propably best monitor ever.

Beware- shows everything .Heavy ,square and speaker post are springsonly .Repair expensive. Can sound fizzy with some electronics

Fantastic speaker.It will be too expensive for production. Looks ridicilous prices of new speakers with berilium drivers.You do not have to buy expensive speaker cables,interconects,but good amp is a must.You can choose between tube or solid state but solid state will be better option.High efficiency design so once again tube friendly.good music sounds amazing bad music terible. Bass is on a ligth side of neutral ,Open soundtsges and realistic tones.OK there are drawbacks but depends on personal taste .Production ended on 1995 so why Yamaha never tried again to made similiar design speaker or better is big ?If you can find it buy it if doesn't suit your taste it will be easy to sell it .

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JBL L90

Natural reproduction, tonal accuracy,speed of light sound ,transparency like electrostatics.Nice retro design .HQ crossover.Berilium drivers. Easy to sell including inflation rates .

Nearfield monitor only ,dry bass and no low end grunt- typical ,relatively small,monitor bass. Can sound too open for some. Can listen to mixing and recording and not music. Imaging .

Yamaha NS1000M - legendary speaker . Listened and then sell to friend for same price paid. Why:no low end grunt.

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Kef 105/2,Grada-Rall ribbon ref 10

Sound

Weight

I have had a set of the monitors since the eighties. My sister-in-law used to work for Yamaha and I got them cheap. I also had a rebuild by Yamaha in the early nineties. And I agree with most of the reviews that these could be the best speakers ever built. Unfortunately I am about to part with them. I am about to put them up for sale on Craig's List Orange County for $1200. Functionally they are perfect but, the cases are a little ruff because I have them hanging from the ceiling with rope and block & tackles. I still have the grills and the original boxes in my garage. SO if anyone is interested in haviung a pair of which are arguably the best speakers ever made, this is your chance. Writw me warmwaters@verizon.net

Simply everything . With the proper amplification or setup in general, the NS-1000's will sound unbelievably transparent and create one awesome sound stage. The woofer is light and incredibly responsive, the beryllium midrange throws out sound as if you are really there, and the beryllium tweeter dazzles you with highs that just sing and sing. All the while they are smooth as can be for hours of listening with no fatigue. Truly Phonomimal. Perhaps the biggest strength is there value. I'd put the NS-1000M up against almost any $20,000+ speaker.

Not a weakness by any means, but the woofer does drop off past 40hz, but from 40hz to 500hz these paper cone woofers are amazing and solid as a rock! Truly accurate bass with no exaggeration like others. Any serious system should use a subwoofer to pickup the extremely low frequencies anyway.

I currently own four pairs of NS-1000M's and am a serious audio enthusiast and collector. I've heard many high end speakers from full ribbon panels and electrostatics to moving coil drivers. I would honestly have to say that Yamaha did build quite possibly one of the worlds greatest sounding loudspeakers ever! I would first like to talk about the build quality. They are absolute tanks! The cabinets are reinforced over and over again with enough dampening material for a 5cft enclosure. The crossovers were built for extreme duty. I could go into detail about the special metallized paper capacitors and other creative features which make them so unique but it would take too long. The 1.2" beryllium dome tweeters are built like the rest of these things, serious! They never stop impressing you with marvelous high frequencies. The 3.5" beryllium dome midranges have that same precise sound as the tweeters. Filling the room with glowing sound you could not even imagine. I find myself closing my eyes when listening to various albums to simulate that live experience. A little info on beryllium, it's lighter than magnesium and harder than titanium. Not to mention it's superior sound propagation. Finally we get to the 12" woofers. Some may think "exotic beryllium dome tweeters and midranges than cheap paper coned woofers, whats up?", Paper is very lightweight and stiff enough to handle most lower frequencies with super fast
transitions and accuracy. The paper cone is the main reason the NS-1000M drops off below 40hz. In later models such as the NS-1000x they used an exotic carbon cone to extend the bass response even lower, but some say the overall sound quality of the woofer was hurt slightly up top. A compromise some are willing to take. The rest of the woofer is built to last with treated cloth surrounds, heavy duty cast aluminum baskets, and large ceramic magnet and voice coil assemblies. There are so many speakers out there I haven't even came close to hearing all of them, but I do have experience with many expensive high end audio pieces. To this day, I really consider the NS-1000M's to be one of the worlds greatest achievements in loudspeaker development. Thats really sad considering they are over 30 years old!

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Newer - B&W, JM Labs, Dynaudio, Martin Logan, Monitor Audio
Older - Carver, Klipsch, Pioneer, Infinity, ESS

Berylium drivers creates a very precise sound. Very loud. Excellant quality cabinet

Replacement parts are expensive.

I have a pair of NS-1000M's which my father originally purchased for a grand back in 1990. I have heard these speakers on 3 different amps. The 1000M's seem to be able to take anything you throw at them. The first amp that i heard them on was an old Sanyo amp which sounded very good and did not lack bass which other reviews have claimed. The second amp i heard these on was a Kenwood k5070 which didn't sound to great until we got a graphic equaliser for it. Without the equaliser it did sound rather dull and lacked bass until we got the equaliser on it. The third system i heard it on and is my current system is a denon hi fi. I have never heard anything sound as good. When properly matched with a good amp and good source equipment they are a match for any speaker. The highs and mids are extremely crisp and precise and the bass is tight and not overpowering but can be a bit boomy if the bass on the amp is turned up. One downside to them is that obviously they are getting old and they are reaching the stage where a bit of wer and tear is setting in and recently one of my tweeters have stop working and it set me back £130 just for that one tweeter and i haven't even had it fited yet. If you do have bad sound from theses bad boys it means your equipment is rubbish and you don't deserve to own such great speaker.

