Hi folks,
Good wishes to you all on this first morning of the month of Baishakh. Brings memory of my late parents who used to celebrate this day always in a special way. We all used to get some new clothes.
Coming back to our discussion, especially with respect to my Canton speakers, I was doing searches on old Canton speakers in general. I found a few proud owners of old Canton speakers in the AudioKarma.org forum and also elsewhere. Not many Karat 60 (my speakers) owners, but a few Karat 20, 30 and 40 owners. These are little brothers of my speakers. They were all made in 1980's and were in production till 1990. The Karat 20 and 30 were 2-way speakers and the 40 was very similar to mine except the woofer was a bit smaller. According to a site by the name
Hauptseite - Hifi-Wiki.de - die freie Gertedatenbank they are all well above 90 db sensitivity (SPL at 1W and 1m) (lowest for the Karat 20 at 91.9 db). They all had 4 Ohm impedance.
There are three owners in that forum of a big floorstander from Canton called "Ergo Passiv" built in the early 1980's (price at that time USD 2600). Looks like two of them bought their pair used for USD 900 around 2005. One other guy got it around USD 400 early 2009. They are all tremendously happy about the speakers. They have put up pictures of these speakers. Boy, they look immaculate even after nearly 30 years. And yes, they were all handcrafted.
The recent buyer was looking for specs for his acqusitions. The following is the excerpt on his interaction with Canton:
"Thanks to all who researched this speaker, and/or responded with information! Contacted Canton to see if they might have some more information, but they could not help me. Any more information, such as user guide or original ad would be great. It is amazing just how rare this model is...never see/saw another pair for sale anywhere in the world! The sound is absolutely amazing for a 20+ year old speaker. Thanks again!"
(post #8 by "safeharbor" in
Vintage Canton Ergo Passiv Loudspeakers - AudioKarma.org Home Audio Stereo Discussion Forums)
The response from Canton in my case was worse, as I have described in my earlier post. If they do not keep details on these old speakers any more, they should just say so, instead of pretending to know and then give a wrong information which they cannot back up.
To summarize the opinions of the people who own these very old Canton speakers:
1. They are built to last and are still sounding great. Actually the Ergo Passive and the Karat 40 owners are trying to say that these are some of the best speakers they ever heard. Within a price point, I totally agree with them as I mentioned in my first post of this thread and at various other points.
2. They all have high sensitivity (well above 90db) and with impedance of 4 Ohm.
3. They apparently do not need a lot of power in the bass region. Apparently the impedance do not go down very much. Pretty flatish performance across the whole frequency range - according to the users (collected from several discussions on the net).
4. The sound signature is very neutral and open with good control in all frequency regime. People are especially mentioning very airy and extended treble and detailed midrange and a big soundstage.
5. Another point they (along with current Canton owners) are making is that the good sound qualities of the Canton speakers remain present across different production lines including relatively lower priced ones (like the current GLE 490 which retails under a a thousand Euros now, I think).
I guess in the 1980's they were not really mass-produced as they used to be handcrafted. BTW, Canton always makes all major components (drivers, cabinets etc) in-house. Only from around 1990 or later, Canton started making speakers in large numbers. I know they built their first in-house anechoic lab only in 1989, although they (four friends really) started making speakers from 1972.
I am getting more confident that pairing with an amp of my choice may not be that difficult.
.
