Bose 901 series VI & Yamaha A-S2000

Hi guys, I've sat in front of 901's in a variety of settings... In the right room... (boundaries are important) with good equipment on them, they can be satisfying. My real complaint no matter what, I've never heard great imaging... they will produce a soundstage, but proper image placement is non existent... I'm not trying to argue with anyone that might have gotten good results with imaging, I'm saying that I haven't heard it... I've built and repaired speakers for 35 years, including a bunch of Bose, they are well though out, some well designed, some ok, but all made with crap parts. For the parts inside, they sound pretty good.

Timlub - Would you be able to speculate about the parts cost in the 901s? And for now disregard the 60% bulk discount that Bose surely sees?
After I see your guess, I'll offer mine.

Timlub, Have you done any critical parts up-grades to the Bose 901's to great effect before?

The Parts Express 901 replacement driver is $18.75 ea. in quantity, less than 1/3 of what Bose charges for an OEM driver. So the drivers are probably worth around $10-11 each wholesale. The Parts Express drivers appear to have about the same build quaiity.

I'd like to see what you could get with 10 higher quality full range drivers in a different configuration such as a tower with 8 drivers facing forward and 2 facing rearward for ambience. The larger cabinet should provide better bass performance with less EQ, and the 80/20 ratio would provide better imaging with more direct and less reflected sound. You'd retain the advantages of the 901 with fewer of the drawbacks--crossoverless sound, large radiating surface, but with more optimized cabinet and more realistic dispersion pattern.

Many of the newer full range drivers have phase plugs, which should improve high frequency dispersion, though you'd probably want to angle the drivers somewhat to improve it.

We used to pay a bit under 8 bucks for a pretty good replacement part. There is also a molded cabinet inside, the real magic of 901's is in the eq... and no, we never did any hard core mods... latex coating drivers, but thats all that I recall. I would suspect that Johnny's esimater is pretty close for dealer cost today.