I'm A Cheater..... In An Audio Sense That Is!

I was really bad this week! I cheated on my speakers..... my long suffering KEF iQ5 main speakers that have been with me for close to a decade. Let me say that they've been a really good pair of main speakers that did a nice job of double duty between home theater and "straight" audio. They sounded nice and were fairly detailed, gorgeous to look at..... but they weren't my dream speakers. As bad as this sounds; they were a compromise. Right sound, right price, right location, right time. Then.....

Yup. Catherine Bell..... what the......

Lt. Colonel Sarah MacKenzie or "Mac" from JAG. You guys know what I'm talking about (I like to use analogies). That one, the one that got away for whatever reason. Of course there are some of you that actually married her, but NOT ME! Not in a speaker sense anyway.

For me, it was the Bowers and Wilkins (B&W) DM603 S3. I sold these guys back in my Soundwave days. They were my absolute favorites. And as you can see from the rather unassuming look of them and that they are "mid-line" in the B&W world (nowhere close to the Nautilus Line) you can understand why I used Catherine Bell for my analogy versus say a Farrah Fawcett, or some other supermodel. 

 

When a customer would come into the store looking for speakers, and they weren't audio "high-rollers" (B&W 800 or CM series), but they weren't budget seeking (Paradigm), I'd take them straight to the 600 Series. If they were looking for a speaker that would do everything well and had a budget around $1000, the the DM603 S3 were the speakers I'd demo first..... and usually last.... before they took them home. I never had any come back.....ever. I'd have the customer come back and buy other stuff, or a referral come in to listen to them because they heard they're friend's pair, but not for repair or dissatisfaction (yes, it was the kind of store). Why the 603, and not the 604, or the 602.5? Well; here's my schpeel from back in the day. They would do everything the 604 would do (with the exception of lower bass), but was "faster" and if you were doing a home theater, you were going to buy a subwoofer anyway since the 604 couldn't do what a good sub was needed for on movies. The 602.5? No real level of bass. They were really a pair of the larger "bookshelf" speakers (602) with a built in stand, therefore requiring a sub! So, the right sub?

If the customer had the budget; I'd recommend the ASW675 every time. Tons of punch and low end rumble, but super tight and fast so doesn't muddy up the music. And the 603s were amazingly musical. Extremely detailed in the high end with the "hand-me-down" nautilus technology aluminum tweeters that have been substantially tamed since the original DM series. The Kevlar mids were just amazingly musical with the third driver an aluminum coned woofer (as in the ASW675) gave a tight bass with no break-up at high volumes. A match made in budget audio heaven.

So, what happened? I don't even remember what I was looking for, but came across some listings on Craigslist for a set of the DM603s for $700, which I think is an "OK" price, but not one that I'd pay. One thing led to another, and I found myself on eBay looking to see how much they sell for..... just on the "off chance"..... Yeah; there was a pair in Sachse (nearby suburb of Dallas) the guy wanted $600 for OBO. Since he specified local pickup only, it limited the competition for me. I offered him $500 and eventually settled at $550. So, I put up my KEF iQ5s along with the matching center channel for $750.

To cap it off, they guy said he had an LCR600 S3 that matched it which he hadn't listed yet and would sell to me for $200. It's the bigger of the two above (the other is the LCR60) and is the best match for the 603. That's a total of $750 if you hadn't notice! So, I've committed speaker divorce for my old flame that refused to die out. Stay tuned for more home theater/audio stuff. This has started me thinking about what more I can do with this quarter of my main hobbies