UREI 815B

Overview

The UREI 815B is not a speaker you buy. It's a speaker you install. At 107 kg (235 lb) it outweighs most guitar amplifiers. The enclosure is a flat black painted utility box with a black cloth grille screen. Modern Recording's 1986 studio monitor roundup listed it at 32 by 43.5 by 21 inches and $2,196.00, a price from a period when a decent used car cost less.

The low-frequency complement is what separates the 815B from its siblings. The 813B adds one 15-inch low-frequency cone. The 815B adds two. As Modern Recording (February 1986, p.39) described it, the 815B carried two 15-inch cones for bass, a 15-inch cone for midrange, and a 1.75-inch horn on top - with an 8-ohm impedance and a frequency response of 40 Hz to 17.5 kHz, ±3 dB. That 40 Hz figure is honest, not optimistic. The enclosure volume is there to keep it honest, and the extra cone is there to make it loud while it does.

Time Align and the one-point source

Living with a 235-pound monitor

Dimensions are 813 mm high, 1105 mm wide, and 533 mm deep. Shipping weight is 235 lbs, so freight is a real consideration.

The 815B is a professional tool with a professional footprint and a professional appetite for amplifier power and floor space. The value was always in the drivers and the crossover, not the box.

For anyone hunting a pair today, the questions are the ones that apply to any large vintage monitor: whether the coaxials are original and healthy, whether the surrounds have been done, and whether the cabinets have been abused in a road case or a soffit. Anything needing driver-level service means finding someone who knows what an 815B is.

The 815B gives genuine 40 Hz output, in a package designed to be worked in rather than admired. It is not a speaker for a small room, and it is not a speaker for someone who wants to move it twice.