When Hurricane Ike was hitting my home town, Port Bolivar Texas on 9/13/08 I was in my house as the water was coming in.I watched as the water was rising on my series 38 speakers.I had more important things to worry about so just let them go.The water got to 1/2 way up the mid range speaker,you can still see the water mark.The pedestal fell off when I was moving them from water damage.I was going to try and open the back and wash them out with fresh water but just let them dry. I plugged them into my Carver A500x amp and CT-23 pre-amp and to my surprise they worked lke they never got wet and they are still working over 8 years later! Awesome speakers still clean and crisp sound from them.When ever they do die they will be replaced by another pair of Cerwin Vega speakers.

I have a set of these that are powered by Sansui gs22000 220rms the sound at 200 w will not only shake the walls and loosen the nails... you will have to use the washroom due to the bass that passes through you.... so make sure you have a great big meal before you do.. just completely awesome....two thumbs up

I'm a huge fan of listening to music the way it's supposed to be heard! And for that reason, I've always been super particular with my sound equipment. I was a teenager when I bought my first high end home stereo system. I worked all year to afford everything i wanted! I bought a "Sony ES STRG8es" for $999.00 (this was when Sony's high end stuff was still real good, unlike now) witch sounded amazing! very clear and powerful sound. Then I bought a pair of "Cerwin Vega RE-38's, at $499 each. i had been gazing at for almost a year, praying i'd be able to get them eventually! And... I finally got them. and had a HQ receiver to play them on. And I gotta say... I was 100% pleased with them! They held up so well, and were so powerful, that I ended up buying a 2nd pair! thats a total of 4 Cerwin Vega RE-38's in 1 room! Oooohh loud! I will agree that the highs weren't exactly as good as i'd liked them to be, but the mids were always real solid i thought. I then bought the Cerwin Vega 15' powered sub (5 15" woofers in 1 room now), and a pair of the Cerwin Vega LS series rear surround sound speakers and a LS center speaker as well. I was never as pleased with the Cerwin Vega LS series. I personally think the "RE" series was some what of the last real solid speaker series Cerwin Vega made. I ended up replacing the Cerwin Vega center and surround speakers with the "Bose Cubes", witch sounded excellent! So now i was running the "RE 38's" as my fronts, the Cerwin Vega 15' powered sub, and "Bose Cubes" for the center and surround speakers. With the Bose Cubes picking up that slack the Vega's had in the "highs" area, it sounded great! I ran this set up for over 10 years! I blew the glass out of the window in this room while rocking out real loud! True story! Also, these speakers come with a fuse safety system witch allows these speakers to be basically un-blowible! Any time the speaker is being pushed to the point of the speaker being put at a risk of blowing, the small little fuse mounted on the back of the box simply pops and cuts the speaker out, so to avoid damage to the speaker. I loved these speakers!

With the start of 2012, i thought it was a good time to upgrade my system. It had been almost 12 years since i bought this system. So I moved the old system down to the den, and decided to upgrade everything, in a big way. First i bought a new receiver. A "Denon ARV-2312CI" for $899.00. This thing sounds awesome. With every possible option you could imagine! Google it! Then for speakers, I decided to go with a brand I'd always wanted but up til now could never afford. And those would be non other then the "Definitive Technology - Bipolar BP-8060ST" tower speakers at $999.00 each, the "Definitive Technology Bipolar CS-8060HD" center channel at $699.00, and the "DEfinitive Technology SR-8040BP" surround speakers at $249.oo each. A quick summary... my new system is by far the best I've ever had or personally even heard! Absolutely phenomenal Everything from Jazz, to Rap, to Rock, to movies! Amazing highs and powerful lows! BUT!... with all the technology i have now, and the massive quality (and price) jump i made here, I STILL absolutely love the old sound system, and she still is actively kept alive in the den on almost a daily basis.

So I guess in comparing the Cerwin Vega RE-38's to the hi tech ,high quality and high priced "Definitive Bipolar BP8060ST" series that i'm currently running , how would I personally say they hold up?... Very nicely! Obviously the "Definitives" sound better. More clear, and wide ranging. There a much higher speaker on the totem poll. However, I absolutely love my "Cerwin Vega RE-38's"! I still rock out to them in my den all the time! And would never part with them! Those bad boys seriously ROCK! If i was a shopper looking for something in the fields of what this discussion is about, I personally would jump on the chance to grab a pair of these if in good condition and for a fair price.

