SpeakerTalk

[oplancq]

Hello,
I was just wondering why KEF did not manufacture LS3/5A before the 90's Raymond Cook version (I think) ? Any specific reason ? Question of right/license ?

Thanks

Olivier
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Olivier

[ColinR]

KEF were a BBC licencee LS5/1/etc and were on a nice little earner making drive units and their own volume products.
Their former Production Manager (Malcolm Jones) was making the niche market LS3/5a crossovers for Goodmans, RAM, etc.
They were sub-contracting volume cabinet making to that firm who's stamp is somewhere in your cabinets or to Maidstone Prison for niche items.
They were also doing research into loudspeaker design for future volume manufacture.

Enough to do for any firm until a time arrives when you can rook the punters for "lodsa skwids" for small numbers of limited editions.
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[speakerguru]

Just in case you didn't know, KEF Electronics Ltd. was bought from the receiver by a Hong Kong based company, Gold Peak, in 1991, at which point it became KEF Audio UK Ltd. and there were huge changes in management personnel and style.

p.s. the green hut was demolished in the 90's too.

[proffski]

Yes but the limited editions looked so nice...
Would have made glorious ornaments had I been able to afford them!
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I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a
man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
-Winston Churchill

[audiolabtower]

I also think the BBC design philosophy was slightly different to KEFs, although what they both aimed at was much the same. BBC (Harwood/Shorter/Hughes etc) philosophy at that time used a specific Finnish birch ply cabinets with screwed front and/or back panels for defined mechanical losses, expensive radio metal core transformers with select on test taps for final balance, polyester caps, bitumen damping pads etc. Kef used high density chipboard, wound inductors, reversible electrolytic capacitors etc, although they started to use damping pads in the Reference series and perfected computer matching to get the same degree of pair matching (and matching to the design target!).
I also think that no-one imagined the LS3/5a would last as long as it did or have the success it did at the time, and perhaps KEF thought it was rather too limited in bass or power handling/max volume to be a mass market product? After all they tried to best it with their own original Reference 101. When the Cook version came out it must have had a very nice profit margin at that price! maybe that explains something?