Apropos of Nothing Department: BIC America "Eviction Series"
mhardy6647
Posts: 33,954
in Speakers
So, just for shoots and Googles 
I was perusing Newegg whilst quaffing my coffee this lovely Monday morning in the north country.
I was lookin' at "speakers", and, right on the first page, I espied this abomination:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16882007028
oy.
So: BIC America is some sort of descendant of BIC (not the pen company!), who imported British turntables in the 1960s. BIC was best known for the 940/960/980 series of "automatic turntables" in the late 1970s -- which were, in fact, the last gasp of the once-great Voice of Music (VM) company of Buchanan, MI. VM made, arguably, the best (or at least, among the simplest and most reliable) hifi record changers (which is only sort of an oxymoron) in the 1950s and into the 1960s. BIC also made/sold loudspeakers of their own in the 1970s -- the "Formula" series (for better or worse).
It gets worse. Apparently BIC America owns (or bought rights to) the RTR brand name/trademark, and has applied it unselfconsciously to the woofers on these monstrosities.
RTR was another fairly great US hifi name, famous for plain-looking and very conventional, but well-regarded loudspeakers for home use.
Finally, I assume that the "EV" in the titular loudspeakers' moniker refers to their proud place in the "Eviction Series"
-- but to me, it recalls, and besmirches, another proud US hifi name: Electrovoice (EV), who were once also of Buchanan, MI (synchronicitiously enough) 
I was perusing Newegg whilst quaffing my coffee this lovely Monday morning in the north country.I was lookin' at "speakers", and, right on the first page, I espied this abomination:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16882007028
oy.
So: BIC America is some sort of descendant of BIC (not the pen company!), who imported British turntables in the 1960s. BIC was best known for the 940/960/980 series of "automatic turntables" in the late 1970s -- which were, in fact, the last gasp of the once-great Voice of Music (VM) company of Buchanan, MI. VM made, arguably, the best (or at least, among the simplest and most reliable) hifi record changers (which is only sort of an oxymoron) in the 1950s and into the 1960s. BIC also made/sold loudspeakers of their own in the 1970s -- the "Formula" series (for better or worse).
It gets worse. Apparently BIC America owns (or bought rights to) the RTR brand name/trademark, and has applied it unselfconsciously to the woofers on these monstrosities.
RTR was another fairly great US hifi name, famous for plain-looking and very conventional, but well-regarded loudspeakers for home use.
Finally, I assume that the "EV" in the titular loudspeakers' moniker refers to their proud place in the "Eviction Series"
-- but to me, it recalls, and besmirches, another proud US hifi name: Electrovoice (EV), who were once also of Buchanan, MI (synchronicitiously enough) Comments
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I like the warning,
WARNING: This product can expose you to chemicals including one or more listed chemicals which are known to the State of California to cause cancer or birth defects or other reproductive harm. For more information, go to www.P65Warnings.ca.gov
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
It is imperative that we recognize that an opinion is not a fact. -
The BIC (VM) record players mentioned above, for those of you too young * too remember.
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* and/or, perhaps, for those of you who don't remember because you did inhale
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I just ASSuMEd this was some sub of the pen company, ha.I disabled signatures.
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Mark,
RTR made more than just conventional monkey coffins. In 1974 I purchased a pair of RTR 280DR. These have four 10" woofers, five 2.5" tweeters, and one piezo (lemon squeezer) tweeter per cabinet. One woofer on the front, one each on left & right sides, and one downward firing. Tweeters were located above & below woofers on the front & sides, with the lemon squeezer top, front. Photo below is pulled from the web & shows them w/o grills.
I chose them over Dalquist DQ-10 (which sounded very good on most material, but every now & then sounded like five drivers not quite blending together). My RTR's are currently on loan to my daughter, and still sound great!
Note that RTR also made electrostatic tweeter arrays. Never got to hear any myself, but folks did seem to think they were pretty good.
Cheers, Jim
A day without music is like a day without food. -
oh, my. oh, my.
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Doc, methinks you took a wrong turn on the internet somewheres...Jay
SDA 2BTL * Musical Fidelity A5cr amp * Oppo BDP-93 * Modded Adcom GDA-600 DAC * Rythmik F8 (x2)
Micro Seiki DQ-50 * Hagerman Cornet 2 Phono * A hodgepodge of cabling * Belkin PF60
Preamp rotation: Krell KSL (SCompRacer recapped) * Manley Shrimp * PS Audio 5.0 -
yup -- but at least I didn't find any cat videos there...
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Point taken.Jim Shearer wrote: »Mark,
RTR made more than just conventional monkey coffins. In 1974 I purchased a pair of RTR 280DR. These have four 10" woofers, five 2.5" tweeters, and one piezo (lemon squeezer) tweeter per cabinet. One woofer on the front, one each on left & right sides, and one downward firing. Tweeters were located above & below woofers on the front & sides, with the lemon squeezer top, front. Photo below is pulled from the web & shows them w/o grills.
