Sound, Looks, Quality

None so Far

I also got these speakers from UBID for $284 a pair. I bought two pairs and couldnt be happier. These are great sounding speakers and also look great. The rosewood Finish is just beautiful. The bass is great for a 170mm Speaker and the mids and highs are awesome. The Modus 1.6 have an adustable tweeter that you can turn for speaker reflection. This is a great feature. Also the Bi-Wiring makes a big difference also. I highly recommend these speakers if you are looking into towers. These retail for $1500 , how could you pass these up for under $300?

Similar Products Used:

Boston Acoustic Towers

price, look, sound

none

very good. but remember: must biwire it.If you are rich enough, buy 2 amp to push it. The sound will be amazing!! If you are poor, buy jvc 1028vbk to push it. Since jvc 1028vbk can push 2 pair speakers.

The sound! The Bass is great!

Wierd "burring" sounds from a tweeter and the grills sucks!

They really have a great sond, you can feel the airpresure changing when playing loud! The are really kind to amps, I started uot with a really weak and cheap amp but the sound was pretty good anyway. I really recomend these speakers to anyone, but if your buying second-hand make sure the grills are in place!

Bass and high

Contruction is just OK. Speaker cover is only thin plastic frame.

I also got these from uBid for $142 plus shipping. The bass is excellent and I do not need a powered sub to rock my house !! The bass does not affect the high and the mid, you could easily hear each instructment and the vocal clearly. I think it is the advantage to seperate the tweeter from the speaker box. By turning the tweeter to a different angle, I could create a much wider soundstage. Very good idea !! I know the next generation of speaker from them has the same style. Visit the following links to see the future. The second link is from US which has less info.

http://www.wharfedale.co.uk/
http://www.wharfedale.com/public_html/wharfedale/

When I was biding at uBid, I almost got Sapphire 89. Did anyone compare the Sapphire 89 with Modus One.Six ? Was I make a right choice to get Modus One.Six instead of Sapphire 89 ?

See My full review below

Still the Grills, I just try not to remove them and when I do VERY CAREFULLY!

I have previously posted a review here and am now with a new onkyo receiver find they sound even better. But I am not posting this to add to my early review, which I still stand by but to respond to William's review 2 below this one.

I too had a speaker that arrivede DOA, but instead of dealing with Ubid, I did dealt with Wharfedale USA (or should I say IAG America). In fact the paperwork, Wharfedal and Ubid all instruct us to deal with Wharfedal for replacement parts or speakers and not Ubid. Ubid is actually only doing what they agreed they will do when they will only give a refund of the purchase price.

Wharfedale, very professionally assisted me, first with LIVE (yes Live) phone tech support and then after determining the problem (they have an 800 number btw), they sent me a replacement set of speakers (No Questions Asked) and return labels to ship back the 1 good and 1 bad one (modus 6's not the 1.6 which I also have). The new speakers arrived in less than 2 weeks and worked like a charm. And yes they can still replace your broken speakers, just call them!

I gave these speakers two 5 star ratings before for value and for an overall rating considering the price of course and Still do. And for service Wharfedale gets a 10 in my book!

And oh, to Bob Charlanza below William - What do you expect in this price range? If you are looking for something substantially better starting looking at higher end speakers, like Martin Logan, Sonus or Vienna and Pay the Price! These compare favorable with Bose, Polk, Klipsch, Definative, Paradigm and Infinity, as well as several others, all of which would have all cost substantially more than the discounted price Ubid is selling these babies for.

Similar Products Used:

Bose, Polk, Klipsch, M & K, Definative, Paradigm, Infinity, Mirage, Mission, Mark Logan, Sonus Faber

Good loking speaker overall. Crisp clean sound when properly powered(External amp). Bi-wiring capability

As we all know The speaker grill is a very poor design. SOLUTION: Don't take the gill off, Ever!

