Be Quiet...Listen Posted July 26, 2014 Posted July 26, 2014 Hi guys, I'm hoping to find a pair of vintage Sony APM speakers. Main focus is on the APM-4, APM-6, APM-8 & the APM-55W, APM-77W. Please PM me if you can help out. Thanks for looking! 1
ZOOTYtooty Posted July 28, 2014 Posted July 28, 2014 I had the AMP 77 es many years ago, still battle to find a box speaker that beats its bass! 4 drivers behind the square woofer, jaw dropping... Just check the surrounds, very few will have survived and impossible to replace. 1
Be Quiet...Listen Posted July 28, 2014 Author Posted July 28, 2014 (edited) sdurrheim, I have read about the inherent issue of the surrounds in the APM series. I'm not too worried about that. Just hoping to find a pair first! Is it another "I wish I never sold those" type of stories? Or have you since found something that's better? Edited July 28, 2014 by Be Quiet...Listen
Sub Sonic Posted July 28, 2014 Posted July 28, 2014 Some replacement surrounds pop up on ebay from time to time, I had a pair of APMs a while ago which I sold on this forum. Regards, SS
ZOOTYtooty Posted July 31, 2014 Posted July 31, 2014 They were fabulous, but did have a bit of a "blocked nose" vocal presentation. I believe the Yamaha NS1000 of the same vintage is probably a better speaker. I sold my APM77 for $200 about 20 years ago at the time they would have been about 8 years old... The Maggies 1.2 here on Stereonet are a superb buy.
Sam Z Posted August 8, 2014 Posted August 8, 2014 (edited) I don't think Sony Aus imported any APM4, 6 or 8s. They'd have been mad to; they cost a bomb and you could have bought better speakers for the money by almost every conceivable standard of what 'better' is.Out of interest, the press's reception to APMs ranged from lukewarm to scathing. For example, some quick contextless quotes from TAS's 1983 mini-review of the APM-6:"an octave short in the bass""impossibly sluggish""ambience is poorly recovered""dynamics are dead""wooly""there's just dullness" "monitor speakers the Sony APM-6's are not"Yikes.In TAS's case, Sony JP complained they weren't set up properly—apparently they're designed to be placed back against a wall a la studio, which the Sony USA folks didn't know about. I'm skeptical it would have made a great deal of difference; as you can probably tell I'm skeptical about APMs at large.My experience with them is mostly with my own pair of APM33s which are sonically ordinary. They sound mid-fi: boxy, lifeless, quacky, with a laughably coloured and artificial midrange—the aforementioned 'blocked nose vocal presentation' is right on the money. No speaker with even the slightest pretension to hi-fi should be altering the tone of voices and instruments this much. Even at this price point Sony could have done a lot better. The bigger models have gotta be better than this, and I'm pretty curious about them, but personally I wouldn't be spending big dollars on any APMs. Edited August 9, 2014 by Sam Z 1
Be Quiet...Listen Posted August 10, 2014 Author Posted August 10, 2014 Thanks for that Sam. I guess who've saved me from hours of searching and money! I was hoping to hear some more positive things. Oh well.
blinky Posted August 13, 2014 Posted August 13, 2014 Tweeter reliability was a big problem and things were improved when the German made 3 way APMs had a cone mid and dome tweet to compliment the ice cream container woofer. Not to be pursued
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