todays bargin speaker find ?

danger boy

(long, sorry guys)

Had the day off (sick, cough, cough)... So i decided to make the most of my day and go trolling for whatever i could find. I usually end up empty handed... but not today.

for $15 for the pair I found a 5 or 6 out of 10 condition pair of Criterion VI bookshelf speakers. I know it's not the find of the year or anything.. but I was a little proud for finding em. Like I said before.. my searches usually end up with squat.

I can't find anything on the good old internet about these speakers. If I remeber right... about a year ago... i run into another pair similar to these, but a different model. I think these (Lafayette ?) Criterion Speakers were made for someone like Sears or JC Penney or similar. Does anyone know any other info about them?

These have a 12" woofer, a 5" mid and 2 or 4 tweets in em. I can't tell for sure. (see pics below). The drivers are all paper, no foam here but none of them have any rot or holes in them... so that's good huh?

I plugged them in and listened.. blech!!! Fooey!!!

then on the back they have knobs for the tweeter and the mid driver. crank em to increase or decrease the tweet or midrange. Ok. fine.. works ok.. and helped to improve the sound.. they sound better now.

I hooked em up to my 50wpc Yammy integrated.. and listened to some CD's off the Toshiba DVD player. ho hum... no biggie. I was compairing them to my lovely Polk Monitor 7b's. These Criterion's didn't stand a chance in hell. They failed.. even after tweaking as much of the tweeter as I could. Finally gave in and thought, well this is the best these cheap speakers will ever sound.

Then I switched on the Pionner TX-9500II tuna... hooked up with Signal Cable 2 with bullets.. WOW! OMG! did they come alive.. yes... they are very close now to the imaging and sound of the Monitor 7b's. They don't troll quite as low as the 7's. but very close. I mean.. i was extremely surprised to hear that big of a difference.

Point here is that source and interconnects DO indeed make a difference.

Just before turning on the tuner.. these were headed to the garage.. they would make a really decent pair of garage speakers. The cabinets do need to be refinished.. (see pics again).

Now i'm thinking of refinishing them and maybe even keeping them inside the house instead of the garage. Been listening to them for a few hours now.. and i can honestly say.. they ain't half bad.

I know they aren't the find of the year.. but what the hell for $15, I can live with myself.

danger boy

pic uno

danger boy

foto numero dos

danger boy

foto tres

danger boy

last one you guys... sheesh!

RuSsMaN

Intersting pair of speakers, I've seen that brand many times, but never that model. I think they screwed up though, I still some blank front baffle they could have stuck a couple more drivers in.

If they sound good, hell yeah for $15. Looks like a great speaker for a garage / shop rig if you don't feel like re-finishing 'em.

Cheers,
Russ

Airplay355

theres a pair of those layin around in a shop close to me. same condition as yours....how the hell did u get the grills off?

danger boy

i took a dull knife and slowly slid it along the side of the top edge to loosen it then.. i pulled it off like a bugger.

It was on with velcro.

these speakers are heavy... not because of all the drivers. but because they used something like 5/8ths MDF or thicker..

Russ, i found about 3 square inches where i think i can install another driver in each cab still. :rolleyes:

Tour2ma

My first pair of speakers were Criterion 80's. They were a "classic" 5-way design from (you nailed it) Lafayette Radio Electronics.

They may have made speakers for others, but more likely others made speakers for them. They were a east coast/ mid-west electronics chain not all that different from the old Rat Shack.

Most of their speakers were not very good. At least the 80's sure as hell weren't, but they were big, played loud and weren't expensive. In others words, perfect for the audio neophyte college student on a budget... which I was at the time... about 1971...

danger boy

that's about what i was thinking..

these would make good inexpensive college student speakers... somewhat loud and if they get toasted... well it wouldn't be a bad hit at all.

thanks for the info... there is very little on the internet about Criterion speakers.

woodyjacobs

Oh come on, you can get more than one more driver in those. Mount a Piezo on top!