amplifier for large advents?


I just bought a nice pair of original Large Advents. Which are the speakers I should have bought in 1973 when I purchased my very first stereo system. So any thoughts on a nice amp to drive them? Vintage or newer would both be ok. Not more then about $1000 used. I've been thinking about vintage Levinson, Audio Research, Krell and such but all a bit more than I want to spend. I haven't listened to a pair of Advents in decades so any current owners opinions would be greatly appreciated.
dfwlistener

Showing 2 responses by xiekitchen

My pair work nicely with a Rega Mira3. Also great with my Eagle 4.
You can take the Advents up a few notches by replacing internal wiring, connectors, crossover cap, etc. I have improved the already great bass with 4 front to back 1" maple crossbraces and changing out fiberglass insulation. enjoy.
P.S. Cardas Golden Cross speaker cables work great.. at 4 times the cost of the speaker lol!! Got 2 sets of Advents to play with, paid I think 150 or 200 for each pair.
Dfwlistener: The crossbraces get glued inside. Pretty easy to do even for a klutzy non-woodworker like me. Buy some maple 1" x 1" stock at home depot.. just measure very closely and over cut not undercut until piece fits snub between front and back baffles.. glue in with wood glue..
I used somewhat inexpensive "gold plated" connectors from parts express as I did not want to spend hundreds on connectors. I used the Swedish made 12 gau wire from Madisound web site with good results (I've used this in all my speaker rebuilds.. inexpensive and sounds pretty good.) I used a couple of Kimber caps to get the right value, this improved midrange warmth and glow. There was a guy on ebay did crossover kits for these and others.. for AR speakers as well. Also he had some really good vintage looking grill cloth for AR's that I used on my advents and they look great. One thing I did was remove the inner black grill cloth to reduce the amount of fabric 'blocking' the sound. I also removed the fried egg tweeter metal grill, you have to be (obviously) very careful with this, but it opened up the tweeter dynamics a bit.