The cabinet is the same. The drivers are the same. The crossover components have aged gently. And the sound is essentially identical to what you would have heard in the showroom a decade ago.
This is not true of all electronics, where component degradation is more of a factor. Speakers are largely mechanical and acoustic objects. When they are well made and well looked after, they endure. The question is knowing how to tell the good from the damaged, and knowing which used speakers represent genuine opportunity rather than a shortcut to regret.
Start with your ears
If you have any opportunity to listen before you buy, take it. Not with unfamiliar music in an unfamiliar room, but with something you know well enough that any tonal imbalance or distortion will register immediately.
What you are listening for in a problematic speaker is not always obvious. A damaged tweeter may produce a subtle harshness in high frequencies rather than an obvious silence. A bass driver whose surround is starting to fail may still produce bass, but with a softness and lack of definition that is easy to attribute to the room or the amplifier rather than the driver itself. A crossover capacitor past its prime tends to make the midrange sound slightly veiled or recessed, as if the music is coming from slightly further away than it should.
Compare this with what a healthy speaker does in the same position: treble that is crisp without being aggressive, bass that has both weight and texture, and a midrange through which voices and acoustic instruments sound present and real. If anything makes you slightly uncomfortable or vaguely unsatisfied without being able to say why, trust that instinct.
Inspect the drivers
With the grilles removed, examine each driver carefully before listening to anything.
The bass and midrange drivers. The surround is the ring of material connecting the outer edge of the cone to the basket. On older speakers, this surround was often made from foam, which degrades over time and can crumble or separate from the cone entirely. This is the most common physical failure mode in used speakers of any age, and foam surrounds that are visibly deteriorating will compromise bass performance significantly. Rubber surrounds, used by most manufacturers from the late 1980s onwards, are far more durable and rarely need attention.
Press gently on the centre of the cone with a fingertip and feel for any scratching or grinding sensation. This would indicate that the voice coil has become displaced and is rubbing against the magnet gap, which is a serious fault requiring professional repair or driver replacement. A healthy driver should depress smoothly and spring back cleanly.
The tweeter. Check the tweeter dome for dents. A dented tweeter dome may still work, but the dent can cause a resonance that affects high frequency performance. On soft dome tweeters, which are very common in British hi-fi, a small dent can sometimes be carefully pulled out with a vacuum. On hard dome tweeters, the dome is more rigid and a dent is harder to address. More importantly, look for any signs of the surround around the tweeter dome lifting or tearing. Again, gently pressing on the dome should produce a smooth, spring back response with no scratching.
If the seller has a tone generator or a simple audio test app, playing a 1kHz tone through each driver and switching channels can confirm both tweeters are working identically and that neither channel has a fault.
Check the cabinets
Cabinet quality matters in speakers far more than in most other hi-fi components, because the cabinet is an acoustic instrument. Its rigidity, internal damping, and port tuning all affect what you hear as much as the drivers themselves.
Look for structural damage: deep gouges in MDF panels, cracked or separated joints, particularly at corners, or any sign that the cabinet has been dropped. Run your hand along the internal edges of the cabinet through the driver cutouts if access allows and feel for bracing joints that may have come loose. A loose internal brace creates a resonance that is audible and difficult to cure without opening the cabinet.
Cosmetic damage, scratches in the veneer or chips on the corners, is different from structural damage. These affect price more than performance. A speaker with cosmetically worn real wood veneer that is otherwise structurally sound is frequently a better purchase than a cosmetically pristine speaker that has been stored in a damp environment.
If the cabinet has a reflex port (a tube opening in the front or rear), peer inside with a torch. The internal damping material should be present and undisturbed. Some speakers also have internal cross bracing visible through the port, which should be firmly in place.
Sensitivity and impedance: matching speakers to your amplifier
Before buying any speaker, check its rated sensitivity and impedance against the amplifier you intend to pair it with. These numbers define the relationship between amplifier power and what you will actually hear in your room.
Sensitivity is measured in decibels at one watt at one metre (dB/1W/1m). A speaker rated at 90dB is significantly louder at a given volume position than one rated at 86dB. Naim amplifiers, for example, are designed around current delivery rather than raw voltage and work particularly well with speakers of 87dB sensitivity and above. Pairing a low sensitivity speaker with an amplifier of modest power output results in a system that sounds strained and compressed at normal listening volumes.
Impedance is the electrical load the speaker presents to the amplifier, measured in ohms. Most speakers are rated at 4 or 8 ohms. An amplifier rated for 8 ohm loads will work harder into a 4 ohm speaker and may run warm or even clip in demanding passages. Some older amplifiers specify a minimum impedance; falling below it can cause protection circuits to trigger or, in older designs without protection, damage the output stage. Check the speaker's rated impedance and confirm it is within your amplifier's specified range before committing to a purchase.
Standmounters or floorstanders: which is right for you?
The honest answer is that room size and personal preference should drive this decision more than any universal principle about which type sounds better.
Stand mounters, also called bookshelf speakers despite the fact that few serious listeners put them on shelves, are typically more predictable in rooms where bass reinforcement from walls and corners can cause problems. Their limited bass extension means they interact with room acoustics in a more manageable way, and in a mid sized listening room a good pair of stand mounters on properly engineered stands will outperform many floor standers at the same price.
