Does the Advent speaker corp still exist?

Answer 1

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