Cerwin-Vega Vega69

Cerwin-Vega have a long and illustrious history going back to the days of low power amplifiers when huge efficiency meant that CV woofers made bigger, badder, deeper bass than any in creation. Gene Cerwinsky is one of my personal heroes, up there with Lansing and Dolby and hugely under-estimated in speaker history. (God I am SUCH a speaker geek.) The legendary K&M van is all CV speakers, although now ancient and they have changed their amplifiers a few times, they still rock and shake your clothes. So these six by nines had better impress teacher or I’ll weep quietly. A tough job to review, as in truth I must not be any harsher on these than any other, so I like to confess my own innermost naughtinesses first to get it over with. Like the Pink & Blue swear words at the beginning of Ian Dury’s Plaistow Patricia. I do love C-V, so will strive for fairness.So whaddaya get? A fairly understated looking set of items engineering-wise. They have a pressed steel chassis and the magnet, which is a wide diameter job wears a rubber boot, branded with a wrinkly decal. Terminated wires are included. The terminals are simple differentiated lugs and the pole mounted tweeter does not swivel.
– Pressed Steel chassis
– Rubber surround
– Silk textile dome tweeter
– Power handling 75w RMS, 150w peak
– Sensitivity 86dB (2.83V, 1m)
– Frequency Response: 55Hz to 22kHz- Impedance 4 Ohms
– Mounting depth 72mm
– Lug connection terminals for spade-end speaker connectors
– Pressed steel grilles
Review by Adam Rayner
The distributor was less than keen to let me have a go on these as they are not really a mad upgrade type item so much as a good workaday speaker, made to match up with the other kit they sell. A simple two way, the single tweeter does not swivel on its pole mount as can the offering from Morel, but was still a little livelier in the high frequencies than the RE Audio 69FR. The bass was simply startling in quantity as the speaker looks like it doesn’t weigh much or seem very substantial but that is a Cerwin-Vega characteristic. Usually attached to high efficiency, they often have smallish magnets but work better than you’d expect through excellence in motor design.
Power handling is not huge and it looks that these have been made to go well with headunit power. I found that Vega69 were hard to get a silly high level of output from, scoring some 113.6dB at maximum before distress sounds, which is still loud if not crushing. Amazingly good sound imaging was heard from Vega 69 as the ‘single source’ output really helps place sounds across the area in between the speakers. A bit like a less expensive Morel-style audiophile offering from Cerwin-Vega then, designed an awful lot like the incredible sounding Pulse 6×9 that costs half as much again.
As such, they would be great as a “You are kidding? You fitted THOSE in the front?” product. Skinnier than most 6x9s at only 72mm deep, they could just conceivably go in front doors and would impress.
Overall 7.2
Sound Quality 8
Build Quality 8
Power Handling 7
Efficiency 6
Value For Money 7