Thanks for the welcomes chaps
I used to absolutely love the LS35a. I owned about five sets years ago, stupidly I sold them all to a Japanese man I knew and he used to take them back on holiday and sell them there, for women to have in the Kitchen !! *eek*.
I sold them between 200 and 350 a set. Which in hindsight was terribly daft. The thing is, I never ever knew the actual retail prices of our stuff, and seeing it every day made it worth less I suppose.
What makes me the most sick is that in April of 1998 Rogers (used to be called Swisstone Electronics) started to experiment with the 35a and to that ends we had carbon woofered R&D versions, Japanese paper versions (don't even go into what they cost... Paper cones alone for R&D were over 80 pounds each. it was some kind of special paper) and all kinds of other weird and wonderful prototypes (even alu cones). I had a set of each and foolishly sold them at the same prices.. What a silly billy.
However, in my opinion the best speakers EVER to have come from Rogers was the Ls5/9. They are, and were, utterly incredible.
Toward the end of the company (around 1999) Rogers were already owned by a company from the far east. And it showed. The LS1? all SEAS and VIFA. The LS55, DB101 (db101 were devved by Andy Whittle, good friend of mine**) and all of those 'later' models were, pardon my french, just rubbish. They were no longer Rogers.
The real Rogers are the LS35a, the Ls5/9 and the Studio 2 (12 inch woofer, large beasts) and some other limited runs, but all of those later ones were just awful in honesty. They sounded OK, heck, some even managed to look OK but they really were horrible.
Another interesting fact about the later speakers (55 and all those others) is that to get around the EC laws we had to sit and peel off the sticker on the cross overs (the made in R.O.C ones) and solder the wires into them ourselves. Shrewd tbh. I quit the company about three months before it finally died because it was getting embarassing. I still have an E40 phono here tho, and about five sets of Crystal Link RCA cables
**. The DB101 has a few things on it that never came to pass that were all put in during R&D. See those funny round things on the back with holes in? they were for the mounting poles that we never put into production. They were 8ft tall chrome poles that you could bolt up to 12 DB101 to and create massive 'stacks' of DB101 for night clubs. Hence the name, decibel 101. All quality went out of the window hehe.
The fuse in there lights up if you hammer them hard, and will eventually blow. Replacement is all but impossible.
Also, on those Ls55's the reason I say do not replace the cross overs is simple. Those are some weird kind of hybrid and you will not find one anything like it. The best thing to do if they are damaged is have them repaired with the correct caps and chokes.
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