Acapella Audio Arts High Violin Rare with Ion Tweeter

For sale by original owner, Acapella Audio Arts High Violin loudspeaker with the famous ion tweeter. I bought these as a demo pair from a local Acapella dealer four years ago.

This is the single woofer version of the High Violin, making it an easy 8 ohm load that can easily be driven by low-powered tube amps. I powered mine with big solid state amps that really made these speakers sing. There was another version of these speakers that also had an internal woofer but made the speakers notoriously difficult to drive with their very low impedance. Not this pair.

I believe these speakers had an original price of $42,000.00 when they were made in 2003 or 2004. The subsequent High Violin Mark IV price rose to $60,000.00, and the newest High Violincello version now retails for $80,000.00! The main difference in these models is in bass drivers and loading. The ion tweeter and spherical horn midrange are largely unchanged, so with these you can hear the fabulous Acapella sound for a fraction of new pricing.

The technology of these speakers is absolutely amazing. What other speakers use a moving coil woofer, spherical horn midrange, and ion tweeter? None that I am aware of, certainly nothing that marries these 3 disparate technologies and makes them work perfectly. If you haven't heard the treble from what has often been called the fastest high-frequency transducers in the world, you are in for a treat. Nothing I have heard before or since approaches the airy, delicate treble of these speakers. The spherical horn midrange throws a huge soundstage and makes the sounds of instruments come alive in your room like they are there. The sealed bass driver was designed for quickness and pitch definition to keep up with the other drivers. Crossovers are at 450 and 5000 Hz.

Conditionwise, I looked over the speakers and there are no flaws anywhere on the fronts and sides. A very few minor hairline scratches are on the back but you will have to look for them. All drivers are in perfect working order. I have all of the hardware including silver Acapella jumpers, spikes, power cords for the tweeter tube amps, and an extra pair of unused tubes.

So, you may ask, why am I selling these almost one-of-a-kind speakers? The answer is that I have had them in my very small listening room, and they are simply too big. I thought I would be able to move them to a larger room but my wife is not ready to give up the pool table and big screen TV. Sigh. I sit about 5 feet from the speakers and am amazed at how well they work. There are no holes in the soundstage and they have great transparency. However, I have heard them in bigger rooms, and there is no doubt that to hear them reach their full potential, they need to be in a much bigger room with listening seat at least 10 feet away. But if you do want to listen to them in the nearfield as I do, they definitely work. I now have gone back to some small 2-way monitors that don't have the bass and treble of the Acapellas, but are more coherent at my close listening seat.

I have the original boxes but since I picked them up locally 4 years ago from the dealer, I never replaced some of the foam inserts that had either deteriorated or disappeared at the dealer. For this reason I will sell them locally; by this I mean that I will drive and deliver them up to 350 miles from my home in Southern California. This would include Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Las Vegas, and Phoenix. I cannot imagine shipping these speakers in these huge boxes by freight. Or you can pick them up from my 93023 home.

I listed three original rave reviews of the speakers below if you want independent confirmation on how good these speakers are.

http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/equipment/1002/acapellaviolin.htm
http://www.ultraaudio.com/equipment/acapella_high_violin.htm
http://www.6moons.com/industryfeatures/ces04jc/ces04jc_4.html

Lowballers will be laughed at and ignored. Reasonable offers will be considered.

I hope you will love these speakers as well as I have. Thank you for looking.