When I first saw these speakers on ubid going for around $100.00 a piece, I thought to myself "This can't be a very good quality speaker." Little did I know that not everything must cost an arm and a leg to be of good quality. So being the inquisitive consumer that I am, I thought I would check out the review of the Modus 1.6 right here at Audio review.com. After reading the reviews which seemed to be quite positive, I decided to purchase a pair of 1.6's at ubid. Around five days later I recieved my speakers in perfect working order, except for one thing. The speaker grilles had almost all of the tabs broken off inside the speaker. Well, not to worry, very minor problem. I promtly hopped on the net and logged on to IAG's website and E-mailed a service complaint about the speaker grilles. A day later I recieved an Email message back from a service representative from Wharfedale. He requested a copy of my invoice from the purchase and said he would send out replacment gilles. I E-mailed him a copy of the invoice and 2 days later there were two brand new speaker grills at my front door (Fed Ex)! The customer service is bar none the best I've ever delt with. Anyway.... Back to the speaker review, they were very impressive! I don't consider myself to be a full blown audiophile, but I know what a good bang for your buck is. I don't think you have to spend thousands of $$$$"s to obtain a very high quality sounding speaker either. This speaker blows my mind at $100.00 a piece. If you supply these speakers with adaquate power and bi-wire or bi-amp them, they are a giant killer. So if you are looking for a set of speakers in the mid hi-fi catagory, these speakers are a sure to please. Don't take the self proclaimed audiophiles to seriously when they are to hard on these speakers in their reviews. For the price of these speakers you just simply can't go wrong. I was so impressed with the 1.6's that I ordered a pair of Sapphire Blue 89's a week later. So far I have been using the Sapph.89's as my front speakers and my 1.6's for the rear. It's a pretty impressive combination when powered by an additional amplifier,(A 5-channel amp with 120w/channel at 8 ohms) I'm thinking about adding another amp, but I really don't wish to exceed the speakers capabilities. Happy hunting, bravo Wharfedale!

Similar Products Used:

None

Tight bass, all around clarity, solid feel of the cabinet.

Definitely the cheap grills. Almost broke one the first time I removed it to inspect the speaker.

The Wharfedale Modus 1.6's are by far the cleanest sounding speakers I have ever owned and quite frankly they look great in my living room. For reference, my system is being driven by a Harman/Kardon AVR-300 with plenty of clean power to handle the 1.6's. From the first time I fired them up I was amazed at how tight the bass is and how crisp the higher frequencies are with the external tweeter. My first selection upon hooking them up was the recently released Trans-Siberian Orchestra Christmas DVD and I was simply in awe. I hooked them up during my lunch hour from work. Big mistake..I was 20 minutes late returning to work in that I didn't want to stop listening.

I pretty much left them alone for a few days to break them in and then started to experiment. Yes, speaker placement and bi-wiring made a HUGE difference in how the speakers sound. With both rear and front porting I played with not only the distance from the wall, but also the angle of the speaker cabinet and the angle of the rotating tweeter. As I said, I didn't have them bi-wired for the first couple days. However, once bi-wired there was a noticible "before and after" difference in the bass with the same soundtrack off of the Trans-Siberian DVD.

The speakers were a steal on U-Bid at $59.00 each plus the questionable "shipping and handling" charges of almost $100.00. I'm using plain old 16 gauge wire, nothing special. The wire suits me fine in that I don't crank the system up very often. Take a chance on the Modus 1.6's if you are looking for a great sound, if you like clean-tight bass and don't mind a speaker that is 42" tall. My wife wasn't too happy with their size, but accepted this minor inconvenience after hearing her Neil Diamond CD's. These speakers would still be a bargain at $450.00 to $500.00 per pair.

Similar Products Used:

Klipsch KG-2, JBL-CF120

Nice "allround" speaker for the beginner, nothing for the more advanced enthusiast.

Not many for the price, the major failure with the One-Six is it's cheap plastic grills.

I wrote the review under this one a long time ago, when I just had bought them, so this is amore honest one.

Like I said the One-Six is really worth the money but it can't be compaired with more expensive speakers.
If you are thinking of buying the One-Six to upgrade from a really cheap set, I think you will like it. However, if you have listened to more expensive speakers before, you probably will find a lot of stuff that isn't so good.
The first thing you notice is that the cheap palsic grills can't handle to much vibration, or they will start to sound. The good thing is that most of yhe time, the tweeter sounds over that so you don't hear it, it's only when it's, for an example, only an acoustic guitar playing loud, that you even hear it, or when it's really much bass in a techno song, you sometimes hear it.

That is the one big misstake by Wharfedale.

Except for that it's a great "allround" speaker that can play much deeper bass than you would think, it's also very good at playing when there are many instruments, for an example, Metallica's S&M concert, where there is both all the instuments of an hardrock group plus all the instruments in a large orchestra. Even in a song where Metallica is playing really loud, you still hear the flutes!
That I think is pretty good for a speaker in this price range.

