For Sale a pair of like new Maple Maxhemps with Omega speaker bases. These speakers have Omega's latest hemp driver and they are brand new drivers with 0 hrs on them. So you will have the pleasure of breaking them in yourself. I rate these a 9 because the drivers are brand new and the cabinets and bases are in excellent condition. The drivers and ports were given a few damping tweaks by Louis. I really like these speakers, they spoiled me with a simply direct and coherent sound. Paired with a tube intergrated, I enjoyed a wonderfully fuss free and musical system. Really made me question why I was trying so hard before.
These are not the perfect speakers for everyone. If you are obsessed about frequency extremes, look elsewhere. if you must recreate a full scale ochestra in your room, look elsewhere. But if you are more concerned about the heart of the musical spectrum, then you'll be treated to a wonderful midrange with lovely tone, tone, tone. You'll get sparkling highs and some very credible room filling bass down to 35hz. If you need more bass Omega just released a Hemp driver based subwoofer. But by no means are these bass shy, within the confines of what the driver can do, the bass was more than I expected. I had these setup in a music room but my new baby has claimed that space and thus the system sadly must go. I can say that I was never more "locked in" than with these speakers. In my setup, music was tuneful, coherent, detailed and fast.
Jonathan Valin of The Absolute Sound has this to say:
"I’m a big fan of any speaker that sounds like a single-driver sound source, which is one of the chief reasons why I prefer two-ways, ’stats, planars, and omnis to hybrids and multiways. But you can’t sound more like a single-driver sound source than, well, a single-driver sound source—and that is precisely what the $2695 Omega Max Hemp loudspeaker is. The folks behind the Max Hemp use, well, hemp not only as the material for their single full-range driver (with whizzer tweet) but for the box it is housed in (and the stand it sits on). A pulpy material that is stiffer than paper (and in certain other forms much more entertaining), hemp like paper has very little sonic signature of its own. With its added strength it makes for a superb driver and cabinet material. The Omega Max may not—by its very nature—be the fullest-range speaker on the market (though the manufacturers claim 40Hz extension) but it is certainly one of the purest. Driven by the $7000 Art Audio Diablo SET amp, $6500 Gill Audio Design Alana preamp, $2350 Sheu-Analog ’table, and $2250 Schroeder arm, it was virtually colorless and boxless-sounding in the midband, so beguilingly and effortlessly natural on voice that it made me think it might make for a poor (or poorer) man’s Magico Mini. The Omega Max Hemp may be one of those great bargains that come along once in a paper moon. I can tell you this: I plan to review a pair in the near future."
So the Maxhemps can play with and compare to some pretty well respected company. And they don't need thousands of dollars worth of front end components to sound good but are revealing enough to show the differences of upstream components.
I listened to some other systems and my mind would feel as if it was waiting for the music to come together but the Hemps served it up in a manner that my mind and ears didn't have to do as much work, the music was just there. Imaging and soundstaging are great. This speaker does alot right, listen and forget about all the Hi-fi stuff. Even now I can't get Roger Waters guitar out of my head, the reason for that stems from this speaker drivers' lineage (The Tone Tubby Hempcone), see the Omega speaker website for more details. These rarely come up for sale and for good reason, Put these in small to medium sized room, get some sweet tubes or whatever you fancy and sit back and relax, these speakers are not going to try to impress you, they are going to dissapear and it will be just you and your music collection. Will upload pictures soon.
http://cls.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?spkrfull&1193895255Thanks
