As KD would say: "Oh, bullsh!t". I am probably not the richest or smartest here. Mark is probably the richest and Woodsjunkie is the smartest. At any rate, no one will ever know and to quote ole Ken again: "It really doesn't matter".
As far as speakers go, those old 901's certainly had their following. When I was at school back in the 70's, several of my friends were students of Dr. Amar Bose and also worked for him assembling 901's on the side. I almost took one of his classes, but scheduling conflicts prevented my doing so. There were hacked together 901's in many dorm rooms around campus. The key to the 901, however, was the active equalizer that had to be used with them in order to flatten out the low frequency response. Without it, the speakers rolled off severely below about 80 Hz. and the complex impedance curve below about 100 Hz. had more peaks than the Rocky Mountains. Many students used the speakers without the equalizer, because Bose kept tight tabs on them. Two older audiophiles from my hometown of White Plains, NY, Ed Adler and Frank Eulau, did much of the work on the equalizer. I used to visit them frequently at Intermedia Sound Labs in NY during school breaks while they were "voicing" the speaker/equalizer combination. The Bose 1801 power amplifier was designed specifically to drive the early 901's as most receivers and amplifiers of the day lacked the low frequency grunt that it took to drive the 901's reactive load, especially with the 30-40dB preemphasis boost the equalizer provided. If I remember correctly, the 1801 and it's pro-oriented sibling, the 1800, put out 256 WRMS per channel. This was big power in it's day; especially when one considered how small the 901's were compared to other speakers that could handle this kind of power. I remember once that Frank hooked up an 1801 to one of the prototype Ohm A speakers. CD's didn't exist back then, so all we used was turntables. Apparently, the viscuous damping fluid in the cuing mechanism of a Shure SME tonearm had leaked out, and when Frank lowered the cuing arm, the stylus crashed down on the record. The 1801 happily flattened the $2000 Walsh conical drivers in both speakers. Big power is cool.
My speakers are Egglestonworks Andras and yes, they do have 1 -1/2" thick Italian Marble on the side panels. They are one of the most inert speakers ever made. They only sit about 39" high and are 18" deep, but weigh in at about 235 lb. each. Each unit has 2 Dynaudio W30 12" woofers set up in a co-driven isobaric configuation. Two Morel 6" midrange drivers with 3" voice coils are driven full range and the high frequencies are handled by the Dynaudio Esotar tweeters. Blow one of the tweeters and both channels have to be replaced as they are matched pairs. Cost for two of these approach $2000. Thank God I haven't had to replace them. Frequency response is within 5 dB from 20-22,000 Hz, anechoic, although nearfield effects can modify this characteristic significantly based on room dimensions and acoustics. Stereophile rated them "Class A".
These are driven with my 10 year old Krell MDA 500 monoblocks which have been flawless. Each amp weighs 165 lb and each has it's own dedicated 20 line direct from my main breaker box. These amps are rated at 500 WRMS into 8 Ohms, and as per original Krell standards, double their power with each successive halving of load impedance. Short duration power into 1 Ohm will exceed 4,000 WRMS, limited only by current available from the 120 VAC mains. A dead short across the speaker output terminals will thermal cycle the protection circuitry with a period of about 45 seconds. Driving the Egglestons, they produce just over 1,000 WRMS each and the speakers love it. Many would argue that the MDA's have the finest bass response and control of any amplifier ever made.
Finally, paraphrasing Al Pacino in the movie "Scarface": "I like chainsaws; only I like audio better".
