Help choosing speakers

[Mark^Bastard]

Hi guys.

First off I'd like to state very clearly: This is not a thread about home theatre speakers. This is not a thread about speakers that will be used on a MCE rig. That's why I thought this was the most appropriate section.

Now onto the question. I know some of you lot are a bit older so to speak, and possibly some of you at least remember what home audio used to be like when component systems were the norm, and record players were the norm, and sound quality was the most important factor (rather than flashing lights and weird looking speakers with 6 'sub woofers' stapled onto the sides).

Basically what I'm asking for is advice on what speakers to buy for my record player setup. My budget is up to around $300.

My old setup was a sony turntable, sony amp, and b&w speakers. All gear from the 80's. My speakers blew, and my amp turned to crap, so I've done some replacing. What I've done so far:

1 - Bought a power amp from dick smith electronics. You probably know the one, the $200 component stereo amp. Came with some very cheap speakers.
2 - Bought a Behringer phono preamp off ebay.
3 - Bought a new needle for my record player (Sony PS-LX3) and cleaned the record player up a lot (pulled it apart, scraped off 20 years of cockroach ****).

Now I'm relatively happy with my new setup, even the speakers are OK, but they're definitely the weakest link. They can't handle bass very well basically, so they must be replaced. So far I'm looking at the following speakers.

1 - Celestion F15 ($300)
2 - Wharfedale Diamond 8.1 ($250)
3 - Accusound Signature Series Reference 8.3 (~$250)

All seem like good enough speakers, but what I really want is ones that are going to fit a record player better than home theatre. In particular these will not be matched with a subwoofer. They will just be the pair of speakers. They will thus need to have okay bass reproduction for music (music created with instruments, not techno or other digital music). They will also need to not be highly clinical modern sounding speakers. I need a bit of warmth in other words.

You wouldn't believe how hard it is to find this information out. You're either stuck with home theatre nerds or audiophile snobs saying that I may as well just buy $2000 speakers. Obviously that's silly given that I spent $200 on the amp!

[rjlloyd]

generally speaking, to get the warmth and depth to the sound you need big speakers, this is why all the old school speakers had at least an 8 inch woofer in them, the bigger the cone, the more air you move. From reading your post I gather you are looking for that old school sound which you will get with any reasonable quality stereo speakers providing they have large woofers. many of the newer home theater speakers with multiple small woofers (say 4 to 6 inch) do an admirable job, but are designed to run with a sub to get down to somewhere near 20 to 30 Hz, subs never really existed when record players were around hence the speakers had large woofers, you should be able to get some good quality old speakers eg Richard Allen or Mordaunt Short for a song on Ebay as nobody seems to want these any more

[rjlloyd]

In response to your current choices I am particular fan of the accusound speakers and have always found them to be excellent for the money