Iconic hi-fi brands and the first speakers they produced. Part one of a two-part feature (see part two next month)
Ever pondered the heritage of your favourite speaker brands? We’ve delved back in time to discover the fruits of their very first efforts...
From Wharfedale’s driver-only efforts in the 1930s to Q Acoustics’ modern beginnings in 2006, via the BBC’S Research Department in the 1960s, this list details the first-ever models from some of the most renowned loudspeaker brands past and present.
So if you’re a fan of hi-fi nostalgia and you don’t ride the same wavelength as Lou Reed (who once said: “I don’t like nostalgia, unless it’s mine”), then this one’s for you.
Part 1 of this two-part feature includes iconic speaker brands from the earliest days of hi-fi in the 1930s until the late 1970s. Part two, covering the 1980s to the present day, will be featured in next month’s issue of What Hi-fi?
Wharfedale Bronze 2 (1932)
Wharfedale’s first speaker was built in the cellar of founder Gilbert Briggs’s llkley home in 1932. Strange though it seems to modern minds, the Bronze was purely a drive unit (radio enthusiasts assembled their own cabinets). A year later, it was housed in a wooden cabinet for those who wanted an ‘extension’ speaker. Shortly after came the ‘Nubian’ cabinet speaker in 1934.
But it was a whole decade before Wharfedale marked the first of many milestones: the invention of the first two-way loudspeaker. In 1945, the company combined a 30cm bass driver with a 25cm full-range ‘treble’ unit, using a crossover at 1khz. And in the years after the company’s introduction of ceramic magnets to moving-coil drive units and work in cabinet dampening, Wharfedale’s much-celebrated Diamond series was born.
Bang & Olufsen Hyperbo (1934)
Not uniquely, Bang & Olufsen’s ‘in’ into speakers was through radio manufacturing. Peter Bang & Svend Olufsen’s first commercial radio – the modest production of which began in Olufsen’s attic – was the Eliminator in 1925, a radio component that allowed the connection of a radio directly to the mains, eliminating the need for batteries.
Having moved to a factory in Struer just two years later (B&O remain at that very same site today), the Hyperbo – a radio, gramophone and integrated loudspeaker – arrived in 1934. Like every B&O product produced since, the Hyperbo was heavily influenced by the emerging Bauhaus style in the early 1900s: a design attitude that has consistently manifested itself in the artistic craft behind the company’s many speakers and TVS.
Acoustic Research AR-1 (1956)
Acoustic Research was founded in 1952 by inventor Edgar Villchur and his student Henry Kloss. Based on the acoustic suspension principle patented by Villchur in 1956, its first model, the AR-1, sold for $185 (more than £1000 in today’s money).
The AR-1’S woofer used entrapped air in the speaker’s sealed enclosure to provide a spring for the diaphragm, enabling it to move back and forth doing the same job as the more conventional mechanical spring.
That was followed shortly afterwards by the AR-2, but in 1958, the AR-3 became Acoustic Research’s landmark speaker, borrowing the AR-1’S acoustic suspension technology, but bringing onboard a newly designed midrange driver and tweeter.
Quad ESL-57 (1957)
Quad founder Peter Walker was the first to implement electrostatic technology in loudspeakers, waving goodbye to traditional driver cones and cumbersome cabinets. In their place, he put a thinly stretched, electrically charged diaphragm between two metal grilles receiving the music signal from the amplifier.
The first in what has become a brand-defining range of electrostatic speakers, the ESL-57 was in production for nearly 30 years, with the ESL-63 continuing Quad’s electrostatic legacy until the turn of the century. You can still see Quad’s latest electrostatic efforts on shop floors today.
KEF K1 Slimline (1961)
KEF’S oldest speaker was born out of founder Raymond Cooke’s desire to achieve outstanding sound quality from a slim, living-room-friendly enclosure.
At 12.5cm deep, the K1 Slimline incorporated the same driver innovations as the Monitor versions that arrived alongside it in the K1 series: the B1814 woofer with its flat rectangular diaphragm of aluminium-skinned polystyrene, the M64 elliptical midrange
unit with a similar diaphragm construction, and the T15 tweeter with its hemispherical Melinex diaphragm.
