HIGH FIDELITY AND ALL THAT

Glen Quick

Look; you can’t fit a whole orchestra in your lounge room, so why bother with Hi-Fi? Any old sound system is good enough for me; - and I couldn’t tell the difference anyway.

Statements frequently made by the unconverted to those of us who believe. Well to be frank, I couldn’t fit a grand piano into my lounge room either but that hasn’t stopped me from slowly building a Hi-Fi system over many years that sounds as good as the real thing.

Sure, you can't fit an orchestra, or an opera stage or a string quartet or even a piano into your listening space but what if you could produce sound that makes it seem as though you're standing, or preferably sitting in a very comfortable chair by an open window into the best concert hall or opera theatre in the world with the very best performers in the world on hand to perform for you at the press of a switch?

Now that's the sort of thing I think is Hi-Fi and that's the sort of sound that I get from my sound system. It’s taken me over 50 years to get there with quite a few false starts and deviations on the way. Like so many of my age [let's just say mature years ], I started by building valve amplifiers that were described in a magazine called Radio & Hobbies that became Electronics Australia. It’s still going I believe but these days calls itself Silicon Chip .

Why did we build amplifiers? The answer to that is easy. On a wage of just a few pounds a week, we couldn't afford the £25 or more that was required to buy a high grade English amplifier like the Leak Point One . So-called because it was made by Harold Leak and Co. in London and had a claimed total harmonic distortion of less than 0.1%.

And the commercial offerings from Australia; well they were 5 or 6 valve radio sets fitted with an input from a very heavy electrical pickup usually attached to an automatic record changer with the whole lot in a beautiful walnut cabinet. Such a lovely piece of furniture, don't you think Gladys? would be the proud housewife's comment when a visitor noticed the new radiogram sitting next to the walnut and glass crystal cabinet in the lounge room where the housewife displayed all her silver and glass that was obligatory to own but far too good ever to be used . And if the visitor pressed further; Oh yes, it's got such a lovely mellow sound and Ernie's got 5 records which he listens to all the time when we're not tuned in to Jack Davey or When a Girl Marries .

A far cry from a window into the best concert hall or opera house in the world but that's what it was like in the days before Hi-Fi.

And as for loud speakers. Well the radiogram had some 6 or 8 inch diameter electro-magnetic device of dubious provenance stuck away in the bottom where the mice liked to nest because it was warm while the Hi-Fi aficionado was building a vented enclosure or constructing the Wharfedale sand-filled panelled corner enclosure into which he fitted a 12 inch cloth suspended Wharfedale or Goodman's bass speaker while on top sat a strange mounting holding a mid-range squawker and a high range tweeter . To quote those long-ago English comedians Flanders & Swan, it would certainly please any passing bat with it’s full-frequency reproduction.

When Long Playing records arrived in the 1950's, the old days of 78s and thorn needles which had to be sharpened between sides [every 2 to 3 minutes] went for ever and we sat back to listen to the 20 to 30 minutes of sound now being lifted from the LP by a sapphire stylus in a light weight pickup with a downward pressure of only a few ounces . When the sapphire stylus wore or became chipped, you could see the soft vinyl LP record change colour as it was being played. Though the record didn't sound too good the next time it was played through.

We had Decca full Frequency Range Recordings with a small ffrr insignia on the cover and label and the Hi-Fi people prized them as they knew that they had been recorded with cutter developed during World War 2 with a high frequency response that went up to 40,000 cycles per second. The fact that most people's ears won't hear anything over 20,000 cycles even when young and that radio broadcasts cut off at about 6,000 cycles somehow escaped attention.

And then we heard about a small English company called The Acoustical Manufacturing Company which made an amplifier called Quad . What an odd name! It stands for quality amplifier domestic , [Quad, geddit?]. Soon the company called itself Quad and then Peter Walker, the genius who developed the Quad launched a new style of loud-speaker called an electrostatic speaker, almost a metre across and wider than it was high. It was called the ESL57 because it came out in 1957. And when we did hear it, a rarity in Australia, because it was so expensive, the sound was a revelation. With its great area, at last we were getting closer to that window into the best concert hall.

And you guessed it! Along came stereo and instead of just one amplifier and speaker, you needed two of everything. But again, when we heard the stereo effects from two ESL57's spaced at least a metre away from the wall behind, suddenly there was a depth to the sound; you could actually hear that there was space around the instruments; there really was a three dimensional sound stage so that the window into the best concert hall came closer still.

But the expense! Well, those prepared to spend the cost of a small car on a sound system were happy but the rest of us just kept on with what we could afford.

How did this Quad ESL57 work? What made it sound so different?

What Peter Walker did was to stretch a very thin piece of plastic film [think Gladwrap] across a honeycomb plastic base, coat it with a very thin layer of a compound that would conduct electricity, and then apply an electric charge of several thousand volts to the coated plastic film making it into a capacitor. Then by sending the output of his valve amplifier to the diaphragm, the whole of it vibrated; greatly increasing the effective size of our magic Hi-Fi window. And being so thin, it weighed so little that it took almost no time to start moving when a signal was applied so that the sound of transients [drums, percussion, piano etc] was greatly improved.

Sound not loud enough? Easy! Just buy two ESL57’s per stereo channel and mount them on a special stand and sit there looking at your ‘stacked pair’ radiating at you like a wall of sound. But what about the lounge room and the crystal cabinet ? What about the wife acceptance factor [known as the waf to the aficionados]? Well, again, just build a special listening room onto your house [dimensions kindly supplied by various magazines] and put the whole lot down one end hidden behind a light scrim curtain and sit back and listen to your wall of sound , your own special window into the best concert hall.

