Hales Transcendence 5 speakers endgame?


I have a pair of Hales Transcendence 5 speakers which I have been enjoying for the past 21 years. I redid the crossovers with high quality parts and put in Seas Millennium tweeters. I recently upgraded my entire system but I am keeping the Hales as I think they sound very nice. I’ve noticed that the Hales stock only have a resale value of a couple of thousand dollars but I don’t see them for sale often. I consider my Hales, especially modded as they are, endgame. Would you agree? Bottom line is that they sound awesome especially with my new digital,amp,preamp and cables.
128x128mitchb

I love my Hales. They are the one component I will keep. I just had them refurbished and tested and although I told the technician I hired to refurbish my speakers that I was willing to spend up to $8000 to super mod them he recommended to match them as close as possible but that they were pretty close to maxed out already with the Seas Millennium tweeters and redone crossovers. He showed me the graphs of the speakers after the work and they are very close to each other. The problem was actually a poorly wired woofer which was throwing off the sound so he rewired and repaired the woofers and now the speakers measure very close to each other. 

That is great, mitchb. Hales was the first hifi speaker I heard that really mesmerized me. I owned a pair of Revelations for almost twenty years, paid for by working at Walmart.  There was pretty big gap between the Transcendence and Revelation respective tweeters, though. I agree with prof's older post, smooth with great timbre. Sealed bass too!

I have owned my Hales T5’s for about 10 years now. I first listened to a pair of Hales at K-Lab’s in Tulsa in the mid/later 90’s. I listened to a pair of Revelation 3’s on a Levinson #39 player ran raw to a 200 watt Levinson amp. Listened to a couple goose bump laden songs and Something happened in those moments that galvanized the experience. Sadly the company expired somehow. Rumor was the Audio stores didn’t want an under $10k speaker getting the attention of buyers looking for the more expensive Thiel, B&W, Wilson, Etc.

Years later another audio nerd buddy said he saw a pair of Hales in Tulsa on Facebook MarketPlace. I grabbed a sweaty wad of cash and burned a trail. Perfect Minty pair! Met another Great audiophile guy who should have never sold me his speakers Hahahaha!!
 

Anyway they are fantastic. I run mostly Apple Music through a Wadia 581i SE player, Raw, through Cardas Golden Reference Balanced cables to an Audio Research D400 MKII to the T5’s via Audio Art cables. It’s very satisfying soundstage. I have had Kef, Revel, JM Lab, Von Schweikert for the better stuff I’ve had in my system and none of the are in the same league as the Hales. I don’t know if all Paul’s speakers of that era have what I have experienced but I Love mine. Won’t be my last pair of speakers for sure but I’ll probably never sell these. Worth more to me than the dollar value they would bring anyway ya know?
 

My best friend and fellow audiophile who has the audio bug worse than me has the new Focal Sopra No,3’s a Wadia Dac. Pass Lbs Class A Mono-blocks and all Audioquest pure silver cables. And while admittedly his gear is better than mine, It doesn’t take anything away from how much I enjoy my couch, my well treated room and the sound of my amp click on. 
 

Just spectacular speakers. Thank you, Paul

 

 

Still loving my Hales T1 and Transcendence center channel in my home theater set up.  Though I have Joseph Audio Perspective speakers for 2 channel listening, I often listen to music on my Hales-based HT set up - e.g. youtube performances or apple music.   Every time I listen I'm sooo glad I snagged these speakers.   So lush, so smooth, so rich and tonally convincing.