Brand

Vintage Advent speakers

Henry Kloss had co-founded Acoustic Research and then KLH before he started Advent in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1967. He wanted to build a projection television, and he built a speaker to pay for it. The Advent Loudspeaker was a two-way with a big woofer and a small cone tweeter, pitched as the equal of the best speakers of its day at about half their usual cost. It sold so well that it overshadowed the projection TV when that finally arrived. The name was a joke about starting a company before the lawyers had finished the papers. Advent sold most speakers in walnut veneer or in vinyl-covered utility cabinets that sounded the same, and it moved production to New Hampshire in 1979 before it went bankrupt in 1981. The Advent Loudspeaker's woofer has a polyurethane foam surround, so ask whether it has been redone.

4 models we cover.