By 1981, Quad had further developed the ESL and the new speaker was called the ESL63 since development had started in 1963. Once again the reviews were ecstatic but the price in England was £1000 per pair. Pretty impressive; so it was a long time before they were sold in Australia in any number.

Now along the line, there had been the massive changeover from vacuum tubes [electronic valves] to transistors and soon to come [1983] was Compact Disc with its digital sound format. I had gone from building valve amplifiers to building transistor versions [nowhere near as easy] and eventually in London in 1977, had bought a Quad amplifier and some Radford loud speakers which I fitted into the so-called Bailey enclosure. This was a speaker cabinet described in the English Wireless World magazine by a Dr Bailey where the radiation from the back of the cone of the bass speaker was fed into a folded triangular labyrinth which was packed with a carefully measured amount of long-fibre wool so that the bass response was reinforced when the back radiation eventually emerged from a vent at the end of the labyrinth. I made the enclosures in my home workshop; quite tricky actually and then veneered the cabinet with pre-glued iron-on sheets of real wood. The appearance and performance was quite impressive and I used these speakers until about 6 years ago.

One day I visited a showroom out on Greenhill Road looking for a new TV. They had a pair of second-hand Quad ESL63's for sale; just been traded-in they said. I went back the next day with a stack of CDs and sat by myself in a demonstration room for a couple of hours and then came out with my cheque book. Yes, they were every bit as good as the Hi-Fi reviews said. The Radford / Baileys were put in storage and the Quads took pride of place. I didn't buy the TV just then though.

All was well for a year or more then returning home after a holiday, I switched them on and heard an ominous spluttering sound. One of the bass diaphragms was breaking down. There was nobody in Adelaide who could repair them so with help from my elder son [Ashleigh], I contacted a firm in Western Australia who sold a repair kit complete with instructions and telephone help when required. The offending speaker was then dismantled in Ashleigh's workshop and over several weekends, we carefully built new diaphragms, re-glued the plastic egg-crate-like stators on which the diaphragms are mounted and then re-assembled and successfully tested the re-built speaker.

Success! No sooner was the re-built speaker home than the remaining one went the same way. So it was back to do the job all over again. Along the way, we damaged one of the egg-crate stators with an over enthusiastic application of glue so it was back to the Internet to find if spare stators were available. What a surprise! By this time, the Quad company in England had closed down and much of the equipment used to make the speakers sold to a small company in Germany [Quad Musikwiedergabe since 1989 ] [the name means literally Quad; music given again] who now made all the spares for the world and even offered an exchange and re-build service for those who shipped their speakers off to Germany.

Yes, they had a repaired panel in stock and about 3 weeks later everything was back in service again. The website of the German company is fascinating to look at and there I found, every autumn, they held a weekend festival for all Quad users. Naturally, it's called the Quadfest . It sounded fascinating. And in 2008, I realised that it almost coincided with a planned visit to our daughter who lives in Berlin. Some e-mails to the factory resulted in an invitation to the Quadfest and so we flew to Frankfurt, then took the train down to Koblenz where we hired a car and drove out to stay in the small town of Mayen [hotel booked by the Quad DE] and then we spent a whole Saturday in the factory at the little village of Gering where Quad is by far the largest business. In fact Gering is so small, it doesn't even have a shop or a pub.

We were warmly welcomed by Manfred Stein, the owner/manager and given the factory tour before sitting down to a series of demonstrations. We were by far the oldest people there; we were told that we had come the farthest for the Quadfest and were treated as honoured guests.

What a company. Not only do they supply spare parts and re-builds for the whole world, they actually make 1950’s design Quad valve amplifiers [Chinese valves] and ESL57 speakers from new as Manfred and a small body of believers say that the ESL57 was the finest loudspeaker ever made. Every loudspeaker built or re-built is laboratory tested before it's despatched and the records filed if it ever comes back again. And there were spin-offs too such as the Jecklin Float and Ergo 2 headsets which uses tiny electrostatic units in a kind of space helmet [you couldn't really call them headphones], there were alternative speakers to the Quads, there was even a man from Switzerland who specialised in re-building Thorens TD124 turntables and selling them at a very high price to the vinyl enthusiasts. He provided a demonstration of classic LPs and even mono LPs using an Ortofon pickup, a Quad valve amplifier and a single ESL57. I must say it sounded wonderful.

And what did the main demonstrations sound like? Well, fantastic. They used Einstein valve CD players and valve amplifiers feeding into stacked ESL57s and anybody could offer up their own CD to be played.

There were visitors from all over Germany, from Holland and from England and with the European Union, a surprising number of English people work in Europe nowadays. You know that once you have bought this gear, you're in a brotherhood and that you'll be supported if ever anything goes wrong. Would I go again? Like a shot if ever I was again in Germany at the right time.

And what does my gear sound like? Well, I've added a couple of Sonique sub-woofers made out at Salisbury North to fill out the bass a bit. If I had a bigger lounge room, they probably would not be needed. I still use my Quad405 bought in London in 1977 and that’s fed by a NAD pre-amplifier and a high end Sony CD player.

Have I got that window into the best concert hall and opera house in the world? My answer is an emphatic YES!

Glen Quick
September 2011

 

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