Buying new, but old speakers

Thanks everyone. It puts my mind at ease a little bit.

Elizabeth, I came upon a recent post of yours about speaker longevity while doing my Google searches. It's nicely detailed and very helpful.

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?cspkr&1268354722&&&/Speaker-Longevity

Hi Elizabeth, thanks for the reply. I'm actually in Canada. The price to be paid is over half off MSRP. I'm not sure if we can post links here, but you can find a review of the Avon on Gramophone. Just type into Google "Castle Avon Gramophone" and you should get the review. It says the speaker was launched in 1996. Also, there are some reviews of the speaker on audioreview.com from a few users who were purchasing it new around of the turn of the century. The speaker is a floorstander with one woofer and an offset tweeter below it. There must have been an original Avon in the 80's and an updated model in the mid 90's.

You are right Blkadr, the surrounds are rubber. I spoke with the dealer this afternoon and confirmed this. They are black, but hey, it's not like I can be too picky when it comes to old Castle speakers, especially ones that are in perfect shape.

I am not unhappy with the sound of my system right now, quite the contrary in fact. But I've always been intrigued by floorstanders and I find that feeling isn't going away, so now I'd like to live with one pair for a while and compare them to my regular speakers (Quad 12L2). Castle has always sort of intrigued me too, so when this pair came up I thought why not? If I don't like them I will sell them and maybe take a hit but not a huge one. For $900 I'm not sure there's another floorstander I'd buy. Maybe a pair of used Quad 21L2. That all depends on how much I like the Avons though, and I won't know until I hear them. But it'll also be cool to own something that's a little more obscure than most other speakers. They definitely have the Castle build quality too...when packed the speakers weigh just over 100 lbs!

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I've been accumulating a few speakers lately. In addition to the Quads I'll try out the Avons and a pair of Tannoy Revolution DC6. Why the collection? Well, I had other gear to trade in/sell and so I grabbed the Tannoys, and similarly now the Castles. I won't be keeping them all. I may keep 2 of the 3, or simply the one I like best. I could see myself parting with all of them for perhaps the Tannoy DC6T (a floorstanding version of the DC6). I have always liked Tannoy. But we'll see...I'm going to take my time determining which of the three speakers I like best and then go from there. In the past I've made too many snap judgements.

Blkadr, I pretty much agree with your assessment of the Quads. I think the midrange is a little bit recessed, but I really love the clarity, detail, weight, and speed. Bought them off of Lanemart here on the 'gon for under $600. A great value! Frankly, I think the 12L2 is a great speaker and the others I have will have their work cut out for them.

And thanks for the feedback on the Avons everyone. It's about half off MSRP for a never used pair of floorstanders. I figured that's about what used speakers usually go for, but perhaps I'm overpaying in this case. Oh well, I'm not too disappointed because had I started negotiating the speakers may have been snapped up by someone else, and another pair isn't likely to come up any time soon. It would have been a tough call, even if I knew I was overpaying.