Are Rodgers ls3/5a as good as advertise? & Why

Whatever Stereophile says is written in stone! Give me a break!

They were Stereophile Class D. I didn't see too many readers writing in disagreeing with this rating nor excessive used LS3/5A prices back then. They were cheap speakers back when they were new and cheap speakers don't age like a fine wine. Buying a pair at current used prices would be a horrible investment.

(cont'd)

That isn't to say I wouldn't want a pair. I wish I would have bought 10 pair brand new. Just wouldn't pay 2-4 times their original price for a used pair.

You might have had more responses posting in the Speakers forum instead of the Amps/Preamps Forum.

The Rogers had no real bass and the dynamics were not that great but what they had in spades was that certain je ne sais quoi.

The LS 3/5A was a product of BBC research and development. This was a very important speaker for it's time. The final design was licensed to various British speaker manufacturers that were forced to adhere to strict BBC guidelines. The speaker cabinets were made of different types of wood and took the cabinet resonances into consideration when the crossover was designed. The crossovers were designed so that the speaker to speaker matching was better than 2dB. The cone material, a first for any woofer, (a Kef driver) was a new thermal plastic material called Bextrene and opened the door for other poly (plastic) woofers. For it's day, it was a true miracle worker. Superb imaging and decent bass out of a small woofer. The downside....Because it's bass was lumpy,it was somewhat finicky about coupling to a subwoofer. The Kef T-27 was rather spitty. The mod at the time was to remove the screen over the tweeter, and that did help, but the tweeter was prone to slight compression at reasonable volume. But the worst problem was the speakers miserable sensitivity which was 82dB/1w/1m. Couple that with a maximum power rating of 50 watts and you realize very quickly that this speaker was not designed to play loud. With improvements in materials and technology, this beautifully made speaker is no longer considered the sonic miracle it once was decades ago.