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Bought a pair locally on CL mostly because they looked different. Ended up replacing the woofers with the ones purchased rather cheaply from Parts Express. Not terribly efficient but they seem to sound decent even with SET amps.

Anyways, does anyone have experience with those Fours or Allison speakers in general? I have heard that the founder, Roy Allison, used to work for Bose (kinda explains the appearance resembling the Bose 901s).

Min

Roy Allison, I believe, was the president and chief designer at AR during the '60s. He was influenced by the work of Dr. Bose at MIT and probably attended a seminar by him. Roy was interested in room effects on speaker measurements. His corner designs, for example, do not exhibit a flat response, because typical rooms absorb some of the sound at certain frequencies. He also was credited with the 'high placement' of the bass driver, which corrects for the Allison Effect.

His speakers always received excellent reviews in all the hi fi mags of the day and even in Consumer Reports, which regards the flatness of the response curve as paramount -- they placed his speakers (as well as Bose) in a special category.

A side note: When he auditioned his speakers for his Australian, audiophile friends, they were disappointed, because they did not exhibit pinpoint imaging. (They were weened on Rogers LS3/5as and Harbeths.)

Allison went out of business in the '90s , but the rights to the name and manufacturing were sold to a company in KY in 2005. It went out of business in 2008.