It is easy to upgrade Penta’s to modern standards and then they will outperform the Beolab 9’s.

Beobuddy is a specialist in upgrading them and when i first heard them, i was blown away and brought my Penta’s immediately to him. No more ‘dull’ Penta’s, they are legends!

Thank you steve for the video - really interesting, I always felt my Beolab Pentas sounded dull and put this down to probably needing refurbishing. I changed them when I got my M100s and different front end. Now the 9s sound amazing to me and much closer to the type of sound Ilike.

I did once commit a sin and changed the crossovers in a pair of really rough Beovox Pentas and this seemed to make them breath.

I'm interested though in what Beobuddy can do - is this something that you can send a pair in for or something you can do yourself? I changed the caps in my M100s with a kit from Dillen and this brought them alive so if you can improve Pentas to that extent that would be great

 

I brought the entire amps to him and took the filters out of the speakers and brought them to him. The amps were recapped and the filters got a new design. I’m not a technical specialist, so i can not tell you what’s technical different, but the sound improves massively. Now i have the settings of treble on 0 and sometimes i think i can go even to minus.

but the greatest strength of the Penta’s now is the real 3D sound. It you close your eyes, you can point where the musicians are standing. And that’s what the Beolab 9’s are missing.

If you want to know more about the upgrade; Beobuddy is a member on this forum, so it is easy to contact him.

leosgonewild wrote:

I wonder how a true active Penta could sound.

 

Rip away the two crossovers, jam there icepower and sap inside and go crazy with tuning 😎

Wouldn't be "true" Pentas then, - would it?  ❓

People finding Pentas sounding dull hopefully aren't comparing 30+ year old unrestored speakers to factory new modern, - right?

Martin 

I agree, Dillen.

My Beovox Pentas was fully restored before I sold them. Very happy with the sound.

I am just curious what a modern DSP would manage to do with those drivers.

I’ve heard that the Beocreate for the CX100 altered the sound to much better. But I never heard them.

Hi Leo,

I use a PC-based DSP package with my Penta mk.3s and I absolutely love the sound.  I use Room EQ Wizard to set up the sound profiles, then Equalizer APO to load the sound profile onto my PC.  Both these are free Windows apps and they take some getting used to but they work superbly well once you are used to them.

I made a video about this here: