Does the Advent speaker corp still exist?
if you do a simple search on Google i think you will find the
answer is no
The name still exists, but with no personnel ties to the
original company.
Advent was originally started by the late Henry Kloss. This
company was eventually bought by Beatrice which became Esmark. In
the 1980's the Esmark audio companies were spun off as
International Jensen Inc. IJI originally consisted of Jensen,
Advent, Phase Linear, and the automotive OEM speaker business, and
component businesses. In the 1990's IJI went public. In the mid
1990's IJI was bought by recoton, and the OEM, and component
companies were spun off as IJI. The Advent line and its design
continued under Recoton ownership, but eventually became solely
sourced overseas. When recoton went out of business the brand names
were picked up but no personnel went to the new owners.
So in short, the name still exists, but the personnel/design
change stopped with Recoton ownership.
PS: AS an addendum to the above or for anyone who wishes to
know, we in the audio business and those few who got to know him
(or at least had dinner with he, Saul Marantz and Jon Dahlquist one
night) knew him as a modest man of surprisingly modest means. He
placed purity in sound reproduction over profit. His Advent
loudspeakers were truly incredible speakers. We sold them against
ANY other speakers even near their price range ($112.00 ea. retail
in '75). When stacking them up against more expensive speakers we
literally stacked 'em - two sets of Advents, woofer to woofer to
challenge some of the most expensive speakers of the time. Nothing
could approach the Advents in their price range, and it took going
to DQ 10's or Infinity 2000A's before one could beat the stacked
Advents and then you were going way out of the Advent price range
(DQ 10's in those days were $400 a side).
This article has inspired me to obtain a pair of them and give
'em the old A / B comparison against today's speakers. Perhaps I'll
look up this article at that time and report on how they do...
Jjurkens