ADS L710 Adventure

Stopped by a thrift yesterday (my rant under "General") and saw some ADS L710. Cosmetically 5/10. One had the tweeter missing, woofers were partially unscrewed broken speaker terminal and missing fuse holder. The other was complete. Both had one woofer doorbelled. Decided to pass. Went by today and they were still there so I decided to grab them. They also had a Sony V-77 receiver that a worker was fiddling with. No Sound. Took a look. Speakers weren't properly connected then saw the jumpers were missing. As it turned out there was a gentleman next to him talking on a cell phone who wanted it. I tried to explain the jumpers while he was on the phone. Asked the guys in back for some RCA plugs. Hooked them up and Voila! Gentleman was still on the phone but asked why I was helping. I just shrugged. In line with the speakers when the man with the receiver came up to me and said he didn't want me to be insulted but he was on the phone with his worker's comp aide and it was important. He then shoved some money at me. I told him no way but he insisted. Five ones (his Sony was $9.99). Was in line with my favourite cashier. Showed her the price on one speaker and no price on the other with missing tweeter so she sold me both for one price and gave me the senior discount . Final cost $3.51 . My first ADS but will probably part them out unless I find a cheap tweeter and they check out good.

nice! it just so happens that i have a spare from a pair of L810's that would work nicely. i'd be happy to send it your way as i have found no need for it in more than 2 years.

Hakka,

You need to start playing the lottery....

Sounds like you had a very good day.
I picked up a pair of L810's at a thrift store.
They replaced my KG-4's.
ADS made some fine speakers.
Those are nice speakers,worth rebuilding.

Congrats Hakka, this is getting old! O.C. has legions of audio hunters but you just keep on scoring!!

I'd part the L-710 and make some dough. Dull sounding even when working right. I used to have a pair of L-810's (also a thrift score) and they sounded like a wet blanket was covering them. Not sure if the treated silk domes or the dual woofers are the offenders but more likely a combo of both. Also, the woofers bottomed out too easily.

I almost chased the guy down to give him the $1.50 change. Took a look at them this evening. Three not two woofers were dented. Both woofers in the bad cabinet were cut loose. I'll test those and give a listen to the complete unit. That'll hep me decide whether to resuscitate or pull the plug. Cabs are rough and grill cloths are ragged. Boxes are heavy then I found out why with the divider and the crossovers are rather substantial.

Here's a look at the project. I had tightened some of the screws on the woofers. Had a couple machine screws as replacements.

Attached Image (Click thumbnail to expand)

Those look like the cloth grill version.

they dont look to be in too bad condition. other than dented dustcaps the drivers look good. cloth grills are easy to recover if you go that route.

Easy to re-vinyl with the quality, but affordable vinyl from parts express.

For the price you'd pay for them they look awesome.

I have a pair in my living room as rears that I bought from a guy on ebay last year. They are good speakers. From my experience with ADS speakers, I never noticed an issue with them "bottoming out".

You can hear bottoming as a mechanical noise at the start of a bass note. I've heard or owned at least a dozen models and half of them had this problem. If you pull the woofer, it is cheaply made with a small magnet and minimal excursion.

This post has been edited by socal sam on May 04, 2009 05:22 pm

I too, have experienced the "bottoming out" with my L1230s.

I "corrected" it by stepping up to a high current, powerful amp. It's in my experience that the lesser amps lose control of the speaker.

I'd have thought a more powerful, faster amp would have been worse- and I dunno if it makes any sense or not, but I've experienced and heard it, and so have friends, it with numerous amp swaps.

Later aDs speakers are supposedly re-designed to avoid this bottoming.



NOTE- it took a lot to get them to do this. Levels I use infrequently as to not damage my hearing. Normal and above normal (but not deafening) listening volumes resulted in no issues

There are very few other speakers I have bottomed out. I did bottom out a pair of HPM-100's on a SX-1980 at ridiculous volume and power. I also had a pair of worn JBL's that bottomed easily. That's it! I've heard too many ADS woofers bottom to discount as an one off occurance.