£645 or reasonable offers considered.


Following my purchase of Quad ESL63's and matching Gradient woofers, I am selling this very nice pair of legendary Yamaha NS1000M's, complete with front grilles and Atacama spiked stands. They are in very good condition,, especially considering the age of the NS1000M speaker. Many that you see for sale are quite tatty, having been used in studios, have original cable connectors and have no front grilles.These here have been rewired internally with Cardas cabling by a previous ownerand have had the front Lpads (dials) bypassed for more direct connection and less degradation of sound, in the same way that hign end amplifiers omit tone controls. If a potential buyer really wants the lpads active, I am sure it would not cost them very much to have them reconnected, or even do it themselves. The original rear cable binding posts, which only accepted bare wire, have been replaced with better ones, accepting bare wire and banana plugs (Or one prong of a spade). You will notice that one of the speakers has the protective cage of the midrange dome removed, whereas the other does not. I can only imagine that one was removed to see if it was an improvement and as no difference was heard, the other was left on. I can certainly hear no difference between the 2 speakers. Likewise, there are 2 dimples in the exposed midrange dome. Again, I hear no difference in the sound between this and the dome in the other speaker. The Stands are Atacama and are filled with either lead shot or sand (Not sure) so are very heavy and vibration-deadened. The cabinets are in very good condition, the grilles are good too, despite being slightly worn on the corners, which is where they presumably rub most. When I bought these speakers, the grilles frequently dropped off the front, due to the grille pegs becoming loose in the front corner holes over the years. I have affixed some velcro to both the front corners of the speaker, and to the grilles. The grilles now stay firmly in place when required, but can be taken off easily if you want, e.g. for serious listening sessions.
Now to the sound...despite some people saying that the Yams are bright, I do not find this so. Having read comments to this effect, I was wary of buying this pair, since the front dials had been taken out of circuit. As soon as I heard them, I realised they were not bright, they are just very transparent, Brightness in, brightness out. They sounded superb with my EAR 509 amps. The beryllium drivers are very special, even by today's standards. Very light but also very stiff- the perfect properties for a speaker unit. They were very expensive for Yamaha to manufacture, but this was a no-compromise design. They actually lost money on them, which is why they eventually discontinued them as they were too expensive to make. This does mean that replacement drivers are about £250 or so to buy these days, but I think it's money well spent if the drivers ever need to be replaced,
I paid £890 for these speakers 3 months ago, which is more than they can be had for on Ebay, but a tatty pair with old original cabling, cheap spring-clip cable connectors, no front grilles and no stands can cost £650 upwards, so I felt it was worth spending the extra for a nice pair. I am just looking to get my money back on them. I bought them to replace a previous pair of Quad ESL63's, but soon after buying them, realised I am a Quad ESL man. Once bitten, no going back, I'm afraid. To my ears, no cone speaker can do what the Quads can, but as an example of a cone speaker, these Yamahas are fabulous and I reckon would see off modern speakers costing several times more money.
Collection only as they are extremely heavy and I do not have the boxes to ship them. I am based in Sutton Coldfield West Midlands.

Photos available at

http://s1181.photobucket.com/albums/...aha%20NS1000M/