Greetings from Canada!

[Active Puck]

Feels good to finally be approved for posting.

First I want to give a shout out to Dave (hey Dave, it's Chris!) for putting up with my e-mails and answering my questions. He's a busy guy so if I don't get a response back right away I know it's not because he's ignoring people. It really says a lot to have a person in charge being active on this forum (including AVSForum, a place I have a love/hate relationship with) as well as corresponding with everyone by e-mail. On the other hand he's made my life more difficult because if he were a jerk or my e-mails were ignored completely I might have blown off Ascend as a speaker choice. Now the Sierra towers are looking really, really good to me.

Speaking of towers, it'd be my first purchase of audio equipment in... well, in a long time. When my crummy Sony receiver died (a year ago? Two? Doesn't matter) I never replaced it. I tossed out my equally crummy Kenwood coffin speakers (these things are great when you're 20 years old and it's Boxing Day and you only have $100) and just never got around to replacing anything.

Maybe that's a good thing because these past six months I've been researching a lot of different speaker companies and it wasn't until the last couple of weeks when I read about Ascend. The simplicity of the site appealed to me, there's lots of technical information and not only that but the speakers are built in North America. That's awesome. If I end up buying Sierra towers it'll be the second purchase of something made in California in a year, my other being an iPad Ultimate Sleeve Case from Waterfield Design in San Francisco (shout out to that company, they're awesome). Some good things can actually be made in China (like my Orion dobsonian) but it's so much better when it's made in Canada or the States.

I suppose that does lead to a question about Ascend speakers: I know that they're built in California, that some of the tweeters are from Europe, but are all the components (drivers, etc) also made in the States or are from Europe?

Anyways this is pretty verbose so I'll just shut up before I bore everyone to death.

[curtis]

I suppose that does lead to a question about Ascend speakers: I know that they're built in California, that some of the tweeters are from Europe, but are all the components (drivers, etc) also made in the States or are from Europe?

The midrange and woofer, I believe, are made for Ascend in Asia. Cabinets are made here in California.

[davef]

Hi Active,

We source components from the US, Norway, Serbia and Asia. The Sierra towers (and Horizon) meet FTC regulations to be labeled as Made-in-the-USA

The cabinets are actually made locally for us and we assemble everything, test and package at our facility. The crossovers in the ribbon versions are also assembled by hand at our facility - although this will probably change in the near future due to us selling much more of this version than anticipated

[Active Puck]

Thanks for the responses, guys. I'm also loving the photos that people are posting of their speakers (including how they're packed), it's obvious that the build quality is pretty awesome, plus they look awesome.