From the Vault

When they weren't playing, I found the appearance of these loudspeakers to be disconcerting because their normally exposed electrostatic elements are shrouded in a black cloth hood to keep out the dust. But when the cloth is removed, and the elements are exposed for use, their silvery perforated stator elements are presented in striking full view.

The long awaited Carver Cube power amplifier is at last available in the UK. Bob Carver, its designer, is not a particularly well known figure in the UK but most people have heard of Phase Linear, which was founded by him, and he also designed its range of products. His special interest has been in high-power amplifiers, with the 400 B and 700 B Phase Linear models now audio legends.

New ideas are being introduced at Celestion to bring its upmarket SL series into the 1990s. The first example, designed by Bob Smith, was the 100 [HFN Nov '91] followed now by the 300 reviewed here. This is a £1000 floorstander that aims to bring improved bass extension, power handling and superior dynamics to the genre, while sensitivity remains below average at 84dB/1W. A remarkable aspect of the 300 is its transmission line loading, a first for Celestion, and developed with an unusually authoritative theoretical approach, by the designer Martin Roberts.

It is no exaggeration to state that the SL6 is one of the most interesting moving-coil speakers to come my way for a long time, and that it embodies significant advances in driver design. Many readers may find this surprising. After all, Celestion has traditionally been associated with the mass end of the market, its reputation justifiably built on product consistency and value-for-money rather than on innovation.

Phone calls from company spokespersons such as Marantz's Steve Harris, are generally one of two types. Either 'Would you like to review our new Model XYZ whatever?' or 'Where the hell is our Model XYZ whatever, which you've had for nine months?' Such phone calls are never about reviewing components that are out of production.

It was back in the March 1996 issue of Hi-Fi News that I took my first look at the £6250 Stratosphere ST1 – a turntable that proved out of this world in sound quality as well as name. Now John Jeffries of Reference International (the name behind both the Strat and Lumley) has delivered a complete system including the £4500 LM2 loudspeakers.

Leave it to Tim de Paravicini to come up with something so deliciously twisted that no tube crazy can resist it. The new EAR Yoshino V20 integrated amplifier, despite costing a not-unreasonable-by-today’s-standards £2495, looks like nothing else and sports a quantity of tubes rivalled by few. Hell, the only items I can think of off-hand with similar numerical appeal – more tubes than any sane person would deem necessary – are high-enders like the GRAAF GM200 OTL with its 16 output tubes per channel, and the recent Silvaweld design with 48 per monoblock.