Whatever Happened to Snell?

I've been using a pair of EIII's since 1988 and I love them.
Recently I decided to upgrade to improve the soundstage - the room is also part of the problem. I listened to some
Vienna Mozarts and Energy Veritas 2.3. The imaging was much
better than my EIII's, but the speakers - especially the
Mozarts - sounded quite strained when played loudly. I like
to listen to high volume blues, jazz & rock, as well as
classical and ethnic music. When I auditioned the Snell XA60
I was totally impressed with their accuracy and efortless
reproduction. Imaging is also a great improvement over the
EIIIs. However, the overall quality of the sound - balance,
dinamics, etc. was definitely reminiscent of the older Snells.
The bottom line is that although the company has gone through some changes, it still has the same philosophy and
approach (it seems to me) in making its speakers. It is
unfortunate that they do not advertise more and do not have
a larger number of dealers. Their product and customer
service is top notch. I would venture to say that they blow
out of the water some pretty high profile competitors. To
my ears, my EIII's more than hold their own against newer,
more expensive designs.

I bought a pair of Snell e-5's in march 2000. I have
owned JBL 150's in 1980's and Bose 901 series 5. Also
own Paradigm Monitor 9's. My buddy has Klipsch C30?

In my opinion the Snell's are the best. They must have
time to be broken in and run by powerful high quality amp that will push low impedence to sound the best.

I hope they stay around for a while. I did hear they
were taken over by Boston and drivers are the same as
in REVELs. Don't know if that is true.

Both Snell AND Boston are famous for controling product quality via strict manufacturing engineering practices.
The question isn't whether Boston can maintain Snell's quality, it's whether they choose to meet the higher price points and pay attention to proper voicing (not their forte).

I have a pair of Snell type A series II that I've had for several years. They've been my favorite speaker ever since I heard them in the mid-'80s, and I jumped at the chance to buy a pair of used ones when they popped up. I'm sure there are greater speakers out there but for the money I'm really pleased with mine.

I'm also fairly local to Snell and I've had them in to the factory once to have the tweeters replaced; one was blown when I bought them. There's only one guy there in the shop who was around when the Type A's were current, and he worked on mine. His name is Mark Malin (may have the last name a little wrong but it's close) and he seems to know what he's doing and is conscientious. When mine were in, he went through them top to bottom and found and replaced a marginal fuse holder and defective binding post, fixed the veneer, etc. I think I got charged a fair amount for the parts and labor and was treated well.

When I was there, I talked at length to the folks in the "new regime". They freely admitted that the only person there that really knew anything about speakers as old as mine was Mark. And, they didn't have any documentation on the design of the Type A or the crossovers etc, This surprised me; that kind of stuff is the lifeblood of a technical company. Their story was that Peter Snell took a lot of technical details with him when he died suddenly. However, I've heard from another Snell owner that's had a lot of contact with them, that just before they got bought by Boston Acoustics they had a "hard drive problem" and lost almost all of their technical and customer data. That seems believeable to me, though I'd hope that it was truly accidental and not deliberate or sabotage.

I got hold of Kevin Voecks at one point to talk about crossover points for the electronic crossover (I'd like to bi-amp but Snell has no information about the EC-2 crossover used with the Type A2's). He was as helpful as he could be - I didn't get all of the information I needed but he gave me what he had. Considering that I was asking about an ancient product that represents a competitor to Revel, it was a nice gesture.

I echo the sentiments of the previous poster who indicated that Boston Acoustics is also a quality-minded company. I agree with that; I've been pleased with products I've owned or used from them in the past. So, I don't think Snell quality will suffer from being bought by Boston Acoustics.

VAM