Recommendations for Vintage Speakers

Allison Model One
Celestion SL700 - although they are stand mounts and not quite full-range

FWIW, I owned an SX-1250 back in the day (Bought, brand new @Best Products in Houston, TX in 1977.).  I acquired the receiver as the first piece of a system I was building, so auditioning a lot of speakers-from-that-era was next on the agenda.  Aside from a brief flirtation with Bose 901 series IIIs, the three finalists from a summer’s worth of haunting Houston stereo shops (of which there were many at that time) were the JBL L-100, the JBL L-65, and the Pioneer HPM 100.  At that time, there was usually an SX-1250 or 1050 in stock and set up at these venues so that was a plus.....I wound up with the L-65s and are still listening to them daily.  Such great sound and so “of those times”, stylistically!  (I”m running them with a PrimaLuna Prologue Classic now.). One bit of info might be useful...I really had my heart set on the big Infinity.Quantum Series speaker’s.  I had salesperson after salesperson steer me away from them because, as they would tell me time and again, my “monster receiver”didn’t have the steam for anything bigger than the Quantum 4 and even that pairing was marginal.  I thought that it was as simple as “The world's Most powerful receiver is gonna be the perfect match for those badass QLS-1s.”  What can I say...I was 18 with too much pocket change!  Glad I got talked out of that one...

I'd look for vintage Polk in the SRS-SDA series. They were remarkable in my vintage system. Sorry I let them go.

I have a friend of mine who I call "Vintage Joe".  He has had all of the above mentioned speakers.  Depending on your price range and room size the best speakers I heard from his system was the IMF 50s and up.  Large box style floor standers.  I also agree with KEF 104/2s and 105s and Dahlquist DQ-20i's.

@lg1

Yep the Quantum would have been a bad match.

I know in the receiver world 160 wpc was "monster" power.  Not so much in high end, especially for demanding speakers.  And then there's the question of the quality of the amp.


Which leads me to this: I'm going to hedge a bit on my previous Dahlquist DQ-10 recommendation for the OP.  They do need high quality, high power amps.  Maybe the oft-recommended Advents would work better with his Pioneer.  I'll never forget the "disappearing act" I enjoyed with my DQ-10s, but I don't think the SX-1250 would match up very well.  Those speakers were very revealing, and I had a really nice front end.