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Videoton Minimax Speakers

A friend’s family had a pair of Minimax with an original Rega Planar 2 and an A&R A60 back in 1980 or thereabouts. The speakers were on wall brackets in a fairly large living room and it sounded very decent to me at the time. They always had a reputation for punching way above their remarkably low price tag.
 
My first stereo system (moving up from my schoolboy mono system with a BSR MP60, half a Sinclair Project 60 kit amp and single Wharfedale kit speaker) was a PL12DII, A60 and Minimax IIs. Over forty years on I still use the A60 and the Pioneer is in the back of a cupboard. The Videotons were sold a long, long time ago though.
 
My earlier post, interpreted by some as "slagging off" something or someone, was to give a little bit of history to the Minimax and their inclusion in system review from 40 years ago which leads some vendors to ask £200 or so for a pair.

I didn't expect many pfm members to remember or even be aware of a 40 year old magazine article (I called it notorious but DGP's own website refers to it as "infamous") and I've been surprised how many not only know of the review but owned, or still own, the speakers. We're a mature lot it seems!

If I was being critical at all it was of those eBay sellers who ask excessive prices for Minimax speakers on the strength of that old review but there's a pair (misdescribed) on eBay right now at a more reasonable £75 which seems more like it!
http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/710-5...0001&campid=5338728743&icep_item=152937130361.
 
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Aiwa d/d t/t, NAD 3020 and Minimax 2's. My first system. Lasted me 2 years before I bought some Cantor 2's.
Ah... flashback.
Jumpers as goalposts....etc

£200? Having a laugh.
 
I replaced the foam surrounds of a rotten pair using a kit from a Dutch company, whose name eludes me for the moment.

Yes, like many speakers the surrounds rot out. The surrounds from KEF B110 SP1003, fit quite well. I had a pair of B110's that were blown and used these surrounds. The cone tweeter of the Minimax, does let it down a bit. I may go to a soft dome tweeter, or perhaps a very nice vintage Peerless cone tweeter.
 
I am enjoying this...but have to say I never ever heard a NAD 30xx amp that didnt sound strident and harsh....i still have friends with them in their systems but when they arrived i tried hard to avoid buying a naim as it would have saved 100£'s...just not possible.

I still have half a dozen HFA that i browse thru every few years
 
I remember recommending them to a friend in 1983 or 1984 when he was building a "cheap as possible" separates system. From memory they were being sold at £40 or so by Richer Sounds (or one of the other bargain-mongers from the back pages of What Hi-Fi) which was an absolute bargain. He used them with a Sony TA242 amplifier and a Marantz turntable and they sounded pretty good.
 
I bought my pair when I was 17 - that'll be 45 years ago, then

They are still going strong in my second system on wall brackets and on the end of a NAD 3120, a cheap DAC and a PC running Foobar/Qobuz/R3/Youtube/whatever. No visible sign of surround rot - I wonder why? They have not been pampered and spent quite a few years in the loft, unexercised...

I wouldn't dream of changing the cone tweeters for domes. I haven't much liked any of the dome tweeters I have had in much more expensive designs (Proac, Kudos, etc.) and if I ever get round to building my Wharfedale SFB/3-based WAW it will certainly have an upward-firing cone wideband driver.
 
Know this thread has been dormant awhile but wondered if anyone had much info on the history of the Minimax speakers as there were clearly quite a number of versions.

Have had quite a few versions over the years & loved all of them all the way back to my Rega Planar 3 / Sugden A48 / Minimax days.

Early models had the paper cone HF unit but real heavyweight cast metal framed mid-bass. Later models had a plastic cone HF unit but less weighty pressed framed mid-mid bass. The box also changed several times with recessed front panels, non recessed front, recessed rear & non recessed rear, sealed & ported!

HiFi Answers even carried an article for a DIY bass speaker to go with it.
 
They also did a DIY article where they replaced the paper tweeter for a dome one.
I did it.
 
A friend bought a pair of the Minimax speakers in the late ‘70s. I thought they sounded pretty good.
I’d just bought BC1s, so there wasn’t much of a comparison but in the context of his system
they worked well.
When the Keesonic Kub came out I wondered if it had been inspired by the little Hungarian speakers,
also having a paper cone tweeter.
 
