silverfacestereo

These are neat. I found them for sale not far from me and had to go take a look. I was impressed and they came home.

The A200s are huge 3-way speakers and measure 41″x21″x6″ – tall, wide and thin. The top of the Boston Acoustic A line, they were meant to be placed against walls, and the shallow and wide construction was said to aid in sound dispersion. I read somewhere that Boston made these as their ‘no compromise’ speaker. I have to agree from a construction standpoint, these are top-notch. The oak veneer is thick and well-made. The grilles are an attractive tan cloth, and on my pair, in perfect condition.

The sound is great. These are 3-ways, with a 10″ woofer, 4″ mid and a SEAS tweeter, at least in my early model – later models had a proprietary dome tweeter. Rated at about 90db/w at one meter, these should be pretty efficient too.

At first they went into my living room, where all these pictures were taken. They produced clear and honest sound. I was never extremely smitten with them, however. My conclusion was that they were too much speaker for the room – they were pretty close together on a narrow wall, and at lower volumes they didn’t seem to work too hard. At higher volumes they came alive however, pushing out increased bass and reaching up high. Eventually they went into storage – they were pretty but I was getting bored, and they were big. It wasn’t easy to move them around (they weigh 60lb apiece) so they stayed hidden.

I pulled them out to demo for a potential buyer in my basement, which is a much more ideal listening environment. We put on some symphonic music and stood back. They were much more enjoyable than I remembered – at standing height you’re facing the mids and tweeters and the low woofer placement makes for a big sound. The highs and mids were full, and with some watts the bass  reached down low and stayed accurate. I switched to a pair of Polk Monitor 7Cs in the room with me and it was as if I’d dropped a beach towel in front of the speakers. The 200s gained a reprieve.

I began to re-think the 200s, and impressed with their performance in my basement, considered swapping my Polk Monitor 7As out for my front surround HT speakers – these speakers are also my go-to for music listening in the basement. There is just enough room on either side of my projection screen to fit these in, and with their spotless veneer and tan grilles, fit in to the decor well.

I bought some upgraded 5-way binding posts for the 200s to swap out the old-school screw posts currently on the back. When I pulled out the woofer on one of the speakers to take a look inside, I made an important discovery – replacement woofers!

!!!!!!

!!!!!

My ostensibly original Boston A200s were butchered!

!!!!

The surrounds on the Boston A line speakers all deteriorate and have to be replaced, and evidently one of the owners before me decided not to do a refoam and purchased replacement drivers from Parts-Express. I looked online and found the new drivers right away – GRS 10″ woofers, which are indeed available on Parts-Express. When I read their specs, I was struck that the efficiency of the new woofer is about 87db/watt, much lower than the stated 90db/watt of the A200 overall. Could this be why to my ears it takes a lot of power to ‘wake up’ these speakers – the woofers need more juice to perform? So one mystery was solved, but another dilemma was opened – should I try to bring these speakers back to original condition, leave as-is, or try to find a more suitable replacement woofer? Surfing the forums, it seems that a Dayton Classic 10″ woofer is almost a perfect drop-in replacement for the original. Some day I may take the plunge. However since I already like the sound of these and intend on using them paired with a subwoofer for HT and music duty anyway, I’m not in any hurry. And they do sound amazing as-is – when they have a few watts behind them the walls do shake!

~ by silverfacestereo on December 27, 2012.

Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: Boston Acoustic A200, speaker, woofer