White Van Speakers ?

Heck, I knew a dude and his dad that basically did this back in the early 70’s. They built "Bose 901" speakers. The living room/kitchen/dining room had several dozen cabinets in various stages of build. They even had the same nasty brown and orange cover material and fake badges. I don’t know if they even started to believe their snake oil but you’d think for all the world by the way they talked that they were a Bose satellite manufacturer.

Somehow they made something of a living off of dupes buying the things for discount rates - enough to buy their beer and pizza for a week. And yes, they had a white van.


They did have the first (and maybe only when I think about it) Quadraphonic system I heard - real Pioneer gear and real Pioneer speakers. Funny how the "Bose" were only for demo purposes, not what they listened to.

At one time we carried a replacement midrange for the 901 - identical in every way except no blue cone.. we made $$$$ selling them for $5 retail, draw your own conclusions....

but we got several calls a week asking us to value White Van speakers.... always that call came after the crime...

Friend of mine has had a pair for over 25 years, still work, they even sent him replacement tweeters back in the late 90’s.

he brought them to my house years back hooked up to my then Rotel 1090, sounded just fine.

he still uses them to this day.  

I actually purchased a pair back in the mid 80s.
I was walking into my local mall and a van drove up and asked if I wanted a pair of great speakers for a great price.
I don't remember the story they told me on why they were available.
I think the price was around $300 to $400 dollars...

The speakers were a big-box 3 way with frequency control buttons, kind of like JBLs back in the day.   They had some name I don't remember that sounded like a well known brand at the time (but wasn't exactly the same) so I told them I wanted to check with the audio store that was in the mall. The two of them followed me in and we all went into the store and I couldn't find a match for me to get a feel for their true value.   I of course gave in and they followed me home (~ 6 miles) and delivered them.   At the time I had a little bit of cash and a check from work, they took the cash and were happy to have me sign the check over.  In hind site that all seems pretty strange, right?

My speakers at the time were speakers I had made myself (3/4" plywood with real-wood veneer, configurable cross-over I purchased from Radio Shack, a woofer and midrange from Radio Shack and a tweeter from a local audio parts store).   My speakers would have been  much better built and used much better parts than the knock-offs, but I didn't see it at the time.

They sounded OK compared to my home made ones, but were nothing special.  Since I didn't need 2 pairs of box speakers in my room and realized I had made a mistake buying them, I donated them to my local (small country) church and they hooked them up into their PA system.

As far as I know, those speakers are still in use at the church!   So yea, I was young and stupid, and the parts and build costs was likely what folks here say they were, but in the end their use at the church and my life experience of the event was definitely worth the cost :)