Pioneer Horn Speakers

schlosman

schlosman

Senior Member
There are some interesting vintage Pioneer speakers on Ebay right now that I'm considering. I almost bought a smaller version a few weeks ago, CS801's, but went for something different that hasn't worked out so I'm looking again. I would drive these with a Marantz 2275. Anybody ever have a chance to hear these? Can anybody venture a guess what these might be worth?


http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=14993&item=1948539572&rd=1

I'm attaching a photo also...

John
 
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I've been checking out the vintage Pioneer speakers as well as other brands myself this week. Although I'm not familiar with this particular Pioneer model, I'd say the price seems high. If you're going to spend that kind of money there's many other "proven performers" currently in that price range that I would go for first, but that's just my opinion.

These are some I'm watching, but probably won't be able to bid on right now...

The Pioneer CS 99A (a vintage classic)
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=14993&item=1948951383

Dahlquist DQM-9 (These are what I use as my main speakers. Incredible!)
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=14993&item=1948532258

The tweeters on that pair of 9's are black, but mine have the stainless steel that matches the rest of the frames. They appear to be the same other than that though. I paid $600 for mine at a local audiophile shop 2 years ago & it was still one of the best audio investments I ever made. They may look small, but they will kick! Very tight deep bass, mellow smooth mids & sweet highs. I run mine with a Sansui 9090DB which is 125 watts per side & they blow everyone away that hears them! GUARUNTEED. ;)

Just some food for thought. Good Luck.
Moon
 
Hey Moondog

Thanks for the advice. I guess I've kind of steered away from the Dahlquist in general because I thought they were real power hogs, and I won't be using a lot of watts to drive these. I was attracted to these Pioneers because I've wanted to try horn speakers. I saw the CS99a's too; I've actually got a set of CS99's now which I really like.

Don't know if you saw these or not, but I believe the founding engineer for this compamny was the chief design guy at Dahlquist before that. These are Alon IV's and they are within driving distance of where I'm at. They're Bi or Tri wireable, and I've got the same issue of whether my current amp will handle these right.
 
As personal opinion only I am not wild about compression drivers and even less so with SS because of the what to me is an overly bright aspect that gives me listening fatigue. The fact that there are 2 compression drivers and 2 metal domed super tweeters would make me steer clear of these. I am also very suseptible to any distortion in the upper ranges and I think that things I can't even hear affect me physically as strange as that seems.
If you have high powered titanium domes in your car and love them these might be right up your alley. If things like that are not to your liking I would take a pass.
 
John - The Sensitivity on the Dahlquist is: 92 dB at 1 KHz. I've run then with a Marantz 4270 that I just sold to Shain & they worked great. Even pushing 2 pairs of speakers.

As for the Alon's... I'm not familiar with them, but I may have to do some research out of curiosity.

I also have to agree with Thatch on the horns in those Pioneers & using a SS receiver. My huntch would be that those would be ear splittingly bright. Not my cup of tea at all.

Moon
 
What are they asking for those Alon's? It says here they listed at $3500!

http://www.alonbyacarian.com/index2.htm

Also the Sensitivity is: 87 dB, so they probably would take some balls to push them right. They look sweet though.

I say if the price is right you might want to grab them & save up for a bigger amp! :p:

Moon
 
Thatch & Moon

You guys make some very good points about these possibly being over bright. I believe I've read somewhere that some of the ealier Japanese made speakers, which were of course developed to Japanese tastes, were set up more to this type of sound. Changes were made later to fit better to Western preferences when they focused on the US market. The info on these 901's is that they were never marketed in this country, and maybe this explains why. Thanks much because I was really ready to jump on these as long as they didn't climb much over $300.

Regarding the Dahlquists, I'm going to take a closer look at these. Thanks again for the info and advice - I owe you guys one!! :wave:
 
MoonDog

What are they asking for those Alon's? It says here they listed at $3500!
Click to expand...

I say if the price is right you might want to grab them & save up for a bigger amp!
Click to expand...


That thought has occurred to me. The other thing - these will be introduced into our newly redecorated living room and they'll have to pass the "Wifability" stamp of approval. I would guess these might get me a :uzi: .

John
 
I'd like to hear the Pioneer CS-901's. I've seen them for sale before, but haven't seen any in person.
It's an interesting piece.