As Paul Benson is now dead and can't reply and I was one of the small full-time Hi-Fi Answers team (Paul/Tony/me) who produced and 'promoted' the Linn/NAD/Minimax system I think I need to put the record straight.

The whole thing sprang from an article called 'Low Finance High Fidelity' I wrote for Answers reviewing the Sansui SR-222/NAD 3030/Celef Domestic II Supers - I'd tried updating this system when the 3030 was replaced by the 3020 to include a Linn/Rega arm front end and initially used ITT 8070 speakers and later Audiomasters. About this time the Editor of Greetings magazine - we shared an office with her - wanted the best quality hi-fi for a very fixed and limited budget. With this in mind I put together a Linn/Rega/Grado FTE front end with an NAD and the cheapest quality speakers we knew - the original Videotone Minimax speakers. The system was real, I used it, I installed it for Terry, editor Benson heard it and we agreed it was important enough to include in his system reviews (more influenced by Russ Andrews and Richard Hey of Nytech than any Glaswegian bogeyman) in the April 1979 issue where the Linn was recommended in 9 out of 10 systems ranging in price from £336.75 to £4303.23 (the odd system out was the cheapest - having a Rega Planar).

There was no 'rider issued' months later about Codas and no 'Editors' requiring headlines. It would be good if people got their fact straight.
DGP

I remember at an Olympia audio show seeing and definitely hearing a pair of Minimax taking the full output of an Amcron Crown D150 only possible because the amp output was so clean, conversely when I was into helping create car show sound systems I used to regularly see 1000 w subwoofers destroyed by "carp" 300w amplifiers .
 
I remember the Minimax speakers being included in a notorious system review in HiFi Answers in the early 70's when they were pushing the idea that every system should include an LP12.

I think I remember this article but I only read HFN&RR for most of that decade, so maybe it was nearer late seventies, when I read everything.

I also recall an article suggesting an LP12 plugged into one of those stereo radio-cassette things that were in vogue at the time. About the same time, a woman came into the shop wanting a system with radio, cassette and turntable with a limited budget. I tried to get her to go buy a music centre from somewhere else, but she insisted she would only buy from me. Ended up selling her a Marantz Superscope radio cassette, a Pioneer PL12D, a ceramic cartridge I found somewhere, and soldering up a din-phone lead on the counter. I doubt she read HiFi-Answers and I doubt I would have come with that solution unless I had read the article. I remain depressed about that day, but she was happy and the shop made money.

the Sansui SR-222

Who of those of us working in the trade at the time could forget those? We had them on permanent order and every few months we got a couple. Snapped up instantly. If I recall correctly we stopped taking reservations on the things as there were a constant stream of people coming in asking to buy one. Sure, they were among the best budget turntables at the time, but the demand was crazy.
 
Early models had the paper cone HF unit but real heavyweight cast metal framed mid-bass. Later models had a plastic cone HF unit but less weighty pressed framed mid-mid bass. The box also changed several times with recessed front panels, non recessed front, recessed rear & non recessed rear, sealed & ported!

There was an even earlier version with a full-range woofer w/whizzer cone and no tweeter.

I remember seeing the ads for the Minimax in the back pages of British magazines, with bad B&W line art that looked like a throwback to the 1960s. It came as a surprise when people started taking them seriously.
 
They also did a DIY article where they replaced the paper tweeter for a dome one.

Indeed, they suggested changing it to a Richard Allan DT20.
The first HiFi magazine I ever bought was HiFi Answers January 78 where there was a letter from Donald J Peers from Richard Allan saying everyone should be careful as the Minimax had 12dB/octave filters (at 3.5kHz) but RA normally recommended 18dB/octave filters for the DT20. He suggested fitting fuses.

BTW, I don't have a superb memory, I just happened to be looking at my old copy of the magazine yesterday!
 
I ran a pair, back in the day when I couldn't afford anything else. They were ok, but the problem was, they weren't much good at the volume I used to like, because the bass mid unit being quite small, was long-throw and the lead-out wire to the coil used to keep pulling off.
 
Anyone remember these?

il_1588xN.1506084682_1h4z.jpg

 
I had a pair of videoton minimax speakers they came with my leak stereo 20 with its vari slope pre amp and fm tuner..looked like a city at night in the dark! I remember them fondly but am quite sure my dynaudios would send them packing nowadays.
 


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