ccrse@ucdavis.UUCP (Steve Ehrhardt) (10/16/85)
It seems that one of the more frequent questions that gets asked on this newsgroup is, 'What's a good speaker in this (usually fairly low) price class?'. This said, I have a related question that has been bugging me some time, and I'm wondering if anyone out there may have a good answer for it. About four years ago, Hafler came out with some rather odd-looking speakers in a cylindrical cabinet called the 355. It used two polypropylene- cone woofers in a hybred design (both carried low frequencies, but one rolled off, leaving the other to act as the midrange), and a 1" soft-dome tweater in a ported enclosure. Without going into any more technical details, suffice it to say that these speakers sounded *very* good, at least to my ear. To date, I have found no one who has listened to them who had significant complaints about their sound, especially for their price, which started at $250/ea. I found that only one of the several Hafler dealers in this area carried these speakers, all of those not carrying it bad-mouthing it consider- ably. The one who did carry them sold them virtually as fast as he could get them in, but Hafler finally discontinued them, apparently for lack of sales. My question is this: Can anyone explain to me why none of other dealers would carry them? Has anyone else on the net listened to these speakers and/or purchased them and can explain what characteristics of them caused them to be so dispised? I'll admit that they are not without fault, but they did seem quite competitive within their price class. Two other items which should be noted: The only shop that *did* carry the 355's was decidedly 'high end' (they were probably the cheapest thing there), and I did happen to buy two pairs of them (close out at $250/pr). Anyone out there have a solution to this mystery?
jon@msunix.UUCP (Jonathan Hue) (10/19/85)
In article <157@ucdavis.UUCP>, ccrse@ucdavis.UUCP (Steve Ehrhardt) writes: > I found that only one of the several Hafler dealers in this area > carried these speakers, all of those not carrying it bad-mouthing it consider- > ably. The one who did carry them sold them virtually as fast as he could get > them in, but Hafler finally discontinued them, apparently for lack of sales. Deetes Anderson of Deetes' Sound Room in Carmichael told me that the speaker was intended to finance the development of the Hafler tuner, and that it actually sold well, but he had to cancel it to have time to work on his tuner. Deetes claimed it was a good speaker for the money, but I've never been crazy about his favorites. Don't know much else about it. Jonathan Hue LMSC-Mechanisms & Servos (..amdcad!cae780!leadsv!msunix!jon) or something like that