Would like to make a side by side comparison with my CS-99A's.

Had a guy locally, give me a call on a pair of Altec 19's, but $1,500 price was too high for me. Love to have them though, but not at that price.
 
The Pioneer CS-901 has to be the most ridiculous speaker design I have seen. This abomination wasn't engineered - it was speced out by the marketing department. It's just a mindless copy of every speaker cliche they could think of.

Think big woofers are better? Let's stuff a huge 15" driver in a small sealed box.

Think the Altex 604 Duplex is the cat's ass? Let's make the 15" driver a 604 lookalike.

Think Altec 811 horns look neat? Let's mount a big ass plastic sectoral horn on top.

Not as many drivers as the competition? Let's slap on two extra supertweeters for no particular reason.

The ludicrousness of this design is best represented by the use of a coaxial bass driver. The only reason to go for the complexity and cost of a coaxial design is to get the best possible imaging by having the drivers act as a point source. This is completely defeated when you split up the frequency range to play back through three other discretely positioned drivers. Not to mention that the tweeter ends up being positioned 1 foot off the floor.

It reminds me of the Russians when they copied the air intake design of the F4 Phantom. The geometry was designed in part just for carrier operation. The Russians had no clue that was the purpose and copied it literally - even though they had no carriers. It's the same level of cluelessness with this speaker system.
 
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I know. I know. I have to work on communicating my true feelings more directly ;)

I distinctly remember the evolution of the "fretwork grill" Japanese monster speakers of the early 70's. Pioneer, Kenwood, Sansui and others all got into the game of one upmanship. Pioneer would put a 15" driver in their top-of-the-line speaker, Sansui would respond with a 16" driver, and Kenwood would trump them with a 17" driver. They started with three-way systems, one would respond with a four-way system, and soon all were making 5-way systems.

Regardless of the number of cross-over points, score had to be kept on the number of drivers you could mount on a small baffle. These speakers appeared to have all of the science of loading up a cannon with as many drivers that you could stuff down the barrel and firing it at a baffle board. Some of them had as many as 10 drivers in a box not much bigger than a bookshelf model.

What bothered me was that none of this was driven by accoustics or engineering. It was strictly visual marketing. These companies had such a low opinion of their customers that they believed bigger and more could be sold as the only measures of better.

These systems sounded as good as they looked. These weren't called "Kabuki" speakers for nothing. You could play Led Zeppelin through them and it came out sounding like kabuki music. Bass - forget it. I remember listening to a Sansui 16" bass driver system at length. I've heard mini monitors with deeper bass. The upper octaves were no better.

Fortunately, this state of affairs did not last that long. By the mid to late 70's, some truly excellent speakers were coming out of Japan. The Pioneer HPM series comes to mind, same with the Technics SB series, and my personal favorite, the Yamaha NS1000M.
 
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I'm under the impression that Japanese drivers were well engineered. Hmmm. Perhaps those Pioneers would be worth it for those 15" co-axes if the price didn't go too high. Maybe one could do something interesting with those drivers.
 
Originally posted by Tom Brennan
I'm under the impression that Japanese drivers were well engineered. Hmmm. Perhaps those Pioneers would be worth it for those 15" co-axes if the price didn't go too high. Maybe one could do something interesting with those drivers.
Click to expand...

Go back to the original auction page and click on "enlarge image" for the first picture. There you will see that the HF part of the coax is just a small tweeter glued to the pole piece in behind the horn. They even have to run the leads for the tweeter through the bass cone. From this, it would appear that the coax cannot work standalone and has to have a separate midrange driver. The small tweeter would never make it down to the cutoff frequency of the 15" bass cone.
 
Man those yamahas look like newer black pieces of crap, but they have a good reputation and a following.
 
Tom Brennan said:
I'm under the impression that Japanese drivers were well engineered. Hmmm. Perhaps those Pioneers would be worth it for those 15" co-axes if the price didn't go too high. Maybe one could do something interesting with those drivers.
Click to expand...

Interesting design but built rather lightweight. Many pairs (Including the pair I bought on FleaBay) are Dead because the horn tweeters are broken off due to careless handling.
:scratch2:
 
I missed it before, but enjoyed the reading anyways.

Don pretty much nailed it on the head - Marketing should not design audio systems!!!

Ron
 
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