Apogee Slant 6 restored - enjoying them

Rosco8 · September 20, 2020

Thought I would share a story on my Apogee journey.

Nearly 30 years ago I was in LA for a week with work, and I noticed nearby an audio place, nothing much else around it and a big car park ... I went in as one does ... staring me in the face and sounding magnificent was a pair of Apogee Centaurus Slant 6's. It was luv' at first sound and they were on a decent sale. Next to them was a pair of Slant 8's, but the price was beyond my budget ... even though at this time the Aussie peso was valuable against the US$. I brought the 6's and ordered a cab ... only one just fit across the back seat poking a bit out the window .. arghh !!!! I ordered a 2nd cab and in a convoy off we went to Qantas Freight, I worked for Qantas. I booked them in and luckily the agent said write you name, Qantas and Sydney on the boxes Being staff they go standby so it just depends when there is space to carry them. Back in Sydney and 6 weeks later no speakers so I called up Freight ... 3 days later the freight con-note that was attached to the speakers boxes arrived at home, but no speakers. You know when you get that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach .. yep .. had it in spades. So there is a standard search that is done and i filled out the necessary form. Nothing for a while ... then a phone call ... we found them, they are in Cairns, thank goodness you wrote your name and destination on them !!!! Now Qantas does not fly from LA to Cairns .. some digging and they arrived from Tokyo on a JAL flight, and had gone on JAL from LA. The mysteries of Freight !!!! A few days later they were home and for many years I enjoyed them immensely ... then the ribbons came loose and that was it ... I always blamed the cat but who knows, so they sat in my garage for many years.

We built a new house 6 years ago and a while after I discovered that Graz on the Sunshine Coast makes new ribbons for them. A few emails in 2018 and duly a cylinder arrived with them in ... and some instructions to install which scared me ... so they sat there until May this year when being locked down like most of us I finally found somebody willing to install them ... I dropped them off at the Speaker Hospital and when I was there for a short time the phones were running hot and they received another 5 jobs, seems everybody had the same idea to get there speakers fixed !!!!! A couple of weeks ago my turn came in the queue, I put them onto Graz to clarify some questions they had and the new ribbons went in, and a new sock was sewn over them ... they ran them up and the bass speakers weren't working ... photos show they were cactus inside, white material everywhere ... eck !!!! the long stint in the garage and mould had got in ... I said can we source another pair or obtain a substitute .... they said it will be cheaper to rebuild them, we do it ... and 3 days later I get the call, come and get them. I also dropped off my old Akai CD 93 reference player that the drawer had failed for the 2nd time and some new belts and a good oiling and she is running perfectly. Picked them up Friday and ran them up yesterday with the Akai CD player as source. Brought tears to my eyes how beautiful they sound and to have my ol' girls back is just wonderful. Its now on a bedroom system I put together from odds and ends I have. I woke up this morning, fired up the Yamaha Musicast device and streamed some soft music and went back to bed and just enjoyed the music. Now how do I get the wife to bring me breaky in bed ??

When the lock down eased a bit I brought another set of speakers (Castle) to tide me over and mentioned that I had my Apogee's in for repair. The seller said I just spoke to a guy a couple of suburbs up who is selling a pair of Slant 8's but wasn't sure about them, he found me the number and I called him .. yeh come around now ... so there were these magnificent speakers sitting with massive cables and as I found a broken CD player, I took the cables and CD player off his hands for a little more coin ... he had no amps to demo them .. I said I can come back tomorrow and bring some gear ... nope, was going to a new job tomorrow out bush, luckily he knew a lot about the speakers and their history, he brought them new in Sydney a long time ago .. phew ... was it worth the risk ... I negotiated him down to a point where I would accept the risk, he wasn't happy but he had already sold all the other gear ... how we fitted them and the other pair I had brought into my little VW Golf I don't know, I had my seat jammed forward and it was a hell of an uncomfortable 2.5 hour ride home. I fired them up, just beautiful. Cannot believe I finally got a pair of Slant 8's !!!!! I sometimes swap them with my Dynaudio C2 Plat .. and you know what I really enjoy the Slant 8's .. Dynaudios are a bit more dynamic but the Slant 8's are just effortless and so musical.

A few pics ... the hodge podge system is the Akai CD and Yammie as sources, Ayon pre and Radford STA-25 valve power amp, what a magnificent amp this is, and thanks to another great SNA member 'You and be quiet .. listen' .... I was actually surprised how well the Radford drives the speakers as they are notoriously hard to drive, but with the Radford set to 4ohms it is effortless, nothing like old iron with big transformers ... lol ... last pic is one of the Slant 8's ..