Why so little discussion about Snell ?

I know this thread is ancient. Just came across it looking for some other info on Snell.

Sad story, I feel. Such great stuff. I remember when I was just getting into audio as a kid and saw Peter Snell demo the Type A. So many great speakers, and so many that are still excellent today. The K, the J, the E, the D, the C. Of course, there are variants in all those types. The E/II and E/III, and Cis and C/Vs, and As are the ones I'm most familiar with. I've lived a long time with the E/IIs, Cis, and C/Vs. The C/Vs were very difficult for me. It was hard to make them work, when they did, though, they were marvelous. The Cis and E/IIs are brilliant. When thinking about smaller speakers, I often will look at Ks or Js.

I needed a new tweeter fuse holder for my C/Vs and visited the shop in Peabody as it was closing. Sad. Lights pretty much out.

The crew at Snell was great, too. Always very personable and helpful. I remember Wally, though he may not remember me.

About their commercial success... Snell speakers were always highly well critically reviewed. Always on the margin.

May their great products live on and on.

Snell lasted a long time after he died, but the original models by Peter were the best. I suspect he would be a force today had he not died.

Nice car.

Snell's heyday was in the 80s...when their C series was a Stereophile fave...at a cost of 2k roughly 30 years ago...a fair sum back then...we had a pair in our house when I was growing up...and stayed in our family for 20 years...however, even with Belles amplification...I was never overly impressed with their performance...a good product for sure...just not a truly great one IMHO...solid company with a rich history...

I owned a pair of Snell E-II for about twenty years and loved every minute with them. They were a part of my first steps into higher-end audio... built, voiced and sold as a matched pair; and with a +- 1.75dB rating, pretty accurate. They were the speakers that were with me in my young adult years and hold a special place in my memories.

I'm still happy after all these years with my Type B pair, bought new when they first came out. They do so many things really well that I have no desire to screw up my system by trying any other speakers. They are really nice-sounding full-range speakers that are easy to place in any room I've had them in. Acoustic bass is my favorite jazz instrument, especially when played by artists like Ray Brown, Niels Henning Orsted Pedersen, or the tragically short-lived master of the bow, Paul chambers. The B's are able to bring the full power and glory of the bass to life. Their SOUNDSTAGE IS HUGE when it is meant to be, and small and intimate when the recording was made in a small venue.

They have stood up well to time. I recently had to replace the woofs, though the fault was all mine (testing new amps with Telarc's 1812 Overture for the first time in years, I forgot about the real canon). The speaker shop checked out all the components on the x-overs. I had them updated with Cardas Patented Binding Posts for a noticeable improvement in bass & imaging. They sounded great on 100w Atmaspheres before their recent demise, and now sound very nice, but in different ways, with a 600w D-Sonic mini-monster that has replaced them.

A lot of older speakers really show their age in systems set-up with tweaks and cabling and clean AC, most of which were not in general use 25 years ago when they came out, but the B's just get better and better when given new gear. I ran them for 20 years with a biwire pair of Cardas' then best speaker cables at $2400 for 4 1/2m legs of hand-crafted Rhodium-plated cables that stayed in until I couldn't resist a biwire set of poeima ii all-silver ribbons with the bass run thicker than the highs. Wires like these just never existed when these speakers were being designed, yet they were like a match made in Heaven for the B's. For more than 20 years, the better I make my system, the better these old-timers sound.