over three-way speaker configurations. These speakers have served well but about 10 years ago the rubber surround started separating from the cones (my limited research has revealed this to be a common problem). At that time, I was able to reattach the surrounds with glue. That worked for a couple of years but now the surround itself is not only detached but deteriorating. I've found refoam kits on ebay but wondered if they were close enough to factory specs as to not affect the quality of sound. Also, I wonder:

1) Should I expect these woofers to last this long? Am I wasting time to re-foam them? They seem like they are in fine condition otherwise but I'm no expert. How long can you expect a paper cone to last before the wear and tear of repeated sound reproduction cause the material itself to break down?

2) Is there a viable replacement woofer available? I've seen supposed "upgrades" available online with more durable and advanced materials but I'm wary that they may not be as well-suited to the cabinet design and crossover wiring as the originals.

3) Am I damaging the woofers to use them while the surrounds are in such condition? What is the exact function(s) of the surrounds? (forgive my ignorance).

4) I know these were manufactured after Henry Kloss left Advent and it had been acquired by Jensen, but is it the general consensus that these are decent speakers that are worth repairing and holding on to? They seem to me to be very well-made. I suspected that the front and top of the cabinets were a veneer over particle board and was surprised to find out today when I removed one of the woofers that the front board is indeed solid wood throughout. I've heard that dense particle board is probably a better material for speaker building, but I was impressed nonetheless that they used real wood. I think these speakers are beautiful, and hope I can get many more years of use out of them. I have a feeling I couldn't afford modern day replacements to match them in quality and styling. Is there even a two-way acoustic suspension home speaker being manufactured by anyone?

Sorry for a long-winded post, but any help and info. is much appreciated.

thanks!

derek

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I'm sure others will add their 2 cents too so until then...

1) About the only thing on a woofer that truly seems to wear out is the surround (foam types that is) and i've never seen the cone itself break down except from outside causes like water damage or physical abuse (babies, pets, etc).

2) in 1997 when I ordered woofers from Advent for my 14 year old Advent "Babys" (I didn't know about refoaming kits back then) the woofers I received were *almost* the same though the cone material was not as felt-like as the originals.

I would be a little wary of "upgraded" woofers - a good speaker consists of a carefully integrated woofer/tweeter/crossover system and many times (in a woofers' case) a tweeter or especially the crossover is designed to make up for a specific deficiency in the woofer. So if a different woofer is used, the tweeter's/crossover's "settings" so to speak will not fit well and the speaker system's overall sound could be audibly affected.

3) YES!

If the surround is falling apart this could cause the cone to become misaligned and the voice coil (the unseen electrical part pushing the cone) could scrape against the internal magnet structure and permanently damage the coil, rendering the woofer useless & unrepairable.

The surround supports the outer edge of the cone and also provides a specific amount of compliance to allow the cone to move the desired distance back & forth with a specific amount of power. If the replacement surround is much too soft or much too stiff, bass output will be audibly affected.

4) I sold them for three years at Best Buy and I liked their sound & consider them to be worth repairing. And I agree that they are very attractive speakers. We sold many of them almost for that one reason alone.

Acoustic-suspension is very rare these days. Off the top of my head the only company that uses this design in most of their speakers and is *not* a tiny boutique manufacturer (i.e. relatively easy to find so you can audition them) AND has a great rep is NHT ("Now Hear This"):

www.nhthifi.com

Any company that uses yodeling on their front page can't be all bad! :^)

I would love to own a pair of their Classic Four floorstanders for a stereo-only/no subwoofer music system I am trying to put together.

This company was also affected by Recoton's mismanagement but they survived. Heres' a story about that which includes a link to a story about NHT's cool/quirky founder, Ken Kantor:

http://www.stereophile.com/news/102405nht/

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Kent-

I am adding some speakers to other rooms in the house using a Niles ss-6 speaker selector, and am wondering what the impedance of the Advent/1 speaker is? If the second set of speakers are selectable between 4 and 8 ohms which should I select to get the most from each pair of speakers? Thanks, the newbie

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Guest 16th and mission

thanks so much Stormy for your detailed and helpful reply. i think i will try my hand at refoaming, and I had heard of NHT but didn't realize they utilized acoustic suspension. Looking forward to checking the links. thanks again.

derek

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  • 3 weeks later...
Guest sbalfour

>Mark,

>

>There are many possible speakers that you may be referring to.

>In the event you are not up-to-date on the Advent chronology

>let me give a quick overview. The Henry Kloss founded Advent

>lasted for years after he left sometime in 1974. The company

>went bankrupt around 1980.

>

>The name Advent was then bought by Jensen who continued to

>manufacture many models of Advent (the Laureate, Heritage,

>Prodigy, Prodigy Tower I & II, Legacy I, II, III, Maestro

>and some of the smaller models I won't detail here). These

>were, generally, solid MDF painted black with Pecan wood tops

>and kick plates or even entire front panels. Jensen was

>eventually bought by Esmark corp and produced some real trash

>under the Advent name but looking much as the Jensen models.

