Evan’s MK2 BeoLab Pentas

[Evan]

Hey everyone! It’s been a long time since I’ve written a thread like this but it seems I have some time to do so and I shouldn’t keep all my delicious build photos to myself.

Here is the long (and still running!) saga of my 2022 rescue of a pair of MK2 PentaLabs.

But first some context! I kind of live in two places – San Francisco, CA and Bridgend, Wales. It’s a long story that mostly involves work. Work is speakers, and speakers are life so everything has blended into one and the same. So if some of the details in this story don’t make logical/logistical sense then that is most likely due to my frantic, time-impoverished, trying to keep everyone happy, expat lifestyle I currently find myself in.

Like many of you, I religiously browse Facebook marketplace, craigslist and eBay just looking at all the B&O gear I could buy. I found a listing for a pair of MK2 Pentas in the East Bay area and kept my eye on the listing for a few months. Definitely didn’t need them as I already have a pair of MK3’s (in a storage unit, 2500 miles away, might as well be on Mars) but then again, the bedroom in SF needs some floor-standers for movie watching and to play music from my then recently acquired BS Moment that the PrizeDrawBot himself sent my way. Turns out luck was on my side as the girlfriend and I found ourselves in the east bay at a lunch gathering. This was a group of my girlfriend’s colleagues so I was naturally, silently plotting to grab those Pentas on the way home. And snag them we did. I even planned ahead for this and made sure we took the larger of our cars in order to accommodate them and carry them home.

Naturally the confident seller stated that they were a flawless pair of Pentas that had zero foam rot. The seller was a restauranteur and used them as PA speakers for wedding receptions and that sort of thing so in hindsight they had lived a pretty tough life. We arrived at the restaurant and I shined my phone light through the fret to show him what foam rot really looked like – the surrounds were literally falling out and collecting in a neat pile behind the fret. The seller also decided to stop using the amps themselves and very inconveniently extended a pair of speaker wires through them amp (yes, he fished the wire THROUGH the amp) instead of just disconnecting the amps altogether and running wire out the back. But at any rate, they seemed savable and both made music so I made a deal.

I think in the end I paid $450 for them.

Here they are in our old bedroom connected up to the Moment for sadly what was only a very brief moment. The amp started cutting out on the right BeoLab and I realized that the tweeter wasn’t even playing. So out they went into the garage as I ordered parts and prepared for my departure to Wales.

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