Blast from the past - Mission 700's

My father recently bought a 5.1 system that has a tuner and CD player. So the old JVC quasi separates system and a pair of Mission 700 speakers were up for grabs.

I had Mission 700's back in 1981 when they were pretty hot and cost me £119 - was a lot of money for a student in those days.

My daughter now has the JVC system in her bedroom with her MP3 player going into it and a smallish pair of JPW speakers that I had in as garage speakers.

My father bought Mission's later on than me after listening to and liking mine. They are in very good nick. The cone surrounds are like new. Mine fell apart and I sold the cabinets on Ebay some years ago.

Before I put the Mission's in the garage I hooked them up to my Copland CDA823 and Valve amp, state of the art Ubyte-2 speaker cables and had a listen.
They sounded quite good. Reasonable detail, bass pretty muddy and a bit boxy. That is compared to the Proac D25's I have that I think are wonderful.
They are better than the JPW's at anyrate so I'm happy

I never got to hear a pair of Mission 770's back then and still wonder how they would compare top the Proac's...

My other garage hifi bits are a Nad 3020 from 1980 (still works fine), a Yamaha tuner and a Technics CDP.

 

Mmm - I recently heard a pair of 753s again. I was very impressed - the bass not as tight as I would like but plenty deep and quite a satisfying mid / treble.

I've never agreed with those who rubbish mission - when set up nicely they've always been acceptable.

 

Agreed.
Some rubbish Proac too
I guess that's why there are 100's of speaker manufacturers all doing business - cos' we all hear things differently / have different tastes.
If, on fair comparison, it sounds right to you - it is.

 

Sage words.

I've never been a huge fan of the big ProAcs - but that's just me (and may also be down to the fact I can't afford them!!). I really like the diddy ones though.

I had a mate with a pair of the original 700's which sounded great. Also the original 770 (with the white front baffle) were a fabulous speaker - heard my first ever LP12 through them with Meridian 103/105 monoblocks (how cool did that stuff look!).

For me, I'd say Mission have produced some junk over the years but have also brought out some absolute peaches. The little 70 Mk1 was awful yet the Mk2 was brilliant (I owned a pair for a few years. Because my new valve amp won't drive the Kans I've hooked up our old pair of Mission 760's and they sound great - a tad plummy but sweet & musical. For a £100 speaker they work a treat.