>

>At some point the Advent name became the property of Recoton,

>who is currently producing some matal & rubber, futuristic

>looking things called Advents but which bear absolutely

>nothing in common with any of the iterations before them.

>

>I hope this rather long dissertation has been helpful.

>

>Kent

>

I'll refine and fill in your chronology, for future reference.

Henry Kloss was at Advent in 1975 when the first prototypes of the

stamped aluminum frame woofer were produced, and he approved them for production. That was early 1975. That year, Advent posted a loss,

and was recapitalized with new investors. Henry was thereafter

excluded from product determination decisions - that was late in

1975. Henry dissociated himself from the company after that to pursue

private video projects that led in 1977 to the founding of Kloss

Video Corp. It doesn't appear that quitting Advent Corp. was a

clean or sudden break. Andy Kotsatos, the designer of the Smaller

Advent, remained with the company another couple of years, and was

responsible for the design of the New Advent in 1976/7. The speaker

foundered among profligate competition.

Advent declared bankruptcy reorganization in Mar. 1981 and entered into an agreement to be acquired by Kloss Video. That fell through,

and the bankruptcy petition was amended to liquidation later that year. International Jensen was an autonomous unit of the Esmark Corp.

in 1982 when Jensen acquired the assets of Advent out of bankruptcy

The Jensen unit itself went bankrupt in 1995, and was acquired by Recoton. There is further history with Thomson Electronics and

Audiovox, but I'll elide that.

Essentially, 1981 marked the end of the heritage Advent lineage.

The fried-egg and ferro-fluid tweeters as well as the stamped frame woofer were dropped from production in 1981. (The Smaller Advent

had been discontinued some time before, in favor of the newer Advent/1, 2 & 3). All of the Advent badged speakers you named which

were sold in the 80's were wholly Jensen designed, and all the components were Jensen. They were all, to say the least, unremarkable

speakers. Jensen reincarnated the original Advent Large in 1994 as

the 25th Anniversary Limited Edition. It had the stamped frame woofer

of the (old) New Advent Large and a remanufactured black 1" soft-dome

square-magnet tweeter. It wasn't quite a match for Henry's cloth- annulus 1.75" KLH-6 style tweeter. Times had changed. and the speaker

had a short run.

The current Audiovox/Advent products bear no lineage with either the 80's Jensen speakers or the 70's Advent Corp. speakers, as you note.

They look like rebadged Recoton speakers to me.

Stuart Balfour

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  • 2 years later...
Silly Kent :^)

If they are the original Advents (with masonite woofer surround) they would not have a 13uF capacitor in them but rather, either 2 16 uFs or 1 16uf and 1 8uF. The first is the series capacitor for the tweeter and the second is the resistor bypass capacitor when the switch is in the extended position (the cap. lets more high frequency energy to the tweeter).

The 2 16 uF version is the earlier one used until about the middle of 1975 and then they switched to the 16/8 uF version. The resistor was also changed along the way from 4 ohms originally to 3 ohms sometime in the early seventies.

The 8uF cap. holds back more of the lower upper frequencies and the tweeter doesn't have to work as hard to reproduce these freqs. thus maybe smoothening out the response or perceived response.

Also, these are 2 way crossovers, not 3 (only 2 drivers).

All of my Advents have the later configuration, having all been built in 1975 or 1976 so I have never heard (except for in the early seventies-too long ago to remember) the earlier ones. I know Jerry (BoldEagle in the forums) likes the later version and has changed his to this config.

This harshness thing seems to be something that some claim bothers them and others don't really experience it. I, myself, don't think they sound harsh (unless the source is harsh).

I would check out the crossovers and make sure everything is OK there. There is a schematic available in the library section of this site and you can get the values of the components from it.

Ask more any time.

Doug

Doug/anybody: could you give us a rough range of ser. No's for the 16/16/3 types and the 16/8/3 types?

Thanks,

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I don't know how much help I'm going to be but my lowest serial number Advent with the 16/8/3 combination is a walnut and it is #187986 built on August 29, 1975.

I don't know exactly when the changeover was but maybe from serial number 150,000 and higher are 16/8/3?

My utilities are all later and all are 16/8/3. I believe this was the combination until the end of production of the original Advent Loudspeaker.

I have also noticed that there was a change on the black tape on the tweeters that may correspond to the electrical changes. Earlier tweeters have the tape going all the way across the masonite square and on the later ones, it stops and is cut off straight before it gets to the left edge.

I don't mean, of course, that the tweeters are different. Just that this may have been a simultaneaous change with the electrical changes.

Doug

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  • 7 months later...

i own a pair of advent millennium speakers. they are about 3 ft tall with 2 identical speakers about 8-10 inches across and a tweeter. there is a sticker on the back with the company name, international jensen, adv 109501 and a serial number. no model number or description about the speaker. because they say millennium on them i'm guessing i bought these around the year 2000. but i know nothing else. does anyone know anything about these speakers? like what they are rated at?

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