Bose 901's with "highend ancillaries"??


I STILL see Bose 901's are available here and maybe new after umpteen years in existence and yet I have still never hear a pair (unless you count the occasional high school concert which used the professional version).

Has anyone ever used these with "highend" gear, and if so what was the result??

Just curious if there is actually something good about the speaker other than the marketing the Bose Corporation has done over the years as they have never been inexpensive and even now hold their value pretty well.

And while I ma sure one can do better for the $$$ etc etc I am only looking for comments on how they actually SOUND - strengths and weaknesses
jrinkerptdnet
I was never that impressed with 901s...like some have mentioned...bloated bass and virtually no treble extension...some prefer this type of "dark" sound...personally I wouldn't bother with them on the used market...much better products to be had...the EQ design another major flaw
Kartikeyp I have heard all those you mentioned except for the silver lines. Imo the tannoy prestige is the one to go for. Close second for me would be the devores and a distant third the coincidents. Coincident has a different presentation, more detailed and lean which I find isn't emotionally engaging. Ymmv
Thanks Analogluvr. Surprised to hear that coincident are lean. But your feedback will be a great help as I am looking at more musical and involving sound. Good to hear you are enjoying Tannoys. Actually out of all the above mentioned speakers, Tannoy is the only brand available in my country. But they are yet to introduce the Prestige series here. I have requested audition for Tannoy DC 10 Ti with a local dealer. I've heard DC 10 Ti sound would be pretty close to prestige series. Although it doesn't have driver with Alnico magnet. Will keep you posted on my experience.
I owned a pair of Series I back in the day and a couple of years ago I bought a new pair of Series VI to play with. Without a long and lengthy explanation, they are not very good at all. The Series Is were much better than the new series, so they have gone downhill from their origins. As much as I wanted to like them, they just don't even do one thing well anymore. I cannot recommend them at all, for any use.

09-04-15: Mapman
I also saw a sizeable rack of new issue old title records there mostly in the $30-$40 range and higher, and a lot of new entry level turntables at various more reasonable price points I thought. I guess if you buy the expensive records you get to buy a turntable for a fairly reasonable cost.
That has always been the predominant business model for hi-fi, photography, and other markets where the makers discovered that the ongoing money's in the software.

An early example was when Eastman Kodak went from making state-of-the-art cameras to Bakelite-cased Brownies with a plastic fixed-focus lens. They wanted to get cameras in the maximum number of hands because, once there, they needed a steady supply of film and processing.

We think of the $30-40 premium audiophile pressings as the expensive records, and they are a bit higher than average, but if you run the figures through an inflation calculator, $30 for an LP today is equivalent to $4.20 in 1967, just slightly on the high side when I bought 'em for about $3.50-4.00.

Today the LPs are the luxurious purchase over cheap and lossy-compressed crappy downloads. It seems like people have figured turntables are "about $100" for the last 40 years with no adjustment for inflation. Plus the hardware is competing with flatscreen TVs, cable bills, smartphone bills, Beats headphones, smart phones, computers, game consoles, Blu-ray players, surround sound HT systems, and many other forms of on-demand portable entertainment that didn't exist 40 years ago.