To minimise colouration, the wall panels of the braced cabinet were dampened with bituminous pads. And, lounge-friendly in their aesthetic as well as their size, the K1 Slimlines were finished in walnut with ‘coffee’ fleck grilles – a far cry from some of the designs it employs today.
B&W P1 (1966)
Beginnings don’t get much more humble than B&W’S. The year after founder John Bowers started hand-assembling speaker systems in the electrical store he ran with Roy Wilkins in Worthing, Bowers & Wilkins (then B&W Electronics Ltd) released its first loudspeaker: the P1.
The cabinet and filter were B&W’S own, but the drivers came from EMI and Celestion – this was in the decade before the company started using the brightyellow Kevlar woven composite. The profits from the P1 allowed Bowers to purchase a Radiometer Oscillator and Pen Recorder, meaning that every speaker the company sold could have calibration certificates.
Spendor BC1 (late ’60s)
Bextrene was the material of choice for the speaker diaphragms in Spendor’s first pair of speakers, the BC1. A product of BBC engineer Spencer Hughes (co-founder with Dorothy Hughes, hence the Spendor name) and co-designer Dudley Harwood, the BC1 speakers had a three-way design: the 8in Bextrene mid/bass driver (the only commercially available Bextrene driver), a Celestion HF 1300 tweeter (ranging between 3khz and 13khz) and a Coles 4001 G supertweeter (above 13khz).
They were fed by a nine-element crossover, comprising film capacitors for frequency and temperature stability, and radio metal cored chokes that allowed for high transients and low resonances.
The BC1S hit the market in the late ‘60s and found their way into broadcast and recording studios before eventually being available to buy for consumers. Some 600 pairs were supposedly in operation at the BBC at one time.
Harbeth HL Monitor Mk1 (1977)
British speaker brand Harbeth came about through the discovery, by founder HD Harwood, of a potential new film plastic for speaker cones. Towards the end of his career in the BBC’S Research Department, and during investigation into bextrene plastic as a cone material for BBC monitors in the ‘60s, Harwood proposed that polypropylene would make a good cone material.
And so, upon his formal retirement, he set up Harbeth to make a speaker with his patented polypropylene-coned driver. The HL Monitor was released in 1977, and four versions subsequently followed over the next decade.
Dynaudio P-series (1977/78)
We have to pedal back 40 years to find this Danish brand’s first speakers – the five P-series models. They were shortlived though, and although they used the company’s own crossovers, they were the only Dynaudio speakers to rely on OEM drivers.
The P series (P for ‘passive’) comprised the P16 (pictured), P21, P31, P46 and P76. All models used a specially coated soft-dome tweeter with high power handling – something Dynaudio would later become renowned for.
The first range to use Dynaudio’s in-house MSP (Magnesium Silicate Polymer) woofers and tweeters (designed by its engineers in Skanderborg) and receive international distribution was the four-strong MSP series in 1984. Dynaudio has used its own drivers ever since.
ATC S50/S85 (1978)
After a few years making drive units, ATC produced its first speaker systems in 1978: the bass-reflex S50 (pictured) and infinite baffle S85, which established a naming tradition representing the internal volume of the speaker. Inside the plywood-based 50- and 85-litre cabinets were 25mm soft-dome tweeters, a 75mm soft-dome mid driver and a 22.5cm woofer (two in the S85).
Unusually, the crossover arrangement allowed for true active tri-amping, allowing the owner, via a rotary switch, to access either the internal passive crossover or use an external electronic crossover. A novel approach indeed.
Proac Tablette (1979)
A few years after founding loudspeaker manufacturer Celef Audio Ltd in 1973, Stewart Tyler decided that producing more expensive designs in smaller quantities, rather than increasing production capacity and potentially sacrificing quality, was the way forward.
With that decision came a new company name: Proac, short for Professional Acoustics. The first speaker to bear the name was the Tablette; mini monitors – they really are dinky – which over the years have spawned more than 10 variations since their original production in 1979.