My personal rating for the "Cerwin-Vega RE-38'":
1-10 STARS
-Box quality = 9
-Woofer capability = 10
-Mids = 7
-Highs = 5
Bass Port output = 7
-Overall as a "floor Loud Speaker" = 8

best speakers i have ever had, incredibly deep bass rivals some subwoofers and the highs are surprisingly crisp and clear for speakers with such head pounding bass. i use a yamaha receiver on them and the 2 work together flawlessly. rival alot of speakers made today and very well made and virtually indestructible

I bought these speakers in 1992 when I was 16. I recall paying something like $700, big bucks for a kid in high school. I still have them as the mains in my surround system in my basement family room. I have used these continuously since I bought them and they sound as good as the day I brought them home, matter of fact they sound better since my current amp is better than the old Sony I had in 92'. My musical tastes have changed a little since I was younger, I listen to a lot of jazz on my B&W 802's in the living room, but if I want to listen to some Megadeth, or some Public Enemy, I'm in the basement on 5 channel stereo (all Cerwin Vega including sub). I don't think I will ever part with these speakers, I will be replacing them in my surround system with a B&W cm system, but I think these will wind up in my garage driven by a pair of NAD 2200 amps. If you listen to rock, or any bass heavy music, these are incredible, work well for a surround setup too.

What can be said that hasn't been said? I am not an audiophile, I like my music LOUD. I like to experience it. After my house was broken into and my old stereo was stolen(JBL L-100's and Carver amp), I looked into all the reviews here and after finding some re38's on Craigslist I purchased them, along with an Adcom GFA 555 II.

Let me say this the music has never felt so good. BASS!!!!!! and all around crisp sound. If you don't get the cops called then you don't like it loud. My nieghbors love me.

I would recomend these to anyone who loves music, loves to listen to and feel it. I am just a music lover, and I love these.

Loud, loud, loud. Bass, bass, bass. Loud, loud bass. Bass! Bass that will make you cry.
Big and impressive.

Lack of mid-range precision in some spoken material.

I have had a pair of these speakers for nine years. Originally, they were powered with a Sony 5.1-channel multimedia receiver. I eventually destroyed one of the channels of that receiver, which was never up to the task of running these speakers. Although the speakers are insanely efficient (102 dB/W), most mainstream receivers just aren't designed for a huge pair of speakers that call for as much power as the Re38s do.
Recently, I switched to an Audiosource Amp One/A, which - at 100 watts - is still not anywhere near the Re38s' maximum power handling capacity of 400 watts. In fact, it has the same nominal amount of power as the Sony receiver. But it is, from a factual standpoint, capable of actually driving these speakers with authority.
As noted in other reviews here (and as should be obvious to anyone who looks at these speakers in the flesh), these speakers are designed to produce high levels of bass wave pressure. Almost everyone who has ever walked into my living room and seen these speakers for the first time has been like, "Wow. Those are huge." These speakers are really in a special class, just in terms of their sheer size.
They say, with engines, that "there's no replacement for displacement." Cerwin-Vega obviously gets that. They are huge; they are also ported (check out the two *gargantuan* ports on the back of the cabinets!) Which makes these speakers like old-school Bentley engines: humongous twin-turbo V8s.
I get nervous just thinking about how loud they would be if actually driven at 400 watts; I have never had the volume above halfway up, and even at that level the volume is unbearably loud in a small room. That 102 dB/W efficiency rating results in LOUD playback. I often look at my preamp's volume control knob, hovering just barely above "0," and think, "Man, I wish there were some reason to turn that up." It would be great to have these in a huge room (or, as a DJ friend of mine once suggested, a small club), where they could really let loose. But, as it is, they are just so loud that they are basically massive overkill for residential application. (Better to have and not need that to not have and to need, though, huh?)
I have a deep and obsessive love of bass wave frequencies, for which reason the Re38s fit my sensibilities like a glove. The bass pressure they are capable of generating is just...absolutely immense. There are no words for it. Their nominal lower fequency cutoff is 27 Hz, which in and of itself is extremely impressive. But, I have to tell you, they go well below 27 Hz to a very significant degree. If you are accustomed to small "subwoofers" that came with a cheap (or expensive) home theater surround package or with your computer, these speakers will redefine what you think of as "bass."
As far as I'm concerned, after owning these, there is no excuse for owning any speaker configuration other than a 15" three-way. Sometimes, when the wife is out of town and I have a music-loving buddy over, these speakers get a bit of a workout. Like I say, turning the volume halfway up on a 100 watt amp isn't exactly pushing these speakers to their limits. But we listen to a lot of electronic music that's heavy on the bass frequencies, and even at those levels I start to get nervous about the cops showing up on my doorstep. They're *LOUD*, man! Really, really loud!
These are not, like, hi-fi audiopile nonense speakers. They are big, vented boxes that push mad air. Sometimes when watching movies, I wish they had a little less of a "boxy" or "woody" sound to them. The mid-range frequency precision is lacking on some material. It just sounds a little...speaker-y. You can definitely tell there are speakers there playing the sound, sometimes. Most of the time, that effect is not noticeable at all. In fact, it seems highly dependent on what the original material was. For pretty much any music, though, they excel. Knowing that the "boxy" quality is there, I know that the speakers are also adding that quality to music. But these speakers were obviously designed with the goal of making stuff like hip-hop, heavy metal and techno and stuff sound really good. And it does. I have never thought any music sounded bad on these (unless it was a bad recording that also sounds bad on every other system too). So these are definitely not "reference-grade" monitor style speakers. They flatter music, which sometimes (but not often) detracts from the movie watching experience.
All in all, I just think these were designed and manufactured with love. I storngly appreciate the design philosophy that went into these speakers, and I hope to god that I will have them for another decade to come. My material circumstances have changed a lot since I got these in '99 (just out of college), but I still see absolutely no reason to trade these speakers for any others.

