Hello and "THANKS IN ADVANCE"


Recently I purchased a pair of Bose 901's and 601's. I'm running the 901's with the Bose equalizer through speaker "A" connections. The 601's are through  "B" connections. I'm scared of the warning in the 901 owners manual that says the 901 equalizer may damage other speakers. Does anyone know where to set my unused  7 band graphic equalizer as to better duplicate the bose equalizer? it"s range is +- 12 db starting at 63Hz to 12.5kHz.

 

1perpet2

....parametric eq’s are better at the slopes, the ’gain across a wide frequency’ as @sgreg1 notes....they ’look’ like such, at least to me...

(...shout out to retrovoltage.com for the graphs...👍)

Went to many a party where 901’s were present.  They were a huge seller.  The only advice is not to play them screaming loud! It’s not good for them or your ears!

Perp,

I sold all these products back in their heyday.  To distill the various advice to clear instructions...

1. Your amp must have a "tape loop", "external processor loop", or pre-out/main-in jumpers in order to incorporate an EQ in the signal path.  

2. The amp that drives the 901s should not drive any other pair...speaker B can only be another pair of the same generation 901s!

3. If your amp has only one set of tape or preamp outputs, use a pair of Y connectors to double (1M>2F), or use duplicate outputs if it has them, to run into a second amplifier...preferably an integrated, to set relative volume.  Choose any line level input.  EQ with your graphic if desired and if amp 2 has a loop too.

4. Early generation 901s (SeriesI and II) had MUCH more severe EQ characteristics than all later models, so the danger of damage to another speaker is greater with those.  No graphic EQ is equipped with the boost to flatten the early ones' response...at 30Hz, they had over 20dB boost!

Hello 1perpet2.  An equalizer is an equilizer. Bose. DBX, whoever. The EQ is asking your amp to put out way more bass than usual for "normal" speakers. Any EQ trying to make the 901's sound good would do the same thing. You don't need a different EQ. Bose warns you because other speakers may not survive the boost required to make the 901's sing nicely. Think about it. The EQ feeds you amp that feeds the speakers, right? The amp is what you need to think about!  It is likely to be pushed into distortion which causes damage to the tweeter voice coils of other speakers. The 901 uses 1 ohm speakers in series with one another. It is the only speaker that can reproduce the sound of a nine foot wide solo violin. Of course, there are no nine foot wide violins. Have pity for the amp that drives the 901's. Happy listening.

OMG it's been the late 70's since it was the last time l heard my friends Bose 901's  I thought they where great, until l heard my other friends Infinity Kappa 9's