Minims 7 Speakers
My father was as serious an audiophile as you could be while being completely and hopelessly broke most of the time. But back in the 80’s, when he was really chasing the perfect sound, he went through a lot of amazing speakers; some alien looking Advent speakers that I hated, a nice pair of Dynacos that are around the house I grew up somewhere still and 2 amazing speakers made by a company called Creek. When I was 11 I was told I was gonna be able to cobble together a system from his cast-offs. I got an Onkyo tape deck, a loud-ass Dynaco receiver and some shitty Japanese turntable whose make I forget now. No speakers. So I had to wait for my birthday for the only brand new component of my set-up.
I open up the box on my 12th and what I get are two heavy black little speakers. I hooked them up and shook the whole house from my little attic room. I was probably rocking White Lion or something.
The Minimus 7s, like a lot of great things, are a complete aberration. They were made by a ridiculously shitty company, namely Tandy, marketed under the crumby stereo brand of Realistic, to be sold through Tandy’s crappy retail wing Radio Shack to broke people who don’t really like music so that they could slap them onto their shelves and play bad music to nobody. By some miracle the Tandy technicians got tired of churning out depressingly retarded computers and dinky amps and actually made a quality product.
The speakers are crazy small. The woofer is four inches and the tweeter only one but their efficiency and accuracy are weirdly on-point. As long as you take care to position these things correctly; get them floating, get them away from the amp, place them near walls if you want more bass, the speakers are bar none the best speakers you will ever buy for under 50 dollars.
Which brings me to my next point. The Minimus line went into production in 1978 and only went off-line a few years ago when RCA bought up a lot of Radio Shack’s holdings. These speakers have developed a cult following like Trekkies or fans of old porn stars. There are sites dedicated to refurbishing these already superb speakers, ( I put new crossovers in mine, they improved slightly) which is great but with the hipster cache comes a rise in prices for what were originally cheap-as-free boxes. Look for them at yard sales, a lot of people had them, and pick them up. If you go the Ebay route don’t spend a dime over 60 dollars and send a nasty email to who ever is trying to jack you. But if you are lucky and have them in your basement, dust them off, hook them up to any decent amp and fuckin’ blast them. I suggest a later period White Lion selection.
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