I have here a pair of JE Labs-stye open baffle speakers using GPA (Altec) 604-8H-III drivers, Selah Audio crossovers, and custom-made 2" solid maple baffles from Mapleshade. I am the original owner of everything.I bought the drivers and xovers nearly a year ago and put them in baffles (JE Labs) I built myself from 3/4" ply. I expected this to be a temporary solution but was pretty much flabbergasted by the quality of sound. In my very large room the 15" driver could move serious air with virtually no cone movement. An open-baffle speaker, of course, maximizes efficiency by not converting the back wave to heat as do box speakers. The speakers really only extend to the mid-40s, but believe me no sub is necessary for acoustic music. The quality of the mid-bass - transient speed and clarity - was among the best I'd ever heard (of course, OBs, with no cabinet colorations, usually do transients very well). In addition there is absolute no "shout" or any sort of horn unpleasantness from the tweeter, and the blending is completely seamless. Finally, these speakers are *extremely* efficient (an honest 100 dB; in actuality 10 dB more efficient than other speakers I've had "rated" at 94-96 dB/W) but have none of the weaknesses of the HE single-driver sound - rolled-off extremely and lack of bass dynamics. They play very well with virtually any amp; I rotated between 2A3 SET and the superb First Watt F2J. In addition to the advantages of OB/dipoles in general, there is something magical about the JE Labs design. The wide baffle supports the "power region" of music - the lower mids - very well, giving rich tonality. The floor-bounce resulting from the low driver position extends the bass reach very nicely - forget what the spreadsheets say about baffle step! I've had many open baffles and planars, most of them "tall & thin", and the JE Labs sounds better than the rest in my experience. (There's a reason the vaulted Quad 57 is almost exactly this size as well; I've had rebuilt Quads too and they don't hold a candle to these speakers.) After around six months of enjoying these speakers, believing they would be my last unless we moved again, I began speaking to Mapleshade about building me some baffles out of their excellent 2" maple. This they did, with a couple months' lead-time. The result was better than I'd hoped for: In addition to being stunningly beautiful (the pics don't do them justice), the added mass - the speakers now weigh well over 100 lb per side - had a large effect on the sound, with the bass deeper and tighter, and the mids cleaned-up too. (I installed my own spikes into the bottom of the Mapleshade side panels, and attached the side panels to the front baffle with the mechanism given my Mapleshade, using four small metal cones for vibration drainage and four wood screws holding each side panel in place.) The, a few months later, a pair of Avantgarde Trios rather unexpectedly fell into my possession. We have decided to keep them, and I've never been an audio pack-rat, so after a month or so cluttering up the bedroom I am offering them for sale. FYI, I chose the Selah crossovers after a lot of research, as they were the most highly-regarded of the several options, and I do think they are responsible for a good bit of the excellent sound. As can be seen in the pics, they are simple and layed-out nicely on large boards. There are binding posts that accept spades or bananas on the inputs and the outputs are hard-wired with 3' leads to the speakers for best sound. These have to be local pickup for now, for a few months at least; they would be very complex and expensive to ship. I do have the boxes for the GPA drivers, which protect them well, but not for the baffle parts (because "I knew I'd never sell them"). These are honestly and end-of-the-road speaker system at an extremely low price, I have to say. I went to Axpona last year and the only speaker I'd heard I would have taken over these was the large Hornings which are around $30K. (Not even the field-coil CAR horns did it for me - go figure, and yes I may be deaf.) Cash on pickup preferred; PayPal adds 3% unless Personal option used.
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