One Thing Audio
Quad
Growing pains
Introduction
In the early 1990s Quad were experiencing what some would describe as 'growing pains'. The difficulty of maintaining their rock solid tradition and yet embrace the fast-moving trends of the market place in a period of economic stagnation was producing a crisis from which some gloomy commentators predicted they would never emerge. The thought that Britain's most prestigious pathfinder in the development of audio might share the fate of Leak, Armstrong, Rogers, Radford, Garrard, Goldring, Ferrograph, Truvox, Chapman, Tripletone, Vortexion, BSR and a host of others was too depressing to contemplate.
An unwavering policy principle in Peter Walker's 'family' business was that spares and servicing would always be available on major products produced by Quad irrespective of age. Much of this work, considered by many to be the cornerstone of the company's reputation was, in the main, unprofitable, and in the 'new order' this state of affairs was unacceptable. Amongst the first 'casualties' were spare parts for what is - and will probably remain - their most famous product, the electrostatic loudspeaker circa 1957. Quad nevertheless went to great lengths to perpetuate supplies through their former German distributors, but there were technical problems which were difficult to overcome.
We are in an age where short-term economic necessity dominates all other considerations. Quad were no longer a 'family business'. Despite this fact of life many senior Quad personnel valiantly fought this trend. With the benefit of hindsight, they were right: any other product might simply have been pensioned off to collect dust in the museum of Britain's great has-beens; but not the ESL 57. It just refused to lie down and die.
No-one seemed more surprised by this than Quad themselves! The ESL 63 is conceptually and technically a superior product. It had successfully addressed many of the problems and weaknesses of the earlier ESL 57. Many critics had been bleating about the design limitation of the ' 57's for years, prompting comments like: "It must remain a bit of a dinosaur with no practical application in today's world of diminuative designs and high powered amplification". Oh dear!
A strange irony was that most of the people now extolling the virtues of the '57 were of a younger generation. Oscar Wilde said: "I've always said that the young are the only critics with enough experience to judge my work". It seemed that nothing was now truer of Peter Walker's famous creation. A clique of fans from an older generation - the Ken Kesslers of this world - are mercifully still vocal and waving the flag, but it has to be said that the 'rediscovery' of Peter Walker's then out-of-fashion masterpiece was spearheaded by a generation unborn in the '57' s heyday.
These same people - this time somewhat to Quad's surprise and alarm - took it upon themselves to 'fill in the gap' left by Quad in the provision of servicing and spares for the '57. The inevitable 'learning-curve' in such an undertaking has, it must be said, produced some results which haven't always been to the benefit of Quad owners. Books from the 'States by Ronald Wagner and Roger Sanders filled in some of the gaps for this new breed of servicing entrepreneur, but both cast their nets wide and were of limited assistance to those seeking an insight into the ESL 57s.
The late lamented Peter Baxandall addressed all the theoretical and technical problems head-on, and his paper is still the most comprehensive and authoritative, but of little practical help for those seeking 'hands on' experience with the ESL 57. We considered we had a head's start here, as our own Ron Best had been servicing 57s since the early '70s, and by the early 1990s the volume of 57s passing through his workshop was not far off the numbers dealt with by Quad themselves.
Then came the announcement by Quad that it was no longer economically viable to manufacture parts for the 57. Ron's stocks of spares would, at best, tide him over for a few months, and Quad's Arthur Fletcher secured a further supply of panels from their final production runs. But these were no more than 11th -hour, short-term solutions. A more radical solution had to be sought.
For those (outside of industry) who had a computer at the time, a fascinating debate had sprung up on the Internet about the feasibility of refurbishing original Quad panels for the ESL 57. Roger Sander's timely 'Electrostatic Cookbook' can be largely credited for opening up the possibilities for a number of enterprising experimenters, chief amongst them being Sheldon Stokes in the States and Gary Jacobson in Australia. Enthusiasm, intelligence and a good deal of ignorance fuelled these entertaining Internet debates (but then we all have to start somewhere. ..) and it has to be said that Quad's insistence that panel-building was something of a black art and involved manufacturing secrets which they would NEVER divulge, provided an irresistible impetus for all the parties involved!
Ron's first reaction was that panel rebuilding was too labour-intensive and time consuming to make it very practical, and the problems too daunting to guarantee consistency. 'Any fool can build a panel which works, but to build 10 panels with the correct specification WHICH PERFORM IDENTICALLY is a very different ball game'. Production consistency is a hard enough task even for the manufacturer, let alone the DIY experimenter with little or no experience in this field. Also, the novice experimenter has a genuine problem with quality variance with the materials he is forced to work with and is attempting to recycle: if he is not fully coversant with every facet of panel design and construction, as well as the tight performance parameters and the effect wear-and ¬tear has on these, the problems of quality control can overwhelm him. The manufacturer of brand¬ new, 'freshly minted' panels does not labour under this constraint.
And by the way, if anyone is wondering why businesses haven't proliferated refurbishing electrostatic speakers, the answer is that the skills required to produce consistent results and the hopelessly labour-intensive nature of the work would make it more profitable to sell Fruit & VEG on a market stall.
Steve Williams, December 2006.
A final word on electrostatic loudspeakers
What is seldom appreciated is that the manufacture of electrostatic loudspeakers is not (and seldom has been) a highly profitable enterprise. They are the best air-sound-pressure-transducer in the world, and this won't change as the laws of nature won't change. It is costly to produce and highly labor-intensive. A successful £ 100 bookshelf speaker would be far more profit-making for its designer. To maintain their market position, Quad electrostatic speakers have, in our opinion, always been underpriced.
To illustrate the point, recently Linn Products have introduced their flagship loudspeaker - the Komri. This is a very good loudspeaker indeed. The asking price is £ 25,000 We consider this price about right for the quality, complexity and sophistication of the product on offer. The complexity and sophistication of Quad's 989 is even greater, and it costs less than one quarter of this amount. This is to pass no judgment on the relative merits of either loudspeaker , merely to give some perspective to Quad's pricing policy.
Steve Williams March 4, 2002
