Advent Rebuild

machone

I refoamed the woofers and rebuilt the crossovers for a pair of original Advents that I have had since the 70's.



I moved them to my office with an old Denon integrated. I am steaming Tidal to them.
It's nice to have them working again.

machone

Before and after crossover photos.

Faustin

Nicely done.

Tony M

Nice re-foaming job.

I would spray paint that fiberboard rim brown or something. Whatever color it was when new.

mhardy6647

As best I can recollect, the fiberboard (Masonite) ring was always au naturel.




(borrowed images, tho' I do have a pair of Utility Advents lurking in the basement & hoping to get themselves refoamed someday!)


To the OP - nice work!
Even just a little spiffing up of the OLA crossovers makes a BIG DIFFERENCE IMO and IME.

Tony M

OK.

I guess if the grills stay on, who cares how it looks. I've owned 2 pr. of them but can't remember the woofers for some reason.

motorhead43026

Nice, those are the Walnut cabinets. I bought a pair of the large Advents in 77, mine were the utility cabinets. Didn't have enough cash for the solid Walnut upgrade. I loved those speakers.

machone

Yeah, mine are utility cabinets as well. My sister had them for while then they returned to me. I personally have not played them since I got my SDA-1A's back in the early 80's.

mhardy6647

they sound so much better with decent current production capacitors and fed gobs of power than they ever sounded when they were new and cheap and hooked to little 20 watt stereo receivers in dorm rooms and apartments 'cross the land.

Nothing against little 20 watt stereo receivers, mind you -- just not the right powerplant for those insensitive, highly damped acoustic suspension loudspeakers.

motorhead43026

At the time I was powering them with a Sanyo intergrated. It was something like a DCA 100 , anyway I remember it being like 45w PC.

I would love to hear a pair freshened up with some good power behind them.

machone

Agree. I had a jaw dropping experience listening to a pair of Advent's driven by a Phase Linear 700B. That is one reason I bought my DH-500.

mhardy6647

Years ago, I had a chance to buy, and seriously considered buying, a pretty big, older, John Curl-designed Parasound stereo power amp (don't remember which one ). I borrowed it to try and hooked it to a pair of AR-14 loudspeakers. AR-14s are Teledyne-era AR two ways with a 12 inch acoustic suspension (what else?) woofer & a dome tweeter* Like the Advents, they're low sensitivity and a bit overdamped and benefit from a lot more power than they were typically provided with when new (mid 1970s).




So, the AR-14 was/is a good sounding speaker (obviously a little compromised with a big woofer & a small tweeter); with the big Parasound, they were authoritative. The transformation was stunning, actually.

I was mostly interested in the amp for subwoofer use, but it was obviously better employed full range -- plus, it was more money than I really, deep down inside, wanted to spend

_________________
* Interestingly, early AR-14 speakers used the same Peerless silk dome as the Monitor 5/7/10 (and early 4 and the original 12), albeit with a 'custom' faceplate.

VR3

Don't have any pics and not sure if this is universal across the board... But my Dad has a pair of the walnut advent he purchased new back in the 60s. About 15 years ago or so we refinished them and refoamed the woofers, on the refinish it turned out the front frame was actually maple and the rest of the cabinet was walnut. Needless to say, it looked. Awesome.

Great job on the rebuild! Might be able to lose the bypass caps though 😊

machone

I thought someone here would see the bypass caps. I visited an Advent site and they used bypass caps. They were cheap so I included them. Easy to remove if you think it would be better.

mhardy6647

I don't think they should hurt -- but it's a testable hypothesis.
Us scientists like those.

codycatalist

Man I have one refoamed NLA 25th Anniversary in my garage, I really need to get around to finishing the second and throwing them on the Adcom. Nice refoam job, much better than mine.

VR3

They used bypass caps due to the main caps being inferior, you shouldn't see any benefit from them. Bypass caps can actually introduce micro distortion and artifacts in my experience

F1nut

They definitely add artifacts.....not good.

mhardy6647

codycatalist wrote: »

Man I have one refoamed NLA 25th Anniversary in my garage, I really need to get around to finishing the second and throwing them on the Adcom. Nice refoam job, much better than mine.

You're almost as bad as I am.
Almost.

I've refoamed zero of the two Utility Advents (given to me some years back by a longtime friend who was their original purchaser) in the basement.

DaveHo

Unless I missed something, it looks like the auto ban hammer has fell again.

@VR3
@KennethSwauger

mhardy6647

DaveHo wrote: »

Unless I missed something, it looks like the auto ban hammer has fell again.

@VR3
@KennethSwauger

whoa, yes, so I see

-- must be an IP address thing... and/or maybe related to the recent spate of "trouble logging in" reports?

codycatalist

mhardy6647 wrote: »

codycatalist wrote: »

Man I have one refoamed NLA 25th Anniversary in my garage, I really need to get around to finishing the second and throwing them on the Adcom. Nice refoam job, much better than mine.

