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Yamaha NS1000M Help, Advice, PLEASE

Hello all. I purchased a nice pair of the legendary Yamaha NS1000M today. I got a good deal on them, and I actually bought them with the intention of trading them for a nice pair of Planar speakers. Then I made the mistake of hooking them up. Oh my. These things are wonderful. Perhaps the ugliest speaker ever made, but truly astonishing sound. I hate to say it, but in some ways superior to my (formerly) unassailable Meadowlark Shearwater "Hotrods". Enough background. I have several questions.

1. This pair was made in 1981 (original stickers still on the rear), and they use the old-style spring-loaded terminals. I hate those things. Will it ruin the value or be a bad idea to install a nice pair of WBT 5-way binding posts or similar?

2. If keeping the original terminals is best, what type of speaker wire should I use? The darn things won't accept anything heavier than bare 14 ga. wire. Is there an audiophile wire designed for this application, or am I relegated to the ole Radio Shack "zipcord"?

3. This pair has the black ash finish, and they are not attractive. Would it be a bad idea (or affect the value) to have the cabinets refinished and stained a medium cherry or oak?

4. The 12" woofers are dirty; really dirty. Is there a way to get behind the metal mesh covers to clean them up? My vacuum will get some of it, but I really need to run a tacky cloth over them to get all the crud. Suggestions?? Are the metal mesh covers removable?

5. I currently have these monsters on my carpeted floor, and the mids and tweeters are significantly lower than my ear-level. What brand, type and size speaker stands are recommended for these speakers.

Thanks all. I'm awestruck. Any other suggestions from you NS1000 fans will be greatly welcome!! -David
klipschking
mgattmch
558 posts
 
Ah, nostalgia, nothing quite like a pair of Yamaha NS-1000Ms to bring back audiophile memories. I have a pair that I purchased new in 1981 (I think), still have them in fact and will keep them for as long as I can. Over the years I have owned many speakers from Quad ESL 63s to B&W N801s, the NS-1000Ms always held their own against virtually any speaker I compared them with (excluding my dream speakers, Apogee Divas, but that's another story). Personally I do not find the black finish ugly, in fact I find the overall design (without grills of course) very attractive. However, each to their own opinion on aesthetics. The other speaker finish Yamaha offered was solid (not veneer) ebony with the NS-1000. I believe there is also a NS-2000 (15" woofer) and very special NSX-10000 model. Mine are on 12" substantial stands with original clip speaker wire connectors on the back. Personally, I find the speakers wire connectors just fine, OK not as good as WBT connectors on the N801s. Mine are used with heavy gauge Monster speaker cables (12AWG ?). I simply trim the cables down to fit into the spring terminals. In the 28 years I have owned the NS-1000Ms I have only had one problem, self induced by an act of shear stupidity, I blew the midrange units in both! Replacement units were painfully expensive. One final comment, the first time I heard the Yamaha NS-1000Ms was at a HiFi show in London, England. Yamaha were demonstrating the speakers using Jean Michel Jarre's Oxygene (part 3) at very high volume. To say the sound was impressive is an understatement, these speakers immediately became a must have for me! Enjoy your classic speakers.
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drubin
3,267 posts
 
Wow, great to read this. I bought a pair new in 1975 or 76 for I think $1000, maybe it was a little more. I sold them about two years later and got Quad ESLs. As a young and impressionable audiophile, I was discouraged by the fairly negative review the Yamahas got in TAS, which caused me to feel maybe I shouldn't hang on to them.. And I felt they always had a bit of a hot, metallic sound. Great bass though. But, jeez, back then we used lamp cord for speaker cable and committed all sorts of other sins by contemporary standards. I think I blew a tweeter twice, not sure how.

I drove them originally with a Yamaha integrated (overrated if you ask me) but subsequently with a Threshold 400A (wish I still had that!) and a few other things. I don't regret the Quads at all, but I wish I could hear the Yamahas again in a modern system. Any owners in the SF Bay Area willing to have me over for a listen?
klipschking OP
82 posts
 
Great stories guys. These things really sing. I keep the tweeter and mid-range pots in the neutral position, and I don't find the treble so much "hot" or "bright" as much as I do "accurate". The detail is simply amazing; very much like a good electrostatic. I think I'm going to gently remove the black paint/stain, and attempt to stain the underlying oak. In that way if the finish doesn't look good, I can go back over it with the original black. I'm going to keep the original spring-clips, but use some Vampire wire pins to terminate my solid-core Audioquest cables. Hey, they're only "original" once, right? Thanks one and all.
bwcanuck
30 posts
 
I actually own one pair of NS-1000Ms, two pairs of NS-2000s, some B&W, Manger MSWs and Quad ESL-63s. There's a bit of an interesting story behind my 2000s; they are NOS with one pair still in the wrapping, but that's for another day. The woofers are actually 13" diagonally, not 15" and the mid and high drivers have a different visual texture than the NS-1000s, and the tweeter frame is larger on the 2000. For the Yamahas I would venture to say the weakness is the absence of time alignment (I'm not even sure if people notice this) and wide acoustic axis spacing due to motor structure size, but remedying this likely would have raised end buyer cost by a notable margin.

I found the Yamahas by accident in a showroom while in search for something much different and had no idea what they were. Needless to say after listening a few times I was impressed and I paid a bit on the higher end of the spectrum I suppose but from inquiries I've learned the prices varied. The bass is great and dynamic but its not as refined as the 63's bass. So far I haven't found another loudspeaker as clear or color free from the mids up as the NS-1000M apart from the NS-2000. While the driver placement doesn't allow as flat of a response with the 2000s', the highs are noticeably clearer.
griffinconst
61 posts
 
Sorry if this was mentioned already but you can use "speaker pin connectors" with those spring terminals.
The ones @ Monoprice are gold plated, take up to 12 AWG wire, and are less than $4 a pair.
Congrats on finding some speakers that you love.
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