General Forum

Re: Longest running speakers?

Ben — Fri, 14 May 2010 03:21:03 GMT

ESS (Electrostatic sound systems) have been making their AMT 1 series speaker since around 1973.

They had a break for the past couple of years, but they are now back in production again.

I have a set of AMT 1C dating from around '81 or '82, which I use as my main speakers.

http://www.audiocircuit.com/index.php?c=ESS&m=AMT-1-C

That's one of my speakers in the picture.

Re: Longest running speakers?

Cleviebaby — Thu, 13 May 2010 06:31:54 GMT

jjcox:

Will those be the longest running speakers ever? For some reason I can't imagine any other company building speakers that stand the test of time SO well. Can you?

Well, yes I can!

The first Quad ESL Electrostatic loudspeaker was introduced in 1956 and stayed in continuous production until 1981. In fact, there are a couple of companies still making them under licence, including one in Germany which also makes, again under licence and at a whopping price, the Dieter Rams designed (styled?) version of the same Quad speaker, the Braun LE1.

The Rogers LS3/5a has also had a seriously long production run in its various guises, and is still in production today, albeit with minor modfications from the original early 70s BBC specification.

Cleve

Re: Longest running speakers?

Evan — Wed, 12 May 2010 20:54:56 GMT

Shouldn't be hard to overtake the CX now! In one of the catalogs for last year I remember reading an interview with David Lewis on the BL8000, just after they had produced 500,000 of them. Quite an achievement.

Longest running speakers?

jjcox — Wed, 12 May 2010 16:41:17 GMT

Still proud owner of a pair of BL6000's, I was wondering... the BL6000 and BL8000 have been around since 1992. They're in their 18th year now (wow, they're finally adults!). The only B&O speakers I can find that have been around longer, are the CX50/CX100 line, which have 19 years on their tracks. So... if the BL6000/BL8000 keep up another year, they'll have matched them and a year later: beaten!

Will those be the longest running speakers ever? For some reason I can't imagine any other company building speakers that stand the test of time SO well. Can you?