toplayer2 wrote:IMO, the best VPO speaker that I have ever heard is made in the USA. It was designed for professional studio monitoring and is extremely accurate and uncolored. What you get out is what you put in. This is the original Mackie HR824 (not the newer MK II which is made in China).
Joe Hardy
Hi Joe,
You wrote the above a little while back.
A few months ago I purchased a pair of the 824's off ebay for a cheap price as one needed fixed. I had been really curious to try a pair. These were made in 99 and in the USA. I spent many hours repairing burned traces on the board and replaced a number of transistors. One thing I found out too is that Mackie doesn't even carry replacement drivers for these pre- Mark II units. As I also needed a new tweeter, fortunately I found a posting on the net from 2009 of someone that had one go bad and the units were still under warranty. He couldn't find a replacement anywhere, even the service centers he checked with said they no longer serviced Mackie and also said the drivers weren't available anymore. One firm suggested checking with Madisound speakers who was then able to recommend a replacement from the same company, Seas, that made the original one. Anyway I got one and it seems to work fine, it's actually suppose to be of a better quality. The only thing is it payed a little louder so I had to turn the gain down a little on the board. Of course the speaker may not have as flat a frequency response now as it should, I don't know.
Fortunately even though Mackie is poor on service and parts, they provide a VERY comprehensive service manual including all of the PCB trace layouts, I was able to download for $5 from a site.
Anyway I was finally able to compare them to my B2031A Behringer's, and even though there is a subtle difference in the sound I really think they sound more balanced in frequency response, have a little more lower end as a whole, leading to a more natural less fatiguing sound.
So now I'd like to buy a few more pairs, but am finding that many of them on ebay, or Craig's list that show the rear, say they are made in China. At some point they switched to China for the manufacturing even for these pre Mark II versions. So my question is, do you have any that were made in China? If so do they sound any worse than the USA made versions? From what I've seen the China versions have the RCA jack and have just the serial number on the back, while the USA versions don't have the jack, and have the date code right next to the serial number.
A note on the drivers, apparently reading on the web, Mackie has supplied the MKII woofers as replacements for the older design, but the owners claim they do not sound as good, and that they are definitely of a different design. For the tweeters they just say you are out of luck. The MKII tweeters are definitely of a different design, I suspect even that they won't fit physically.
Thanks,
Eric