Just been having a tidy up and found my old Jamo 65III Cornet speakers. They look in good condition and, connected to an old CD player, sound good too.

I bought these around 25 years ago.

Question is, could I use these as the front speakers on my AV set-up?

Yamaha RX-V679 amp with Mordaunt Short MS 5.1 speakers.

They’re 6 ohm, 120W long term – 170W short term 3-way’s

I could use my current MS902’s as ‘surround back’ speakers 🙂

I suspect at 6 ohm they would not be compatible with most modern surround sound amps, but check your amp spec’s. All the amps I’ve had have required 8 ohm or more. One amp I think could drive down to 6 or 4 ohm, but it limited the system.

If it is mainly for AV use then the corner speakers are just effect speakers, the majority of the sound comes from the centre speaker with that and the sub being the most important speakers in the system – you can get away with less good effect speakers, so speakers like this would be way too much overkill unless your system is a combined AV and audio setup and you want the best of both worlds.

The amp does have an impedance setting so I can change to 6 ohm.

We do like to use the set-up as a music system too by running just the fronts.

Yeah, you can switch between 6 (or lower) and 8 (or higher) on that receiver.  The jury’s out on whether you should, however.

Yes you can, I did a similar thing with some Eltax speakers using a Pioneer receiver. It works very nicely for both music (front two channels only) and surround (7.1) after some tuning.

On my amp (and probably most?) you can adjust the ‘width’ of the centre channel, which makes some of the sound from the centre speaker channel play through the left and right fronts. Without that setting adjusted,  the sound was a bit unbalanced.

The bigger problem for me was the spouse-acceptance-factor, with the result that now I’m using some Wharfdale Diamonds in place of the Eltax due to their smaller size.

Thanks guys, I’ll give it a go and see how it sounds.

The bigger problem for me was the spouse-acceptance-factor, with the result that now I’m using some Wharfdale Diamonds in place of the Eltax due to their smaller size.

We’re in the process of working out the best place for the set-up and there’s a big, blank wall which would have plenty of space for it and would give us the optimum position for the surround sound. I’ll move it around and see what wifey thinks..

wouldn’t changing the impedance for the amp change it for all channels, or can it be set just for the front two?

wouldn’t changing the impedance for the amp change it for all channels, or can it be set just for the front two?

That’s a good point actually.  I’d expect that it’s a global setting.  With Dolby Digital and higher it expects a set of matched speakers (as opposed to the Pro Logic era which did funny things with 16 Ohm surrounds).  And if that’s the case then I’d definitely leave it at the default 8.

From the manual:

“In it’s default setting, the unit is configured for 8 ohm speakers. When using a 6 ohm speaker for any channel, set the speaker impedance to 6 ohm MIN. In this case you can use 4 ohm speakers as the front speakers”

Just noticed my MS302’s are 4 Ohm.

Do you want your woofers and tweeters?

Do you want a bag on your head?