Hi, I have spotted a pair of B&O Beovox S45 Speakers for sale near me and I am seriously considering buying them, but was wondering about how to connect them to regular speaker terminals on an amp/receiver. I am having trouble finding many pictures of them, but this picture here shows the back of the speaker:
From what I can see there are no speaker terminals such as those found on newer speakers, so I was wondering how these would connect to an amp, and what cable I would need. Sorry if this is a stupid question, I don't have a great deal of experience with speakers this old and am mainly considering buying them on reputation and value alone. Thanks for any help!
First, I have to ask why you want B&O S45's. They aren't a very good speakers even by the standards of 1980's speaker design. They are unsual - which was B&O's intent - and they mount on a wall - which a lot of speakers do nowdays. Otherwsie, there aren't any features I can remember about these speakers that would make them a recommendation for purchase - not then and not now, and I did sell B&O in the '80's.
To answer your question my recollection tells me the S45 could not be made to work with anything other than a B&O connector. You can see it sticking out of the end of the B&O speaker wire in the pictures. The connector was essentially proprietary to B&O and could only be purchased through B&O service centers/dealers. B&O doesn't support their old product at this time and you'll have to find a B&O dealer to find out if they still sell these connectors.
At a later date B&O did make several of their speakers with push clip type speaker connections which allowed any 20 AWG bare wire to be used. I don't remember the S45 having this facility however. If you're stuck on owning these speakers, ask the seller if they have the B&O connectors or whether the speakers accept bare wire.