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Great balanced sound... no coloration... pure sound.... natural

Heavy not easy to move...

Still the best speaker I have ever heard.... even after 30 years...

Customer Service

Still can get parts...

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Everything. So much so that at least four other audiophiles I know have been convinced to convert to them after hearing mine (one after his Quad ESL63s and REL sub were destroyed in the Canberra bushfires).

None, although they are back-breaking to move around. And they work best on stands about a foot or so off the floor, away from corners (where they can get boomy).

I now own three sets of these - two pairs are the NS1000M, the other is the NS1000 (I bought my first set of NS1000Ms in 1975). Now, to my mind, these are arguably the best speakers to have been made by anybody - ever (and I've listened to a LOT of speakers over the years, and worked in a hi-fi store in my younger days too). Certainly they are more technologically advanced with their beryllium midrange and tweeter domes than just about anything else. And they are built like the proverbial brick outhouse (the NS1000Ms weigh in at 31kg each and the NS1000s are 39kg each!). All that said, however, the NS1000s have come in for quite a bit of criticism too - typically that they lack bass, have a harsh treble and midrange, poor imaging, etc. But ALL of these criticisms are a result of blaming the messenger for the message. The NS1000s play what they are fed, undisguised. And if they are fed crap, they sound like crap (as they should!). Unfortunately, however, because they are the last and most obvious link in the reproductive chain, they often get blamed for any faults in the resulting sound. But team them up with top quality source equipment and an amplifier that is REALLY capable of driving them properly (i.e. one that can deliver a LOT of current and has an excellent damping factor as well as low distortion) and the result is nothing short of astonishingly dynamic and realistic. Not only do they have more than adequate bass drive, the speed and impact of it is stunning. And the midrange and treble are as sweet, limpid and transparent as one could desire. It is just like having the performers in the room with you (try the Telarc Jacques Loussier Trio playing their version of Bach on them ...!!). I now drive mine with a Yamaha CA-1000 amp fed by a Yamaha CT-7000 FM tuner, Technics/SME3009/Shure VxMR turntable set up, and Marantz CD6000 OSE Limited Edition CD player, and the resulting sound is truly wonderful. So, to sum up, in the words of a late 70s Practical Hi Fi (British mag) reviewer - "these are the best speakers I have ever heard, or not heard, if you get my meaning". I agree wholeheartedly with his comment, and nothing has altered to make me change my mind since I read it way back then. Amen.

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Not so much "used" as heard (and usually lots of times):
Janzten hybrid (electrostatic + conventional woofer)
Bose 901
AR LST, 3a, 2ax, etc
Crown (forgotten the model, but each side had a large, dual woofer box with a separate mid/tweeter enclosure on top)
Gale 401
Quad ESL, ESL63 + REL sub
Duntech Sovereigns (direct comparison)
Infinity
Epicure
Advent
IMF transmission lines
Klipschorn (yes, the big room corner horns)
JBL, Pioneer, etc, etc, etc

Very accurate sounding loudspeaker. Bass is deep and powerful when putting on stand about 10" and must set the speaker near back wall. (less than 12")
I saw many reviews stated the weak bass and I could say that it must have been from poor set up. (probably set the speaker too far from back wall or with too close or too high from the floor)
Beryllium mid can make good or rought sound very much depending on the quality of source and amplifier and this is very useful for me since I build amplifier for a living. Tweeter sounds very accurate also. Details are good.
With 90dB sensitivity I first thought that I can't get any dynamic from my SE-2A3 but I was wrong. NS-1000 can display very high quality and big sound even with 3.5Watt/CH from my 2A3. Of course with 300B or 211/845, you can get much more SPL.

Due to sealed cabinet, humidity causes rust, oxidization inside wire, connector and parts. I have to clean all connector joints.
One of the woofer's magnet got rusting to the point that it pushed its pole piece out of center caused voice coil stuck. I had to remove the magnet and its pole piece and clean all rust and painfully assemble the magnet back. (if you do not own CNC milling machine, pls do not attemp such move)
Speaker terminal is somewhat difficult to use.

I searched for Yamaha NS-1000M for years in Thailand and finally I got Yamaha NS-1000 (home version). It is heavier than M version and got nice veneer. The reason I want this speaker is that it contains pure Beryllium drivers while most modern loudspeakers do not even include this expensive element into their expensive products.
Yamaha NS-1000 reproduces very accurate sound and that's no wonder why it has been standard in many recording studios until now. The next good thing is that it can generate very high SPL that most modern bookshelf speakers can only dream of.

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NS mean natural sound. Is is the real truth. Not spectacular but day after day you forget them to listen only the music.

None for this price.

Bought them by curiosity.
After several months, I think they are the best I have ever owned.
Not the more punchy or the more pleasant (I mint colored) but the more natural.
You can listen music for hours and hours without tiredness.
With this kind of loudspeaker, the first listening is not necessarily convincing.
At the fist time, I thought they were to lustresness with a lack of life.
It is when I have once again listen my other loudspeaker that, slowly, I have decide to put then in my principal system.
The amp is a Hafler 9505.

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Celestion Ditton 66, Chartwell LS3/5a, JBL 4315B, JBL 4312A, Pioneer HPM 100, Yamaha NS 10

Revealing of details in the recorded matter.Good studio monitors.

Do not image properly in a home situation.

These have many good points.Like all speakers with dome midranges however they do not image properly.
Even most $400 stand mounts image much better.
Good speakers should dissapear sonically whereas with these you are always aware that the sound is coming from both speakers.Voices in particular are too big and not focussed.
And good stereo should always be about imaging.Otherwise we might as well be listening to one speaker in mono.

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Yamaha NS1200
Celestion 551