Allison One speakers

the one can be used against any flat wall...the three is for corners only.

Ah, maybe that's the ticket then....I just remember the model I heard being in the corners, and liking what I heard. Remember, this was the late 70's....

As has been said, I think you no doubt have a pair of original vintage Ones and mistakenly consulted the BB value of the 'reissues', which were -- general design principles and inpiration aside -- completely different speakers made by a different company that bought the Allison name, and which retailed for several times more. (Jaybo would be the expert in that comparison. Both companies are defunct now.)

I've owned two pairs of the originals, the second of which I inherited from my father (actually, that set was comprised of a One on a flat wall combined with a Three in a corner -- an arrangement suggested for his particular room layout by none other than Roy Allison himself, a corner-loaded Three being the functional equivalent of a One on a wall). If I had the space and the inclination to collect vintage speakers, I'd have a set still. In audiophile terms they are at a disadvantage against modern speakers when it comes to all those speaker bugaboos that have largely been tamed since the 70's, like coloration/distortion/resonance/resolution. But in terms of sheer listening involvement they remain better than most, due to Allison's advanced design concepts for successfully addressing dispersion and room-interaction effects that he first identified and described (concerning woofer-loading and midrange cancellation, which are still largely ignored in speaker design to this day despite being universally recognized as empirically valid).

I would advise against replacing the tweeters unless you have to. Of course modern tweeters can go higher cleaner than the paper originals, but none have the idiosyncratic Allison 'split nipple' design which gave them an unusually broad power response designed to complement their 45-degree lateral mounting orientation, and Ones would not sound like Ones with conventional pistonic tweeters. Same for the dome midranges -- if you want modern sound you'll need modern speakers, but enjoy these for themselves. And make sure whoever reconditions your woofers has familiarity with the intended mass/compliance tuning of the acoustic-suspension originals, which used heavily (and heavy!) doped cones unlike typical modern light-coned woofers.

(And go very easy when fitting the still-ahead of their time, acoustically transparent one-piece frameless grilles, which become less flexable as they age and prone to cracking.)

Thanks for the advise on re-conditioning. I plan to have the woofers redone by Bill LeGal at Millersound. He is familiar with these and I have had nothing but good results with all the work he has done for me in the past. Also appreciate the advise on replacing the tweeters, mids. I am likely to leave these as is and will only consider replacing with something non-original if they go out at some point in the future. Does anyone have an opinion about restoring or upgrading the crossover (worth replacing anything due to age? or leave alone until they go bad?) Will likely get into playing shape and decide if I will keep them or not, and if I keep them if I want to go to any additional effort to upgrade the crossovers etc. They will be compared to a pair of Alon model V that I currently have and will drive with an Aragon 4004 MkII power amp and a preamp to be named later (any suggestions?) which provides ample power for most speakers I could throw at it. Another post asked how much I paid for these and the answer is $300 - in hind sight a bit too much given what I have learned here but if I end up liking them (I do have a larger space that will allow me to set up as recommended here) will not be so bad. Anyway, thanks again for the information and recommendations.

$300 is not bad at all if the condition is acceptable, and no way would I think that's the BB price of the 'reissues' (which should be much higher it seems to me), so even if the year-listing mistakenly confused the two, the price-listing probably didn't.

I do recall seeing somewhere that many owners have upgraded caps and wiring and such, even installing binding posts, but I have no personal experience with these mods, do a search (Web not Agon) and you might find something.

As for finding original replacement drivers, the same or very similar drivers were also used in some later, less costly models of the original Allison company that sold in larger quantities, such as the "CD_#" model line. (Mids and tweeters would probably be easier to locate, since most of the woofers used in these smaller model were less than 10".) As I recall there was actually a second ownership of the original company, consecutive with Roy Allison's ownership, that continued to use the same in-house drivers for those models that featured them. Then that company eventually went defunct, and later the 'reissue' company or whatever you want to call it was started by yet a third ownership, but those speakers shared no parts with the originals and used conventional OEM drivers. The original firm also came out with a fancier, 'new and improved' successor model to the Ones, that expanded on the same core design principles, called the IC-20 ("IC" stood for Image Control).