Spent the day demoing these three classic speakers for a potential customer. Which would you choose?
JBL L300
Pioneer HPM 200
B&W 801 Matrix
Spent the day demoing these three classic speakers for a potential customer. Which would you choose?
JBL L300
Pioneer HPM 200
B&W 801 Matrix
Never heard the big Pioneer...
I'd probably go with the Matrix. You had 'em all there... what did you think?
Widget
I'd only be guessing- but I'd say the 801 all the way (for me). I've heard them and they are very dynamic- yet they have all the qualities of a "modern" day high end speaker. I liked them. I can see why they are popular.
Keep us posted. Those are all quite nice!
The L300 will hold it's value for some time to come- probably increase, actually. I can't say that about the 801's.
No question in my mind. Newer, more technically advanced, metal dome tweeter, eats power, loved 'em the first time I heard them.
The others have some strengths, but the B&W is great soundingtop to
Out.
The surprise is the big Pioneers. They were made in So. Calofornia for pioneer as an attack on speakers like the JBL L200/300 and the large Infinities, ect...very unique speaker an honest effort not just a copy of an L100....
Check the two high frequency drivers.
Oh, I remember them and even have a brochure on them in my files... I just don't remember ever hearing them. Sonically do you like them as well as the others though?
Widget
I guess the word is surprise... you would expect a fairly open sound with the 360 degree dispersion from the tweeter and supertweeter. and yes the sound is very out of the box much like the B&W. The bass is quite full and very well damped much like the old infinities of the time, no boxyness at all.
It was great having them all in the same room together for the last few months, even though I have owned the Pioneers for nearly twenty years I hadn't listened to them until about three months ago. I took them in on trade for a pair of Klipsch cornerhorns when we were a klipsch dealer and just put them in the wharehouse and there they sat.
I took a quick look at eBay to see if there had been any HPM 200s recently just for kicks... I'd expect the L300s get more cash... though the HPM 200 is a rare beast... I did see something I had forgotten about. The HPM 150. As I recall it came out a year later or so.
Widget
My first question would have been , What gear did you audition them on?
I'd still like to know as does probably the rest of the crew
Regards
Michael
The Preamp I have been using for the last twenty years for evaluation is a Denon PRA 2000Z. It was part of their audiophile series in Japan and is an extreemely well designed and executed solid state preamp with a great phono section. It is setup right not with a Rotel power amp and a newer denon CD player, both hold their own but not up to the level of the preamp.
The preamp usually powers the Beveridge electrostatics that are sittinin the same room, they have their own amps.
I looked at the picture before I read the text and I was going to ask if that was a Beveridge... I never heard that design, but the tubular Model 3's were some of the first speakers that I ever heard that really stunned me.... they were so much more detailed and natural sounding than anything I had heard before.
Are the Beveridges your primary loudspeakers?
Widget
They were at my home until recent remodel.
The HPM200s are good for a very good reason. They were designed by a team headed by Bart Locanthi... who left JBL in the early 1970s, to head up Pioneer's loudspeaker division.
Between about 1975 and 1981, there were some extremely impressive products from Pioneer in the HPM and S series, under the expertise of Locanthi. After Pioneer decided to become more "mass market" in the USA and discontinued the HPM and S series lines, these products became the genesis of the TAD pro-sound division (which still makes state-of-the-art speaker drivers and such) and the Executive high-end speaker line (which apparently still makes high-end products, for the Japanese domestic market).
I've done a refurbishment job on a pair of the HPM200s... and I have to say, that they are some of the most impressive speakers I've heard, from anywhere near that time. This may sound like heresy... but I'd take them, in a minute, over L200s or L300s... the HPM200s just have smoother sonic balance, tighter bass, and more open imaging soundstaging and imaging than the L200/L300, while giving quite good dynamics...
BTW: The Matrix 801 would be at the BOTTOM of the list for me. Just no control on the bottom, compared to the Pioneer or the L300. If it were a pair of Matrix 802s (dual 8" instead of the IMHO "sloppy" 12" bass driver), then it'd be a much harder decision to not choose them. The 802 was a simply fantastic speaker. Too bad B&W doesn't make anything THAT good, anymore...
Regards,
Gordon.
Those Pioneers do look lovely.
I read somewhere else that the two 10" drivers have different surrounds. One being configured as a sub-woofer and the other a mid-driver. So a five way speaker then.
I doubt there are any of these in the UK but I have added them to my drool list anyway just in case. One mght turn up one day.
Same surround... just one of them has a mass ring (ala AR, etc) on the cone, making it a "sub woofer".Originally Posted by messengerman
Both woofers go "all the way down" in bandwidth from the crossover, but the "subwoofer" has a lower low-pass frequency than the "midbass-woofer" 10". So, I guess you could call it a "4.5 way" speaker.
Regards,
Gordon.
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