Hey, a few of us tried.....

In all honesty, these are rather eclectic speakers to begin with.
Folks who might have knowledge of them would likely not be frequent registered visitors here.

Have you tried hitting some vintage/diy type forums?

By the way, you did read my signature, didn't you? ; )

Best of luck with your search.

Bill - on the Hill
Practicing Curmudgeon & Audio Snob
- just an “ON” switch, Please –

Perhaps you got no replies simply because no one knew anything about them.
That seems rather likely, in the case of something so unusual.

No need to get so defensive.

If you really want to see heads roll, say Sansui SP, Bose 901, or I like Yamaha speakers and I'm not a recording engineer. All of which have thier audiophile merits and with proper setup and good amplification often sound as natural and balanced as the flavor of the week Wilson/B&W/Spendor etc. and are cheap enough to buy and if you don't like them just sell them and get your money back.

The ugly truth of this end of the hobby is that if it's not an affordable integrated amplifier, and preferably British, nothing under a grand gets taken very seriously by many many people in this business. Do the Chinese, Japanese, Germans, and yes Americans and Canadians make great tube and solid state integrateds under or around a grand and certainly under or around 2k? Of course they do.

If you want a hobby where the entry level is APPRECIATED FOR WHAT IT IS as much as the balls to the walls get out of the way stuff, drive sports cars. MOST car guys just love cars that go fast and handle well. They don't care if it's a Honda Civic, and old Datsun, or a new Aston. It's just how they are wired. Understand though, what happens inside a car, aside from the computer technology, is understandable to most people because its basically pretty simple and hasn't changed THAT MUCH in 110 years.

What happens inside a black box with a silver faceplate, while also pretty simple and fundemental to an electrical engineer, might as well be fucking magic to the AVERAGE audiophile. So the prettier the box and faceplate, the more VALUE they will ascribe to it. Do you think that having $5 op amps that have near the current handling, faster slew rate, and comparable thermal handling abilities than the BEST discrete amplifier stages of 20 years ago has made the preamp section of a $500 integrated sound WORSE? That's just silly. You have to have a 12ax7/6sn7/6sl7 (some would even say 2a3/300b as a preamp/driver) with a VERY clean power supply to match the clarity and linearity of a modern wideband op amp. Engineers didn't use complex class A transistor sections through the 70's and 80's because they WANTED to. They did it because they were told the tube was dead and that was the only way to make a transitor section that sounded REMOTELY like tubes! Duh! Do you think that Mark Levinson really made a much better an amp in the late 70's and early 80's than David Hafler and Nelson Pass? Well, do you? David Hafler practically invented the high end solid state amplifier. He just didn't put a half inch faceplate and garishly over designed and completely useless handles on that faceplate. Don't believe me? Go get yourself a DH-200/220 or 500, check the DC offset, and turn the bias up from the normal 140-200ma to 240-400. Now, you've made yourself a little space heater - but suddenly those Levinsons don't sound so impressive. And you are out a couple hundred bucks and an afternoon of your time.

The point I'm making as a young tube lover who is currently using fairly inexpensive solid state stuff right now, is you can take with a grain of salt allot of what you read in this magazine and on this forum if you understand, however basically, Ohms law, you can differenciate snake oil from engineering. And WHY some amps/cables/termination connections/phono cartridges etc sound better - regardless of cost.

I have have been designing and building and listening to amplifiers for over 50 years, and have pretty much been there and done that...no matter what. Naturally I started with tube designs, since that's what we had.

I can tell you this; there are some pretty good solid-state amplifiers around for only $600-800 or so, and there are almost NO tube amplifiers that are worth spit IMO for under $2000.

The Music Hall 15.3 and NAD C326BEE, for example, are inexpensive and sound very good. Almost any tube amplifier you can get for under $2000 has output transformers that are too small, very little bass, and just plain not enough power for the vast majority of speakers.

If you want to spend $4000 to $9000, you can get some great tube amplifiers that sound fabulous and have enough power, but trying to go to tubes on the cheap is a losing proposition.

I have an Audio Research LS-26 tube preamp and a Musical Fidelity M6PRX power amp to drive my Vandersteen Treos, and the sound is to die for. I have had excellent tube amps, but I will never go there again; too much grief, lousy reliability in most cases, and not enough clean bass.

The sound quality of the $3500 M6PRX amplifier is right up there with the very best of the tube amplifiers that cost 2 to 3 times as much. And, of course, you will spend several hundred dollars every year buying new tubes to keep the tube amp properly tuned up.

And one more thing; I have found that anything John Atkinson says is 100% on target every time. His reviews and measured results on equipment are so much better than any other resource I am aware of that there is no comparison. Lots of luck trying to improve on his knowledge of all things audio. You don't need any salt with his opinions.

I had posted a question about integrated amps and was seriously considering a lower priced Yamaha. I was familiar with Yamaha's amplifiers and pre-amps from the mid 90's which sounded darn good. I ended us with Carver, largely because I wanted surround sound but walked away with a very favorable opinion of Yamaha. In response to my forum post, some folks gently encouraged me to listen to others and some folks were more blunt in there opinions that Yamaha is not what it was in the 90's.

My thought was everyone out here just hates Yamaha because it is a big, Japanese company that sells stuff at Best Buy. I was wrong.

In the end I listened to a Yamaha, Onkyo and NAD integrated amps at one dealer in an A-B environment powering speaker I like very much and know are neutral - the Sunfire CRS line. I walked away completely impressed with NAD and was shocked and a bit horrified at the relative mediocrity of the Yamaha's and Onkyo's. In all fairness, both sounded much better driving Polk speakers but in the end, I am not a huge fan of the Polk RTi's. My long winded point is, after listening, a lot of folks here make good points and I agree that the Yamaha and coincidentally Onkyo, sounded like crap.

I would not say that these forums are without snobbery. I can think of examples but am certain I am just as guilty and am blind to it so I will opt against throwing stones here.

But in the end, people post and get very good advice on systems ranging from hundred's of dollars to tens of thousands of dollars. I think everyone here really wants to do their very best to help people engage in a hobby we are all passionate about.

In the case of those Philco speakers, I am glad you posted even though I was really not familiar with them. It is always great to know about these little gems in case I stumble across them in my wanderings. You never know when you will stumble across a real gem at a tag sale.