For all you Bose 901 Haters!

rankaudio@ magnepan has a great image and stage but the most people dont know how to use them.

Also you never needs a sub with magnepan, magnepan has the most natural bass.

First quit with tube amps and put a big amp on it.

Well, so many ideas come to mind.  First was the hysterical laughing fit we had in my shop when we finally got around to hooking up a pair of these (1974).  I still remember my tummy hurting from laughing so much.  I think we actually fell on the floor and rolled around--we were young in those days.

I had never heard them before and we were going around the room hooking up one pair of speakers at a time for my "education" since, at that age, I "knew everything" of course.  I thought we had them hooked up wrong or something.  NOTHING could sound that bad, especially from a company who's print ads featured very tall young guys dressed in white lab coats with Buddy Holley glasses and clipboards.  Naw, they were just as bad as they sounded.  

Funny, I had a couple of old Mac 275's (I think--long time ago) but we did not hook them up as we were using all Audio Research stuff for this education session.

Whew--funny even now.  But hey, the ads were wonderful, no?

Cheers!

Yes, everyone has a Bose story.  My roommate in college had these. We were both budding audiophiles.  We discovered if you turn them around and play them backward so the drivers are facing you, the imaging improves and they do sound quite good, in a way that most multiple small driver systems can sound.  I might add, in playing them backward you do not have to play them so loud and the overall sound is nonfatiguing.  They just lacked deep bass.

Yes @oldhvymec , my father had Jensen imperials with the flexaire woofers. When he got those I got the realistic Optimus 1s. He loved them. Couldn’t remember The model until I read your post. Thanks. 

I used to work at a mid-fi store that carried Bose in LA during the height of their popularity.

They sucked then, they always sucked, no amount of modern mods can polish those turds.

Lack of detail, flabby bass, and zero imaging and soundstage. 

We carried a cheaply built 'house brand' speaker that outperformed them.