Up for sale is a pair of hard to find Diatone DS-500 bookshelf speakers.

Diatones are really not common in the US and we’re mostly made for the Japanese market. Occasionally pieces made their way across the ocean but not enough to be common.

This set is in decent condition but will need some work to be in excellent, working condition.

Diatones mostly used an impregnated cloth surround on the cones and over time, they harden. There’s no way to prevent that from happening so they’ll need to be replaced with a foam surround.

The other big issue with one of the drivers is a small crack in the injection molded cone. It’s a very small crack that easily be fixed with some super glue. It’s such a clean crack that it’s nearly invisible unless you push on it with a finger to expose the gap.

Aside from that, the other drivers are in excellent shape and work fine. The cabinets are extremely heavy for their size (just under 10lbs each) and have 1 rear facing port.

The cabinets have minor scuffs and wear but no water damage or crumbling corners. The grilles are in good shape with solid frames and some small blemishes in the fabric.

The grilles were given a deep cleaning with fabric cleaner pretreatment, hot water tank soak and ultrasonic cleaning.

Everything about Diatones is well thought out and extremely high quality. The binding posts are very stout, the cabinets are heavy and well braced, the drivers are fairly advanced with tons of research/design put into new construction materials (as of 1982 when these were released) and just enough finish to run them without the brown cloth grilles.