Floor standers bring more bass extension and more scale to large scale music. In a room big enough to accommodate them properly, a well chosen pair of floor standers provides a different, more complete acoustic experience. In a small or lively room, that same bass output can become a problem that is difficult to solve without careful positioning or room treatment.
On the used market, stand mounters from serious British manufacturers represent extraordinary value because they were often expensive when new, hold their quality almost indefinitely, and are easier to transport and store than floor standers, which means more of them appear in good condition.
Brands worth seeking on the pre-owned market
Harbeth make some of the most consistently musical speakers in British hi-fi, from the compact P3ESR to the larger SHL5 and Monitor series. They are built in Lindfield, West Sussex, and their paper cone drivers and thin-wall cabinet construction produce a midrange coherence that listeners find difficult to improve on at any price. Used Harbeths hold their value well, which is itself an indicator of quality.
ProAc Response and Studio series speakers appear regularly on the pre-owned market and offer a similar combination of tonal balance and driver quality. The Response 1 SC and its predecessors are among the finest small stand mounters ever made.
Neat Acoustics, based in County Durham, make speakers that are particularly well suited to Naim and Rega amplifiers. The Motive and Momentum series are compact, efficient, and surprisingly capable in the bass for their size.
Spendor and Stirling Broadcast both trace their origins to the BBC monitor designs of the 1970s and produce speakers with an emphasis on accurate midrange reproduction that many listeners prefer for long term listening.
B&W (Bowers and Wilkins) 600 and 700 series speakers are widely available used and offer a more forward, detailed presentation than the British monitors listed above. The 805 and its descendants are excellent standmounters. The Nautilus tweeter technology, which appeared in the 800 series from the late 1990s, represents a significant step up in high-frequency performance.
Dynaudio make speakers built around their own drivers, manufactured in Denmark to very high tolerances. Used Dynaudio standmounters, particularly the Contour and Focus series, are consistently well regarded and represent excellent value when condition is good.
The bottom line
A well chosen pair of used speakers, bought from a seller who can demonstrate they work correctly and describe their history honestly, will often outperform any new speaker at the same budget. The key is knowing what to check and understanding what you are looking for before you spend anything.
If you are not sure what will work in your room or with your system, get in touch. We test every pair of speakers we sell and are happy to talk through what would work before you commit to a purchase.
Browse our current speaker stock at 2ndhandhifi.co.uk
For the dedicated enthusiast
If you want to go further than the visual and listening checks above, here is where speaker assessment gets more technical.
Crossover capacitor ageing. The crossover network divides the audio signal between the tweeter and the woofer (and midrange driver, on a three-way speaker). Crossover networks use capacitors and inductors whose values determine the crossover frequency and the shape of the filter. Electrolytic capacitors, which are common in crossovers from the 1980s and 1990s, degrade over time. Their capacitance drifts, which shifts the crossover frequency and can produce a slightly recessed or coloured midrange. A crossover recap by a competent technician is typically less expensive than a new set of drivers and can restore a speaker to its original specification. If you are buying a used speaker more than 20 years old and it sounds slightly veiled in the midrange despite otherwise good driver condition, the crossover is the first place to look.
Impedance curves and amplifier compatibility. The rated impedance of a speaker (4 ohms, 8 ohms) is a nominal figure. The actual impedance varies with frequency and can dip significantly below the rated value at certain points in the bass region. Some speakers, including many high end designs, present impedance dips to 2 ohms or below at their bass resonance frequency. This is not a problem for a high current amplifier designed to handle it, but it can cause difficulties for amplifiers with limited current delivery. If you are considering a speaker known for a difficult impedance load, Dynaudio and Sonus Faber have historically presented challenging loads, verify that your amplifier is rated to handle it before assuming they will simply work together.
Bi-wiring and bi-amping. Many quality speakers have two pairs of binding posts (the connections for the speaker cable), separated by metal links. Removing the links and running separate cable runs from the amplifier to the high frequency and low frequency sections is called bi-wiring. Whether bi-wiring produces an audible improvement is a genuinely contested question. Bi-amping, which uses separate amplifiers for the high and low frequency sections, is a more substantive change and is measurably different: each amplifier handles a narrower frequency range and is not compromised by the electrical demands of the other. Naim offer a range of power amplifiers specifically intended for bi-amping, and the improvement in resolution and dynamics when bi-amping good speakers with capable amplification is real and significant.
Speaker placement and Qtc. The Qtc (total Q factor) of a speaker describes its bass alignment. A Qtc of 0.5 to 0.7 typically describes a speaker designed for free space placement, which benefits from being away from walls. A higher Qtc (0.7 to 1.0) indicates a speaker designed to work closer to a boundary, where bass reinforcement from the wall fills in the lower frequencies the speaker does not produce on its own. Most manufacturers specify recommended placement distances in the manual. Ignoring this and placing a free space speaker close to a rear wall produces bass that is thick and poorly defined; pulling a boundary-designed speaker away from all surfaces produces thin and lightweight bass. Knowing the Qtc of the speaker you are considering and matching it to the placement options in your room is a practical step that most listening comparisons in shops overlook entirely.