Vintage vs New


My children growing older and leaving home has allowed me to get back into our common interest. I find myself wanting a new pair of speakers and I’m torn between some vintage models that interested me in easier times, but were not obtainable due to budgetary limitations, and current models with their state of the art drivers.  Case in point: B&W 801 Matrix Anniversary vs. anything in the 702/703.
I would like to hear people’s thoughts.  
mjjw
There are plenty of vintage speakers and electronics that still sound incredible.  The B&Ws are a very nice choice especially for the prices.  Upgrade a few parts and even better.

We recently compared 3 Class A solid state amps  a few current and one not so current the BEL amp.  5 out of 5 picked the old BEL amp.

If you are someone who thinks vintage cannot compare to todays components I would be more than happy to compare my Lafayette KT-550 tube power amp to whatever you have.  Those hand wound transformers cannot be duplicated today which provides the magic - think dynaco - simple design but good transformers.

BTW the old KEF 104.2 and up still sound dame good.  Find a pair of the Sony monitors  SS-ARs or something like that still outperform many monitors today.

Happy Listening.

Marantz 10b, 7, 8, 3

Quad 57's!!!

Early generation Magneplanars (yes, from the 70's)

Quad 63's (I Prefer the 57's.(

Shindo anything.  Shindo has been around a long time.

Old Nagra gear

VOTT

Nakamichi Dragon

just a start.  could go on.

And yes, audiophile shops in the 70's and 80's had power cords and speaker cords... good ones.  

the shop that turned me onto audio when I was in college sure did.
Most vintage is outdated, capacitors in the day Suck, after 15 years of steady use caps dry out and loose their detail ,if they 
don’t leak , resistors cement ,or even carbon warm but veiled.
the only thing that could be a gem was vacuum tube transformers 
mostly from Japan like Tango or other brands ,, As Millercarbon 
said Nostalgia  with it $$ to rebuild it . Their were great designs in the past 
but rebuild with modern Quality parts is my advise. I have been there done that . I many times buy modern ,but I upgrade or mod to a much higher level in parts quality. I rebuild my own Loudspeaker Xovers for example, in the vast majority parts are average at best.What most Audiophiles don’t realize is that only 25% on average actually goes into the cost of the parts,the rest overhead and markup. That’s how Modwright is so successful.