Manufacture & Acknowledgements
In a marketplace filled to brimming with mass-production loudspeaker systems that now look due East for their manufacturing base, even with what are marketed as ‘specialist’ articles, no-doubt heavily influenced by accountant and shareholder-led directives prioritising maximum gains, such business models are undeniably the very antithesis of smaller, highly committed and dedicated operations that take a more bespoke and personal approach toward their market base and goals, for it is with the home-grown model of producing and manufacturing that buyers of specialist precision merchandise resolutely insist upon every time.
Such small-scale industries are gathering greater interest for their more authentic avenue of realising a product invested with time, patience and expertise from conception to execution through values centred on longevity of ownership; measures that eschew the often contradictory and burdensome influences of complying with shareholders and what are known as ‘efficient market hypothesis’ (EMH) business-dynamic ideals and trends of the moment.
This is where the machine shop and workshop of the respective precision engineering and furniture operations that employ craftspeople of such longstanding industries of tradition here in the UK are behind what is a statement product that is created especially as a one-off that no accountant would ever understand, let-alone endorse. Such beliefs on how to do things correctly for those who fully comprehend the ‘quality is key’ ethos bears out an approach that keeps it all simple and on-point by never putting cost considerations before quality through outsourcing to high-volume/low cost production processes from far-flung bases abroad; notwithstanding the less-than-green implication of transportation from a half-way around the world for materials and finished articles with the fossil fuels required to do so.
From these fast-track low-cost production models, the notional long-term value appended toward the home-grown small-scale curated product of individually unique qualities, combined with a general cynicism toward ‘built for profit’ merchandise that very quickly becomes obsolete, presents as an ever more salient proposition. Deploying only the highest grade of components available wherever possible, the remit of items sourced for the IAS Beaulieu 40R loudspeaker system rest within the European Union and the United Kingdom.
The following is a list of the contributors involved by way of gratitude and acknowledgement to their various businesses that have partaken with the supply and/or manufacture of the materials that form the loudspeaker system as a whole, as well as for the helpful assistance offered in the early stages of the product’s development. This includes friends and colleagues within and outside of the hi-fi industry for their knowledge and general all-round loyalty and support.
Accu Fasteners Ltd
Christian Andersen – Andersen Audio
Alan Baker – Images/Activ8
Terry Bateman – Rega
Jerry Bloomfield – Falcon Acoustics
Ian Bodil – HMF Solutions
Frederik Caroe – Duelund Coherent Audio
Bob Chumbley – Identilabel
Guy Collins – The Rubber Company
Paul Coupe – Reference Fidelity Components
Martin Cullingford – Gramophone
Tom Evans – Tom Evans Audio Design
Claus Futtrup – SEAS Loudspeakers
Derek Halls – DHP Video
Steve Harris – Hi-fi News & Record Review
David Lane – Willys Hi-fi
Neal Lewer – Furnish & Co.
Nick Lucas – Hi-fi Collective
Clare MacLean – Metwin Engineering
John Morley – John Morley Photography
Michael Price – rtd. BBC
Rupert Robertson – ex. BBC
Dave Smith – DK Loudspeakers
Sue Townshend – Townshend Audio
Steve Nichiman – Volt Loudspeakers