Smaller Advents, fried green/orange egg tweeters and serial numbers (!)

[musicallowb]

G'day all!

I have spent the morning going thru the Advent forums to make sure I wasn't asking qustions that had been answered already. There are some partial answers to my questions, but if anyone has definitive (as much as can be with vintage speakers) answers to these questions, I would greatly appreciate your input! I'll try not to be too long winded :-)

I have just recently returned to collecting vintage speakers. After years of being away I picked up a set of Smaller Advents @ a resale shop for $20 for the pair. One had a damaged tweeter, the other was perfect; woofers were refoamed, and it looks like a very good job.

The cabinets are different in appearance. The vinyl on one is darker than the other. The darker vinyl cabinet has a black painted baffle, the other is plain particle board. The broken tweeter in black baffle cab is stamped "May 8 1973", plain baffle cab tweeter is stamped "May 3 1974". Both tweeters have the smaller magnets, yet the black baffle cab has a larger tweeter cutout to fit the Large Advent tweeter. Plain baffle cab has a smaller, round cutout that won't accomodate the larger magnet tweeter without modification. So my questions are as follows:

1) Does anybody know....which came first - the smaller magnet assembly, or the larger one? I assume the larger magnet tweeter is more forward sounding than the smaller one. I have two extra tweeters. Both have large magnets, but no dates stamped on them. And one is green, one is orange.

I'm trying to match up the system to be as even as possible, but I don't know which tweeter version I should go with. I like the brighter sound of the larger magnet tweeters, but I don't want to overpower the woofers. And before I alter the cab with the smaller hole, I'd like to know which version is earlier (tweeters that were in there may not be original ones, so can't go by their dates).

2) Did one have a better x-over version than the other? I havent removed the woofers yet to look at the x-overs, so I don't have values yet.

3) Was there a difference between the green and orange tweeters with same size magnets, larger or smaller?

4) Are the cabinets any different in build quality besides the baffle color being different?

Okay...I think that's all for now. Thanks for your answers in advance!

[Doug G.]

Hello,

1. The smaller magnet tweeters are earlier and the way the Smaller Advents were originally designed. The smaller magnet made it less efficient which matched the woofer better.

Evidently, later on there was some rethinking or feedback from the field and they installed the larger magnet tweeters in some of the Smaller Advents.

As you have speculated, the larger magnet tweeters would, of course, sound more forward.

2. I don't believe there were ever any changes in the Smaller Advent crossover but I'm not 100% sure about this.

3. This is one of the most vexing questions about Advents. Green vs. orange. There seems to be a general concensus that the green ones are more subdued than the oranges but I don't know. I have a pair of large Advents with green tweeters from 1975 and sometimes I think I can hear this difference between them and my other pairs, which have orange tweeters, and sometimes I don't think I can.

4. Probably not any difference. The different baffle colors were very common even with very close serial numbers.

Doug

[musicallowb]

Thanks for the info, Doug! That helped put things in perspective a bit. I was perplexed because the cabinet with the smaller tweeter hole and plain baffle had a larger serial number (S 128473) than the black baffle with large magnet tweeter (S 127961). Oh well...life's little mysteries. Now if only I could find a KLH Model Twenty Three spec sheet or brochure...