Are Rodgers ls3/5a as good as advertise? & Why

The LS 3/5A was a product of BBC research and development. This was a very important speaker for it's time. The final design was licensed to various British speaker manufacturers that were forced to adhere to strict BBC guidelines. The speaker cabinets were made of different types of wood and took the cabinet resonances into consideration when the crossover was designed. The crossovers were designed so that the speaker to speaker matching was better than 2dB. The cone material, a first for any woofer, (a Kef driver) was a new thermal plastic material called Bextrene and opened the door for other poly (plastic) woofers. For it's day, it was a true miracle worker. Superb imaging and decent bass out of a small woofer. The downside....Because it's bass was lumpy,it was somewhat finicky about coupling to a subwoofer. The Kef T-27 was rather spitty. The mod at the time was to remove the screen over the tweeter, and that did help, but the tweeter was prone to slight compression at reasonable volume. But the worst problem was the speakers miserable sensitivity which was 82dB/1w/1m. Couple that with a maximum power rating of 50 watts and you realize very quickly that this speaker was not designed to play loud. With improvements in materials and technology, this beautifully made speaker is no longer considered the sonic miracle it once was decades ago.

I owned a pair of Rogers LS 3/5A's for quite a few years back in the day, and powered them with a pair of Modded Dyna MkIII's. The Dyna's used Genelex KT-88's. My preamp was a modded McIntosh C-20. Sounded good for many years but then decided to build my own speakers.