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Mission 770

Is anyone still there on this thread? I bought a pair of the mission 770 with the semi opaque polypropylene midrange units in the early 1980s. Still sounding good in front of a Music Fidelity power amp. Units are on trolley stands with the feet replaced with spikes, the units sit on stone blocks and are clear and punchy with highest res streaming. Does anyone know how best to bypass the fuses, they have never blown. Thanks.
 
I read an article in Hi-Fi News about Mission, and either Henry or Farad Azima ( I don't recall which ) admitted that the 770 was constantly going through changes and revisions.
I once heard the original model and decided to keep my Spendor BC1s.
 
They didn't stop with the 770.

Various examples of the 753 I've examined have had 0 ohms, 0.5 ohms or 1 ohm in series with the tweeter.

All are variations on "way too bright". A resistor value of 3 ohms achieves the correct balance.

Sometimes you just can't rationalise the things speaker makers do.
 
I'm glad I stayed with my BC1s.

I once heard a pair of 753s at a demonstration.
Very impressive ( especially with rock music ) but to my ears not at all musical...
 
Oh, they play music all right, grab it by the scruff in a manner quite beyond the capability of a soggy old Spendor!

However, probably not the choice for more genteel genres.

Unmodified, and with inappropriate amps upstream, eg Olive Naim and, wierdly, Cyrus, they could strip wall paper at 50 paces.
 
Oh, they play music all right, grab it by the scruff in a manner quite beyond the capability of a soggy old Spendor!

However, probably not the choice for more genteel genres.

Unmodified, and with inappropriate amps upstream, eg Olive Naim and, wierdly, Cyrus, they could strip wall paper at 50 paces.

'Horses for courses'
We all like different things...
 
There were two versions of the 737R; one had the ubiquitous Vifa 19mm Polyamide tweeter, the other a nice Peerless 25 mm fabric dome.

At the time I was working at a shop that stocked the full range, and the latter 737R was my pick of the bunch.

Also good were the 70.2 and the 780 Argonaut.
 
I have been using 770 freedoms for 18months now. My tweeter was blown so I put new SEAS tweeters in as Robert had done with his 770's. They are punchy and lifelike. They replaced 15" Tannoy. They don't just have the scale and bass of big Tannoys or the low distortion at crazy sound levels.
However, they make a great fist at most music and I do not miss the Tannoy really. These suit my room and ears nicely for sound quality and integration.
AFAIK the later freedom black bass cones are the same material as the clear ones. I prefer a solid state amp with them. They sound great with my old 60watt Jap amps.
 
I’m finding something unexpected with mine, I’ve got them quite far apart, about 12’, and the sense of space and air is extraordinary! It’s like you’re in the concert hall!
 
I remember the review that started that myth.


I've got three systems now, Quad/Gradients, Mission and JR149. The bass on the Mission is very distinctive, it doesn't sound like the other two, or as far as I remember like other speakers I've owned.

In fact the whole sound, the tone, of the Mission is a different thing from anything I've had before.

With the mission, with just a Quad 303, I can hear the room that the music’s being played in - the height, the walls. It’s very strange. For small vocal pieces (I’m listening to a renaissance mass sung with just four singers as I type) it’s amazing really.
 
I've heard some pretty exotic systems in people's homes and in studios, one of the moments I will always remember is listening to "Kate Bush The Dreaming" on my Mission 770s a big Pioneer amp and original Sondek with a Mission 774 arm and a Goldring Eroica cartridge.

In terms of just the sheer chutzpah and musical enjoyment in a typical Brit sized living room, the Mission 770s and the Rogers LS7s IMHO, were two of the best "affordable" midsize speakers ever produced. Neither were the last word in anything however, they did most things pretty darn well. Both of them loved big Japanese amps with was of course, heretical at the time.
 
I've got three systems now, Quad/Gradients, Mission and JR149. The bass on the Mission is very distinctive, it doesn't sound like the other two, or as far as I remember like other speakers I've owned.

In fact the whole sound, the tone, of the Mission is a different thing from anything I've had before.

With the mission, with just a Quad 303, I can hear the room that the music’s being played in - the height, the walls. It’s very strange. For small vocal pieces (I’m listening to a renaissance mass sung with just four singers as I type) it’s amazing really.

Can't say I found anything even remotely similar with mine as far as sounding different or wrong or anything.

Along the lines of what "Firemoon" is saying, I found their greatest strengths to be amazing dynamics, slam, speed etc when driven by a big amp (I mainly used a Musical Fidelity A370 with mine). Excellent power handling and ability to go loud cleanly for a speaker of its type and size. That they combine this with good transparency and pretty low colouration generally made them the dog's bollocks for me for many years.... lots of other speakers came in and were quickly humiliated by the 770's! Rogers LS7's were good but had nothing like the same ability to go loud and offer big dynamics.

Ultimately for me their big flaw that led to Spendors gradually taking over as my daily speakers was that although low colouration in general there is (with mine anyway) a hardness/harshness in a specific frequency range around or just above the crossover frequency that can make them really unforgiving of, as a good example, 80's digital recordings. Deliberately bright and sibilant stuff like George Michael recordings (the worst offender I can think of!) could take the enamel of your teeth from 30 paces!
 


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