You're almost as bad as I am.
Almost.

I've refoamed zero of the two Utility Advents (given to me some years back by a longtime friend who was their original purchaser) in the basement.

As an explanation my cat chewed up my second replacement foam, I have just yet to find motivation to purchase again. You sir need to get on it.

pitdogg2

codycatalist wrote: »

mhardy6647 wrote: »

codycatalist wrote: »

Man I have one refoamed NLA 25th Anniversary in my garage, I really need to get around to finishing the second and throwing them on the Adcom. Nice refoam job, much better than mine.

You're almost as bad as I am.
Almost.

I've refoamed zero of the two Utility Advents (given to me some years back by a longtime friend who was their original purchaser) in the basement.

As an explanation my cat chewed up my second replacement foam, I have just yet to find motivation to purchase again. You sir need to get on it.

That cat of yours has fouled up enough of your gear.....

Would like to borrow Chester? He likes cats, and your gear would be safe....

I'd find a way to disappear that speaker chewing, clawing cat of yours.

codycatalist

pitdogg2 wrote: »

codycatalist wrote: »

mhardy6647 wrote: »

codycatalist wrote: »

Man I have one refoamed NLA 25th Anniversary in my garage, I really need to get around to finishing the second and throwing them on the Adcom. Nice refoam job, much better than mine.

You're almost as bad as I am.
Almost.

I've refoamed zero of the two Utility Advents (given to me some years back by a longtime friend who was their original purchaser) in the basement.

As an explanation my cat chewed up my second replacement foam, I have just yet to find motivation to purchase again. You sir need to get on it.

That cat of yours has fouled up enough of your gear.....

Would like to borrow Chester? He likes cats, and your gear would be safe....

I'd find a way to disappear that speaker chewing, clawing cat of yours.

LOL!!!

I know Ivan, I know. She has now ceased to mess with my speaker stuff now that she is grown and calmed down. It doesn't hurt she is a fatty and can't get on top of my speakers anymore so I think I am good.

The reason I have my 2Bs in my small dedicated room is because I don't want to take any chances on losing more 6511s.

reverb

I love the Advent sound. For my money it's very listenable, non-fatiguing and a pretty good value for the dollar. Make a good choice for a someone just getting into audio. I gifted both of my nephews systems that included Advents. Hard to beat the simplicity of an Acoustic Suspension 2-way - which is what Advent is known for.

Tony M

I think air suspension was all the rave when they came out.

Yup. I got hooked on stereo with a pair of KLH 2 way acoustic suspension speakers in my late teens, early twenty's. They sounded so right.
KLH Model 20's were the ones I believe.

mhardy6647

Acoustic suspension was all the rage for a couple-three decades after Villchur & colleagues invented it in the early 1950s and commercialized the AR-1. Kloss and Allison, among others, were cronies of Villchur @ AR. Besides KLH, Advent, CambridgeSoundworks and Allison, those pioneers also, at least indirectly, begat (among others) EPI/Epicure, Boston Acoustics, Cizek, and Genesis, and must have influenced (at least) a/d/s and Avid, too. Those were heady times in and around Cambridge (even not allowing for Dr. Bose and his minions).


https://youtu.be/MbtkL5_f6-4

motorhead43026

Tony M wrote: »

I think air suspension was all the rave when they came out.

Yup. I got hooked on stereo with a pair of KLH 2 way acoustic suspension speakers in my late teens, early twenty's. They sounded so right.
KLH Model 20's were the ones I believe.

This in not mine, but I have one exactly like it in excellent condition and it works!. It is in storage at this moment. It is a KLH 20 plus. I have been offered as much as $2500.00 for it. Speaks sound great.

Tony M

That's a high-end console for sure! Even in it's day it was probably expensive. I like it a lot!

Tony M

I picked up some MINTY advent cabinets years ago that a guy placed on the side of the road and put a post on Craig's list saying, "Speaker cabinets for free. Perfect cond.. needs speakers. First one here gets them. I'll remove the ad when they're gone.

Or something close to that. I live about 3 miles from that place and I beat another guy to them, I found out later on. I think I have tweeters for them. The woofers aren't that much but I just haven't done a thing with them besides putting them on a shelf.

Here's one of them.

Here they are now. They've been on this rack for to way long!!!

mhardy6647

Are those OLAs or something like 5012Ws? I had a pair of the latter for a while -- long after Kloss had sold Advent off to (?) Recoton (IIRC), but they were pretty darned good. I liked the tweeter in the 5012W better than the weird little cone/dome hybrid Henry used in the OLA (FWIW).