I chose them over Dalquist DQ-10 (which sounded very good on most material, but every now & then sounded like five drivers not quite blending together). My RTR's are currently on loan to my daughter, and still sound great!
Note that RTR also made electrostatic tweeter arrays. Never got to hear any myself, but folks did seem to think they were pretty good.
Cheers, Jim
I was a little unfair in my characterization of RtR, indeed. All I meant to imply was that they were, in general, big rectangular boxes festooned with (generally) cone drivers... not exactly "high tech", at least morphologically. Folks do tend to really like 'em -- although I have very little experience with them. They just weren't popular* in the mid-Atlantic area when I was coming of age.
I also neglected to mention (although I actually had meant to) that the RtR boxes tended to use pretty good component drivers (e.g., Philips and Peerless cone MR and/or tweeters, as well as CTS drivers no doubt).
FWIW, I was never all that crazy about the DQ-10s (and I'm still not).
* Although it is widely claimed (on the internet) that RtR was somehow related to the "Synergistics" brand that Stereo Discounters (of Timonium, MD) was pushing - hard - in the aforementioned 'seventies. There was certainly some stylistic resemblance -- but I dunno.
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Icing on the cake.
Kinda looks like somethin' the current incarnation of McIntosh would do...
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mhardy6647 wrote: »yup -- but at least I didn't find any cat videos there...
Let me go ahead and fix that for you...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyNlqQId-nk
"Some people find it easier to be conceited rather than correct."
"Unwad those panties and have a good time man. We're all here to help each other, no matter how it might appear." DSkip -
I was going to say p - r - 0 - n, but I didn't want to give Vanilla the heebie-jeebies, so I said "cat" instead.
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mhardy6647 wrote: »yup -- but at least I didn't find any cat videos there...
Let me go ahead and fix that for you...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyNlqQId-nk
Thanks for sharing that.
No. Really.
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http://www.bicamerica.com/showpage.php?brand=3&type=15&spkrID=120
heck, they're even biampable...
(and, to their credit, I suppose, they weigh seventy pounds each -- which isn't insubstantial)
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I believe Infinity, B&W, Fulton and others used RTR electrostatic add-on tweeters.
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The "Eviction" series name just hit me. ha.
"Buy these and you'll be the envy of all your friends and family when you get kicked out of your neighborhood!"
Here are the 'specks'
I disabled signatures. -
KennethSwauger wrote: »I believe Infinity, B&W, Fulton and others used RTR electrostatic add-on tweeters.
I am drawing a blank on their electrostatics, I must admit. I haven't knowingly encountered them "in the wild".
Oh, as a not-entirely-pointless aside (also an attempt to make myself seem slightly less of the Philistine I would appear to be on the strength of this thread), I've yet to hear a bad sounding electrostatic transducer: even the single-ended electrostatic tweeters used by Radio Shack (i.e., their OEM) in the "Electrostat-2" (and 2a) loudspeakers (and their relatives) of the 1960s into early 1970s.
In theory, single-ended (as opposed to push-pull) electrostatic transducer elements are terribly nonlinear... but the SE tweeters in the Electrostat-2a sound good to me.
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They were part of the Infinity Servo-Static and 2000i speakers and a part of the excellent Fulton J Module speakers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTGQ1iOn4v4 -
The "Eviction" series name just hit me. ha.
"Buy these and you'll be the envy of all your friends and family when you get kicked out of your neighborhood!"
Here are the 'specks'
I know there's a large number of folks on another site that Doc and I visit who would cherish those speakers.Political Correctness'.........defined
"A doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a t-u-r-d by the clean end."
President of Club Polk -
They'd give HPM-100s and Cerwin-Vegas a run for their money, no doubt.
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It's that 15" woofer......nothing else will do.Political Correctness'.........defined
"A doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a t-u-r-d by the clean end."
President of Club Polk -
ahem. Pardon?
DSC_8060 by Mark Hardy, on Flickr
(although the Duplexes are really more like 15 inch midranges...)
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These were my first 'real' speakers of my very own that I bought in the early 90s from a buddy in the Air Force days - Pioneer CS-9900
yeeeehawwwww!
I disabled signatures. -
These were my first 'real' speakers of my very own that I bought in the early 90s from a buddy in the Air Force days - Pioneer CS-9900
yeeeehawwwww!
You be stylin' wit dem fifthteens.Political Correctness'.........defined
"A doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a t-u-r-d by the clean end."
President of Club Polk -
Currently refurbishing a set of Venturi 6s
And a set of RtRs as well (woofer surrounds)
Haven't gotten a chance to listen to either yet -
Man, you got a problem, lol
(one I can fully relate to)I disabled signatures.
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