Historical

One day last year, my friend Larry and I were talking about our college-fraternity days and loudspeakers. Those were four of the best years of my life. Strong friendships were formed, and ever since, we've kept in touch with most of our fraternity's brothers-in-heart. Ours was not a jock house, nor was it the last bastion of rampant male sexuality—it was, after all, an MIT frat house. But it was full of music lovers who fell neatly into three camps: the California School owned JBL Decades, the New England School had Smaller Advents, and the Renegades boasted bootlegged Bose 901s (footnote 1).

Editor's Note: Those of us who cut our engineering teeth on tubes still remember the advent of the solid-state amplifier with mixed feelings. Yes, they were lighter and cheaper per watt than the thermionic hulks we loved so much, but they broke all the time (thanks to the germanium transistor) and sounded like—well, let J. Gordon Holt tell us what they sounded like in an "As We See It" article from Vol.1 No.10, first published in May 1965. We also develop the theme with a JGH review of an early transistorized amp, as well as a selection of readers' letters from the early days of Stereophile. Enjoy.—John Atkinson

First I should clear up what may be an ambiguity in the driver-lineup spec for these speakers. In each system, three 8" cone units serve as woofers. Two of these crossover from the midrange drivers at 100Hz. Crossover to the third 8-incher, the subwoofer, is at 40Hz. Thus, two woofers are active from 100Hz down to 40Hz, and all three are active below 40. In other words, the third woofer does not come into play until the frequency drops to the point where the radiating area of two 8-inchers starts to become inadequate for moving air, at which point the additional area of the third speaker is thrown in. Below 40Hz, all three are working together.

The Bozak Concert Grand is a loudspeaker dreams are made of. I was just a boy, but I remember to this day the impressive pictures of them in Audio magazine. I thought they must be the best loudspeakers ever made because they were so big—they would let more of the music come out. I suspect the Bozaks beckoned to me in some primal way, just as those giant construction trucks do—the ones that have tires bigger than a man.

On Friday morning, March 25, 2005, my friend Maura Rieland, Stereophile's show coordinator through the second half of the 1990s, e-mailed me to say that she had just learned of the passing of Ken Nelson.

Quad: The Closest Approach
by Ken Kessler. Cambridge, England, UK: International Audio Group Ltd., 2003. Hardcover, 12" square, 215 pp. ISBN 0 954 57420 6.
Available from: Quad dealers or IAG America, 15 Walpole Park South, Walpole, MA 02801. Tel: (508) 850-3950.