Avid Model 102
A hundred and thirty bucks bought you a two-way air-suspension box with a grille you could reupholster yourself, and a measurement sheet honest enough to embarrass the spec department.
Overview
The Model 102 is the middle child of Avid's Series 100 line. It is a two-way air-suspension bookshelf with a 1-inch dome tweeter and a 10-inch high-compliance woofer. The enclosure measures 25 inches tall, 15 wide, and 9-5/8 deep, and weighs 36 pounds. Avid's own advertising put the Series 100 range at $79.50 to $139.50 across the 100, 102, and 103, with the 102 listing at $130.00. The sides are simulated-walnut vinyl, so nobody is going to mistake it for furniture-grade veneer. The dominating physical feature, as Audio (September 1975, p.67) put it, was the grille. It is double-knit stretch fabric over a pressboard frame that snaps into the front of the enclosure, and the owner could swap cloth colors for $3.95 a pair. That is an unusual bit of user-serviceability for a budget speaker, and the reviewer reckoned that feature alone could sell the system to a lot of people.
That same review, by Richard C. Heyser, is the most complete document anyone is likely to find on the 102. It is candid about what the speaker does well and where it stumbles. The published specs are 8 ohms nominal, 100 watts power handling, 35 Hz to 18 kHz ± 5 dB, and a crossover at 2200 Hz. A three-position high-frequency level switch sits behind the removable grille on a slotted shaft you could turn with a coin. A tweeter-protecting fuse sits in a holder just above that control, and the rear panel carries push-type connectors in a recessed, color-coded cavity. Avid shipped a five-year warranty transferable to later owners, plus an instruction manual the reviewer went out of his way to praise as intelligent and readable.
The measurements are where the 102 gets interesting. Heyser's anechoic sweep came out almost exactly matching Avid's printed claims. He joked that the company risked being cited for "unwarranted honesty in specification." Efficiency lands around 85 dB SPL for one watt across most of the usable range, which is moderate for a bookshelf this size. The bottom end rolls off below roughly 55 Hz in well-behaved fashion. The impedance curve suggests a sealed box with a 50 Hz cutoff, and the minimum impedance dips low enough that the review advised against running two pairs in parallel. The acoustic crossover actually begins nearer 3 kHz than the rated 2200 Hz, and there are small sibilance-emphasizing peaks in the 7-to-9 kHz region and again at 14 kHz. The three level positions only affect content above 3 kHz, and the difference between settings is slight - approximately 2 dB of energy.
Distortion is where the 102 punches above its price. Heyser found harmonic distortion very low at moderate and low levels. The lowest register ran out of steam above about 20 watts average, while the midbass and upper frequencies handled the full 100 watts without complaint. The crescendo test passed easily, and the speaker absorbed random peaks up to 300 watts while suppressing inner musical voices by no more than 1 dB. Acoustic intermodulation of 440 Hz by 41 Hz was dominated by phase modulation rather than amplitude effects. The energy-time analysis traced most of the response irregularities above 2 kHz to diffraction and scatter off the enclosure and woofer surface rather than to the tweeter itself. The 10 dB gap between direct and first reverberant sound translated to about 3 dB of response irregularity at 10 kHz.
In listening, the top end came across as stronger than the midrange and bass, and Heyser pulled the tweeter level down alongside the tone controls to balance things. Bass avoided boom entirely, though kick drum and tom-tom sounded a touch thin, and a mild bass boost would likely satisfy most ears. The midbass showed some mild peaks and a slightly grainy character in the range that emphasizes record scratches. Stereo imagery held up well with no image wander as the listener moved between seats. Massed choral groups came over convincingly, though vocals read as reasonably accurate if a bit distant. Heyser's verdict was a lot of good sound for a modest price, recommendable as a primary system on a tight budget, and a strong candidate for rear-channel duty in a four-channel setup given its upper-frequency behavior.
The five-year transferable warranty is long expired, obviously. Note that the later Model 102A, listed in a 1980 buyer's guide, is a distinct two-way with a 10-inch woofer and 1-inch plastic dome tweeter crossing at 2200 Hz. Do not assume parts interchange between the two.
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