Customer Service

I've never had a reason to contact customer service about these speakers.

Similar Products Used:

None (these are special).

I had a chance to have the speakersI own cerwin vegas at-15 and a smaller pair too.but when i put these speakers(that is the ones in this ad} on hold the got stoling from my workes out door container.it makes me sad to see that i could have had good speakers for less then 300 but i will make sure i get this no matter what i am a huge cerwin vega fan love the speaker more then anyother speaker and would tell anyone how likes loud music to get some

BASS...Lots of it, accurate, and low frequency capable
Speakers are very forgiving to abuse...go ahead, turn it up
Definite WOW factor visually, and in absolute volume (102 db 1w/1m !!)
5-way binding posts accept banana plugs/spade lugs/bare wire etc etc
Mids and highs are nice, could embarass an audiophile or 2
Solid build quality...heavy!

None really.
Be prepared to provide at least 200 watts RMS to each speaker, preferably from a high current block amp (Yamaha, NAD, Adcom, Bryston etc etc).
The speakers are heavy, but that to me denotes build quality.

What can I say here that other people have not said? I hate to sound like an echo but these speakers are LOUD and CLEAR. Perhaps it is the 'clear' part that makes me like them so much. I have top of the line Paradigms and while the CV's are not quite the same in terms of finese, the CV's are what I find myself listening to more often. Bass is the definite strong point, both in quantity and quality and they can reach down to 20Hz easily. Mids and highs for me at least are very nice. Again, the loud and clear part makes the difference.
The CV's also have that 'wow' factor. Both when you take the grills off and people see that trademark orange-ringed woofer, and when you turn up the volume (and who does not try and impress his/her friends by blasting their stereo!?!?).
I recommend these speakers very much. You will not be disappointed in my opinion. These speakers are the American muscle car of audio speakers. Remember, you would not drive a 69" 427ci Camero in a park full of kids all the time, so do not buy these speakers unless you want performance! That means loud.

Customer Service

N/A

Similar Products Used:

Paradigm
Energy
JBL
Infinity
Polk Audio

400 watt capability, great sound, awesome bass, very nice looking cabinet, virtually indestructable, C-V quality all around.

Only one I can see is the weight but it comes with the territory and I can live with it !

For the short time I have owned these RE-38''s, I can already understand why they get such great reviews. Awesome sound, exceptional bass, and great looking cabinets (I have the black). Who needs a surround sound system with these ?! I am driving them with a Onkyo TX-8511 which pushes 100 w/c and can handle the 4 ohms. I also invested in a set of Monster orignal speaker cables with pin connectors for the receiver ends and twist-on banana plugs for the speaker ends (well worth the extra bucks)! If you can find a set of RE-38''s out there, I highly recommend picking them up.

Similar Products Used:

JVC (don''t laugh)