Repairing The Bose 901: A Speaker Odyssey

sit back close your eyes imagine the most quintessential mid-century pair of speakers that you can you have them in your mind all right was it these nice guess wait you saw the thumbnail of this video that's cheating that doesn't count this masterpiece of mid-century design is a Bose 901 speaker there's another one over there too now normally I like to tell you guys a bit of history and kind of give you a rundown of the item that I have but these warrant something a little different because getting them to usable condition was not my favorite thing that's ever happened when they first were hooked up and played they sounded off originally we had hooked them up to the realistic receiver that you saw a couple videos back because it had Basin treble adjustments there's supposed to be a separate EQ unit but thanks to some kids on a school bus I don't have that I'll explain that later as soon as we started screwing around with the knobs I could hear Bad noises a little more volume some heavier bass brought out what we all feared like the sound of an angry Hornet's Nest right after your neighbor shot paintballs at it these two innocent looking kids started buzzing very loudly now opening them up was not the easiest thing in the world to do the fabric faces are glued and stapled on and getting them off to investigate without scratching the wood is difficult enough that's why I just plugged them in and went for it I normally wouldn't just do that of course normally we wouldn't even buy the thing without opening it up and checking but these things are worth a lot of money in Palm Springs so it was worth the risk in this case when we got the front off until the little speaker cone it was clear that the foam was completely rotten I was going to have to either replace the speakers entirely or just put new foam on them I figured three screws and some clipping and soldering easy peasy right and each one was only about 30 bucks that's no big deal there's only one speaker on it so that's affordable oh wait I forgot about the eight cones on the back of each speaker so that's 38 times 18 carry the two my mortgage payment so that's not happening this is an estate sale fine so new foam it is now it's not hard to change the foam on speakers it's a pretty straightforward task I've done it before but this was not so much a foam change as it was a slow descent into madness as I sat at my parents house alone and meticulously cleaned up and fixed 18 rotten speakers if you're wondering why I chose to do this at my parents house and not my own it's because I was worried that my intermittent bouts of sobbing might distract my wife while she tried to study I'll give you a really quick breakdown of what I did to change the foam and why it took me two whole days to do it the removal of the old foam was by far the easiest part because it was totally dry and crumbly I figured out that I could just hit the speakers with the vacuum cleaner hose and it sucked all the old foam off almost immediately that was nice because it also got rid of the spider eggs remember kids old stereo equipment often has spider nests in it I like Critters as much as the next person but spiders are notoriously bad about paying rent so don't let them live with you the cones in the baskets had to be cleaned up to make sure that the glue stuck which again is really easy although not so much when you have a big camera in the way trying to film it then all I had to do was glue them here's where I learned a valuable lesson about gluing speakers if you're going to try to do this in your house you need a fan and an open window I thought I was just going to spend a couple hours gluing the inner part of the paper to the cone wait 24 hours for them to dry then glue the outer ring of the foam to the basket what actually happened was a couple hours of being cooped up in a room with glue fumes where I traveled through a Stargate watched myself age in a weird room with antique furniture and a glowing floor then found myself floating in space as a baby in a bubble that is not normally how I like to spend my Tuesdays that's a Saturday activity so when my wife finally found me and George wandering the desert babbling about aliens the following morning she reminded me that I still had to finish the repair job and gave me a fan that made things a lot better I think the biggest thing to note about the gluing process that I found was that having the foam surround permanently stuck to the cones made centering The Voice coils almost entirely unnecessary of all 18 speakers only two of them needed a little nudge to be centered I think that was partially because they're small and light so the spider was able to automatically Center the coils on its own it took really no effort to do to be clear that's not the spider that laid the eggs the spider in this case is the springy bit attached to the voice coil so how do they sound that's a million dollar question right well that's a complicated answer the short answer is they sound fine as in they work the way they're supposed to the long answer is we can't really give them the test that they deserve because 10 minutes before we got to the estate sale there was a guy walking out with the equalizer box that's specifically supposed to go with these and he didn't buy the speakers like who does that we would have had the equalizer but there was a school bus in front of us and the kids that were getting on were walking at an infuriatingly glacial Pace needless to say I don't have the equipment to test them on correctly they don't sound bad certainly I definitely wouldn't replace my good Martin Logan speakers with these but they sound the way you would expect and the effect of bouncing The Sound Off the Wall was definitely interesting Bose uses something they call Psycho Acoustics which in a nutshell focuses on how you perceive the sound rather than perfectly recreating every detail then that's definitely what these do and Bose doesn't really try to hide it right at the beginning the instruction manual says quote the active equalizer corrects for any DVD Aviation caused by the mechanical design constraints of the speaker they spell it right out for you the thing is we're used to air pods and car stereos unless you're a strict audio file or a recording engineer I would guess that most people would like these now I would like to stop for a second and remind everybody that I am not an expert on these types of things I like this stuff but I have no engineering training no electrical training no experience with audio recording short of the microphone we have here and I have very limited musical tastes I am just a reluctant hick from Northern California so when I say that these speakers sound good or not good or whatever that means precisely nothing if you are coming to me for Reliable reviews of stereo equipment I regret to inform you that dog don't hunt that being said and now that they're operational I do want to take you on a little tour of the third generation Bose 901 because if nothing else it really is a pretty speaker say what you will about the sound quality but Bose created something very iconic with the look of these and I for one greatly appreciate that to start with my favorite part is the fabric they chose for the front it's the 70s the only thing more 70s than this fabric is Javier bardem's Carl Sagan hair in No Country for Old Men combine that with the wood and the Beautiful tulip stands a work of art really and let's not forget the fact that the vents in the back look like little jet engines these would have been right at home in A Clockwork Orange the wires connect to the speakers on the bottom but there lies a little problem what they seem to want is for the wires to feed down the base and out the bottom but what they neglected to do was leave any kind of Notch so the stands didn't rock or damage the wire or your hardwood obviously this wasn't too much of an issue on shag carpet that required a dedicated rake yeah there were carpet rakes in the 70s that was a thing from what I can find online the stands came in black chrome and less commonly this almondy color they appear to be original although I think these speakers were not mounted to these stands originally because there were holes drilled into the wood that do not line up with the holes on the stands these are what make estate sales fun waking up at 6 a.m on a Friday to wander through some dead person's house and buy their crap is arguably morbid but it's crazy what you find my dad bought Hopalong Cassidy's old bathrobe and yard boots once we also accidentally bought a box of what might have been human ashes we didn't know it was that we bought the locked box that's what was in them we did bring them back so don't look at me like that so that's the video I guess I'm sorry there wasn't more history or information this time it was more of a vlog than it was anything else so I guess I'll see you guys next time stay metal

Channel: AudioThrift

Views: 7,651

Keywords: bose, vintage, vintage speakers, bose 901, refoaming, speakers, vintage hifi, stereo equipment

Id: 34RSAu0684I

Length: 7min 52sec (472 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 14 2023