Opinion of my older Snell E111's please -


I am Not tech savy, but purchase tech items at savy places and try and buy well. I have a pair of Snell E3's and am contemplating whether to sell or keep. Same prob a lot of people have, I have little room for these beauties.sigh. But I would be hard pressed to get a good sound for the $900.00 I orig paid for them , I think around 1989/1990:s. I actually don't know that much about the specifications on these speakers, as I cannot find the orig papers. Can I find out more about them somewhere? Even though they are older? I am going to price them,but your help there would help, too. Also, they need some touch up on the wood,and I'm not sure about the other parts, but they look fine and sound good. THANKS for listening, sites and audiophiles help a lot, so thanks ahead of time. Deb in fla
debbiebuster

Showing 3 responses by kotta

Hi Deb. I own a pr. of these very fine spks. The owners manual doesn't list any specs, but a sales brochure I have does. +/- 1.75 dB from 39Hz to 20 kHz anechoic. Crossover 2.7 kHz. Nom. impedence 6 ohms. sensitivity 91 dB w/1 watt in anechoic chamber. 35"H x 13"W x 11"D. 50 lbs. each. These are really easy to drive and the sound just fine w/ a low powered amp. But, if you hook them up to beefy amp such as Bryston 4B ST, then the bass will be amazing! They were/are bargins when new and now used. I'm going to guess their resale value is between $325-$475, depending on condition of course. The only maintance issue is that the woofers will need to be refoamed eventually. Not a big deal. Snell would work on them still I believe. Snell did have info on these spks. on their website, but I believe they removed it sometime ago. A shame. I would be very reluctant to ship them w/o the factory shipping boxs because of their weight and the real tweeter. (BTW, besides knowing how to design and build great spks., the shipping boxes were first-rate.) I would be glade to photo-copy my manual/sales brochure if you may need them. Regards, Bill.
I meant to say "rear" tweeter instead of "real" tweeter. Also, these spks. are rated for amps between 15 to 150 watts. I understand what you're saying about their size. There are some extremely good sounding slender floorstanders available. They may be more accurate in the mid-range and the bass, but they may not go so low nor sound so full sounding. So in all honesty, if you need to free up some space in your room, do check out your other options. But I doubt you would find something used in that price range ($300-400) that would be so full sounding and musical. (I can think of a few exceptions (ADS for one) but they would be bulky as well.) Now, if I had the need for another set of loudspeakers, I personally would look into Australian-made KRIX loudspeakers which are being closed out by FullCompass. I own two prs. of their spks. and they are superb sounding. They need alot of break-in time to sound their best. Something to consider. Regards, Bill.
If memory serves me, the IV's very alittle narrower and the tweeters were different. One thing I would consider doing w/them if a had to remove the woofer, is changing out the bidding posts. (BP Hex's would be an exc. choice) You would be quite surprissed how much of an improvement this would make. Even putting in one higher quality set and forgo bi-wiring them. If you're using the stock pins that combine the low/high posts, consider another method. (I'm using a piece of heavy guage (Aprx. 14ga.) wire to jump the posts then using a single cable w/banana connectors to hook them up. I've found that Qed "Kudos" works very well this way and makes the spk. very enjoyable to listen to. One seller on Ebay has them for $39 new for a 12' pr. Banana terminated. Excellent simple cables for these spks.) Bill