What vintage speaker might you use today

One sonic aspect as heard via some of the vintage speaker designs, their reproduction of bass compared to modern designs, gets an interesting comment in below quote.

[...] all this talk about bass started me thinking about some of the speakers I have reviewed and listened to at audio shows in the last couple of years. A few came to mind: the Burwell & Sons Homage speakers, the big JBL Everest, the incredible sounding RCA LC-1A LS-11 and those wonderful sounding Tannoy Golds mounted in a Jensen Imperial Cabinets turned upside down so that the empty horn part of the cabinet acted as a stand to raise the Tannoy Gold drivers to the right height. Those were in the Pass Labs room at the 2014 California Audio Show.

All of these speakers have several things in common. First, they are all based on or actually are speakers from the mid to late 50s. Second, none of them attempt to play down into the 20s, in fact some don’t make it below 45Hz. Third, they all have very large drivers, most of them have 15-inch bass drivers and the Quad ESL bass panels have around 500 square inches for each speaker. Lastly, while they don’t all sound the same in the bass they all sound wonderfully musical.

There seems to me to be something fundamentally different in the way these speakers play bass compared to modern speakers with their super dead cabinets and incredible fast, tight and really deep bass. While these speakers sound very impressive their bass just doesn’t flow within the performance like these older-design speakers. The bass on these newer speakers is definitely deeper, faster and has more slam, but they just don’t have the life in the bass that the more vintage designs do. All of the speakers above have incredible air and harmonics in the bass. You feel the bass. Yes, you feel the bass with the modern speaker as well, but differently. The bass from modern speakers with extremely dead cabinets has a very pistonic sound. To me, real music seldom sounds this way, occasionally rock music does, but it also often sounds purposefully distorted.

http://www.dagogo.com/beatnik-pet-peeve-3-way-modern-speakers-play-bass

I can attest to the merits of vintage designs incorporating large bass units and their supposed "musical" imprinting. My recently acquired all-horn loaded speakers use 15" bass drivers in folded horns, and are a pretty radical departure from my previous bass reflex-loaded speakers in providing what can actually be described as timbre and tunefulness in the bass with a seamless blend to the mid horn above them. They are specified to reach 56Hz only, a likely reason why many an interested audiophile would probably discount them prior to any audition, but the physicality, effortless power, speed and gently pressurized "wavefront" here presented is so tunefully imbedded in the remaining frequency spectrum above that it makes any preoccupation with bass extension per se seem utterly misplaced. I didn't know that prior to listening to them and how much the quality (and type) of bass could truly matter, so much indeed as to come to eschew most of what I've heard of the typical bass in modern designs with smaller (usually reflex loaded) drivers. I can still enjoy such more modern bass designs for what they are, but it's with the proviso that I probably wouldn't want to own them.

As I was composing my post directly above, Doug posted his. Also well reasoned, I second his recommendation to augment the Quad with a pair of subs. But not just any sub---the GR Research/Rythmik OB/Dipole Sub. It is in some ways similar to the one Gradient designed and offered for the Quad ESL63 in the 80's and 90's, but quite a bit better. It is particularly well suited for dipole loudspeakers, sounding very different from a "normal" sub, no matter the quality. You can read all about it on the GR Research website and in their Audiocircle Forum. Very special!

Ok, this is fun. I don’t even love some of these, but have good memories. Does that make sense?

Klipsch corner horns. These were the first high end speakers I ever heard. It was in 69 at HiFi Stereo House in my home town of Newington, CT. They were run with phase linear and crown gear if I recall correctly. I would love to tinker with the crossovers using new components and internal cabling. I’d also play with the veneer as I work with wood and would have a ton of fun finishing these honking horns (I typically don’t even like horns, lol).

Proac Response 2’s. These were a great speaker in the day. They could be a bit hot on top, but man did they disappear and they did midrange correctly. Very listenable and easy to drive with top tube gear.

Quad.....

ET’s.

JSE infinite slopes. I think it was the 5’s that were the large ones. 5 drivers if I recall. Those really sounded great with modded B&K gear from a store in Bristol CT who specialized in modding the B&K line. Many nights with wine and music in the store, lol.

Of course the last ones would be the Vandersteen 2's with NAD separates from 89.  All being fed from a Sota vacuum TT with a nice Van Den Hul cartridge.  We finally had real cable in 89 too ;)....

My systems are a cross section of my audio history as I find myself unable to part with many favourites.

I've owned and valued Spica Angelus, and still own and use Vandersteen 4A (newer models are simpler with on board amps, albeit more costly), and my second system uses Martin Logan CLS, my 3rd, Energy Reference Connoisseurs.

Any will at least hold their own with current models.

A lot of interesting comments, above, that illustrate how much a particular preference is a matter of taste more so than of particular technology and vintage of the gear.  I found it interesting that Doug Schroeder much preferred the Volti Vittora over the 757s among speakers based on horn-compression drivers.  I like the tonality of the Volti speaker, but, in the three instances that I heard the speakers, they sounded very polite and dynamically dead compared to the compression driver speakers that I personally prefer.  I did not hear the 757s he heard at RMAF, and most of the 757s I've heard were restored/modified, so I don't know if it sounded anything like the 757s that I favor over the Volti.  

I tend to agree with the comments above about the tunefulness of some vintage woofer/enclosures.  Yes, they do not go very deep and deliver the same kind of punch, and I will agree that punch is a plus with some music, but, I will take the trade-off to have the tuneful and "less mechanical" sound of old school bass.

As for the sub-woofer for a Quad, a friend of mine likes the Gradient dipole sub-woofer he uses with a Quad 63.  I haven't heard his setup with the Gradient (he changes out various speakers that as often as most people change underwear and I missed that setup), but I have heard them elsewhere, and they do sound quite natural.  It may be the case that dipole bass would be a better match with dipole speakers like the Quads.  I heard, at a show, BG Radia dipole speakers with the Sound Insight SI 300 sub-woofers, and the combination sounded pretty good.