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Snell Type A/II or Type E/III - opinions wanted

Hi,

I've recently been bitten by the Snell bug. My first pair was a nice Type J/IV which I sold to "upgrade" to the highly touted Type E/III. I LOVE these speakers and they didn't cost a mint either! However I want to move up the aisle in vintage snell and have located a pair of Type A/II I could buy. Include the electronic crossover, all the original boxes, and receipts for $1800 worth of recent (last couple of years) mechanical overhaul including caps, surrounds and replacement snell drivers, where needed.

This pair of A/II will cost me a premium though, above what is listed here as average "used", and I may not get much opportunity to demo them beyond making sure they work correctly. My question is will the A/IIs be a significant upgrade to my E/III? I'm hoping someone out there will have experience with both models and will be willing to share?

Thanks in advance!
oktyabr
thorman
1,262 posts
 
If I remember right the A/3 is the easier of the A's to drive..I think the 1 and 2 are a harder load to drive so I would be very carefull and do your homework..I do remember them form many years ago..Wonderfull speaker..They do need a large room though I do remember that.......
ck
101 posts
 
Many years ago I owned a pair of AIII i and they were a great speaker. A couple of things to keep in mind, they really need to be bi-amped to get the best out of them and you will need a big room to get the full benefit from them. When set up correctly they are a great speaker.

What price point are you looking at? These are pretty old and one wonders if some other new speaker would be a better fit.
oktyabr OP
7 posts
 
I've seen the Bs on the 'bay. One pair local pickup only and the other pair after shipping would easily top $2ooo... more than I need to spend if I want to keep "happily" in front of "married".

I can have the A/II for right at $900 and he's willing to take my E/III in exchange... I think right about $400 trade in credit.

My listening room isn't what I would describe as "large" but it's been an adequate home for large Maggies, Vandersteen 2C, Dahlquist (20i & 30) as well as the top of the food chain in vintage AR. I run one Adcom GFA-555mkII, can add a second, but also wonder what the Type A might sound like with McIntosh SS?
oktyabr OP
7 posts
 
As for the age of the speaker, again, these have been recently overhauled, completely. The owner describes them as "better than new"?
alpha220
20 posts
 
I'd agree that it's worth considering a more recent model, unless you really need a model that Peter Snell himself designed.

The models designed by Kevin Voecks, like your J/IV, were very, very well reviewed by Stereophile magazine. In particular, the Type D, which I own and love, and the C/V, which recieve numerous glowing remarks on this board, are both astounding used speaker values. Both models often sell in the $1000 or less range with the D's occasionally dipping into the $600 range.

A set of Type D's is on sale on this board now for $800 -> http://www.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?spkrfull&1275012004

You really should try to give the Type D's and Type C/V's a listen.

The bass goes very low on both. Don't forget that Snell was very strict with frequency response measurements. They used an anechoic chamber and limited their published numbers to usually +/- 2dB (sometimes less!), which is not the industry norm. The Type D was listed as 36Hz to 20kHz +/- 1.75dB anechoic. Stereophile's testing revealed them to be good to "at least 30Hz". The C/V's went even lower.

Finally, the old Snell specifications page that can be found via Google and was posted by Snell several years back contains several incorrect entries, those specifications can not be used reliably.
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