Another thing that I need to say is that if you buy them, make sure you have spikes and that you biwire them!
I had listened to them for half a year without that, and when I bought that, it was like a pair of new better speakers. The major change I discovered was that it seperated the treble, midrange and bass much, much better!
And THAT was really worth the money!

This is my current system:

Amplifier: Rotel RA-971 MkII, $450.
DVD: Harman/Kardon DVD 20, $550. (only in europe)
Speaker cable: Classic Supra 4.0 (times two for biwiring)
Signal cable: MITerminator 5, $70.

I will soon upgrade to, probably, a pair of Dynaudio Audience 72, or 82's. But im really glad i started out with the Modus One-Six's because it was them that got me intrested, and learned me to apriciate the sound of a HiFi system.

Great soundstage. Physical appearance. Bi-wire. Value for price.

Break-in period. Unknown manufacturer in USA.

OK, I knew nothing of Wharfdale before buying these speakers, but the features (170watt, 3-way, bi-wire) for the price at UBID drove me to give them a try. I had a minor problem when I opened the box...the tweeters were not connected! So after an email to the US distributor (www.iagamerica.com)I found out which wire went where. Not a major issue, but worth mentioning in a review.

I first had them hooked up to a Sony receiver (STR D965)at 80watts/channel. The room size was 17'x35' with 9' ceilings and hardwood floors. They sounded good (lots of volume) but not great. Muddy mid-range and poor bass. Tweeters sounded too bright. To say the least I was a little disappointed. Yet after about 10-15 hours of listening, they started to "bloom" and really open-up. I started noticing cleaner midrange which took the edge off the tweeter's brightness. I moved the speakers a few more inches away from the wall and started noticing a better bass. As others here have said, these speakers need some time to properly break-in, so be patient.

I recently moved them into a smaller home-theater room that is 12'x18'. They are being driven by a Technics SA-DX1040 500w bi-amp digital receiver. What a difference this has made. Having the speakers bi-wired and bi-amp driven makes a noticable impact. The issues discussed above about muddy midrange and poor bass, are gone. These speakers are now responsive and well balanced. They easily dominate the Bose Acoustimass series 5 speakers in sound quality and volume (even the sub-woofer in the Bose can not keep pace with the 1.6's output). Actually, they make the Bose AM5 sound like computer speakers!

Overall, you can not beat the value for the money. It took a week of play-time for these speakers to "come to life" and I think that's the reason most give them a poor rating. Also, if you can bi-wire/bi-amp these speakers you will immediately notice an impovement in sound quality.

Similar Products Used:

Bose Acoustimass Series 5, Cerwin Vega studio speakers, Dalquist PDQ200.

See below

See below

The Wharfedale Modus One-Six speakers are the largest offering in Wharfedale’s Modus Music line. The speakers, like my predecessors before me, were purchased at ubid.com for approximately $271.00 including shipping, just one of the benefits of bidding on Easter Sunday. Note that the speakers are shipped in their original boxes, and I did receive one with a minor dent on one of the cabinet’s side, although nothing major and hardly noticeable. The speakers are powered by a Denon AVR-1800 receiver and are connected via Monster cable and connectors. Now paying $271.00 for a pair of floorstanders is one thing, but do they sound any good?

In a word yes. The speakers, like any other, require a bit of break-in period, but after several listening hours seem to come alive with some nice natural highs and some fairly deep bass. The speaker’s somewhat unconventional design, in addition to making your friends wonder what this “camera” is doing atop your cabinets, adds to minimize edge diffraction and to set the Modus Music line form its competitors.

In my home theater set-up I have the One Six’s paired nicely with the Modus Center speaker and a pair of Modus 6 speakers for the rear. The center channel speaker was purchased at amazon.com for $154.00 delivered and the rears from ubid.com for $190.00 including delivery. In a home theater the One Six’s really shine. The nice highs make dialogue and action sequences reproduction seem realistic, such as the infamous storming of the government building and subsequent gun battle in “The Matrix” and also for the 5 channel stereo mode that the Denon receiver affords.

As for weaknesses, I would agree with some previous enthusiasts that these speakers do lack some of the midrange that you would expect from a speaker this size, and would certainly benefit with the use of a powered subwoofer. Unfortunately, one of the disadvantages of apartment living. Also the speakers are made in China, although designed and engineered in the United Kingdom, but do not show any lapse in either quality or construction.

In summary an excellent value for the money and if your budget is under $300.00 for a full floorstanding speaker and under $650.00 for a tonally matched home theater than Wharfedale is definitely the way to go!