Gramophone Dreams

The story goes that starting in 1962, Malcolm Jones was KEF's "first employee," where he "did most of the design and development of the legendary KEF drive units—the B139, B200, B110, T15, T27—and the systems in which they were incorporated. Malcolm left KEF in 1974, having just completed the Reference Series 104 system and work on an active professional monitor to work full time at Falcon Acoustics Ltd."

Fast-forward a few years. I bought my first BBC LS3/5a in 1980. It was a Falcon Acoustics kit I saw advertised in the back of Speaker Builder magazine. Fingers crossed, I sent a postal money order in a thin Air Mail envelope to what I imagined was a garden shed in England. But of course it wasn't.

According to the Falcon Loudspeakers website (footnote 1), "During the 1980's and 1990's, Falcon wound hundreds of thousands of inductors each year for UK and international customers. Many of Europe's well-known speaker systems used Falcon inductors. At one time over two thirds of UK manufacturers used Falcon inductors."

Fast-forward to the 21st century. "After trading as Falcon Acoustics for some time Malcolm finally fully retired in 2009 and transferred Falcon to Jerry Bloomfield near Oxford."

Fast-forward to today. "Falcon Acoustics is now the largest UK supplier of drive units and is UK Distributor for most major brands, as well as manufacturing the Falcon Acoustics range of drive units all designed by Malcolm Jones. In 2014/2015, Falcon Acoustics also started making the now famous Falcon Acoustics Classic BBC LS3/5a."

I reviewed that speaker in July 2015 and used it as my reference for years, until I reviewed Falcon's Gold Badge version in July 2021. This month, I am auditioning Jerry Bloomfield's 2024 Limited Edition LS3/5a (footnote 2), and it is showing a higher level of transparency and resolve than any of my three previous Falcon LS3/5a iterations.

2024 Limited Edition LS3/5a
If I spent 10 times as much as these $9495/ pair Falcon 2024 Limited Edition LS3/3a, I am sure I would get a bigger, louder speaker, with deeper bass, but I doubt the experience would be more intense or emotionally uplifting than when I played a 1961 Shaded Dog pressing (RCA LSC-2504) of Anna Moffo (footnote 3) singing "Bell Song" from Delibes's Lakmé and "Jewel Song" from Gounod's Faust.

The Audio-Technica ART20 moving coil I reviewed in GD93 was finally broken in, and what was coming out of Falcon's 2024 Limited Edition LS3/5a's was as detailed, richly toned, and dreamy as I would ever want. More would be too much.

Playing this disc with the Nelson Pass–designed First Watt SIT-4 driving the "LE" Falcons delivered a goose-bumped teary-eyed fall-in-love-with-Anna moment. The LE's startling transparency placed a flesh-and-blood Anna Moffo in a real room with a floor and microphones on stands, right behind my speakers.

Compared to my Gold Badge Falcons, the 2024 LE LS3/5a's showed dramatically firmer bass, more detail, less grain, and vocal-range tone that exceeded anything I've previously heard from a wooden box with a dome tweeter.

The 2024 LE's transparency was hear-it-from-the-kitchen stunning. Best I can figure, the LE's thinner cabinet is doing a better job hiding its resonant modes, its larger inductors are intensifying the bass, and its cleaner-sounding capacitors are opening up the soundspace, letting in more light and clean air.

Falcon Acoustics Managing Director Jerry Bloomfield told me, "Only 50 pairs of the Falcon Acoustics LS3/5a 2024 Limited Edition will be made, and they are sequentially numbered, with two reference pairs being kept for company use. "Standard versions of the 5a are made with 12mm thick Baltic birch cabinet walls and screwed-on backs, but Falcon's 2024 LE use 9mm plywood like the BBC Research & Development originals. But unlike the originals, the LEs have glued-on backs (Jerry says they sound better that way) and come in an Italian-made leather carrying case. [They] showcase a slippery satin finished English Burr Elm veneer, fronted by grilles made of 1975-vintage Tygan cloth woven in Yorkshire, England."

Jerry says the LE version "uses a gold-tracked Arlon 25N purple multilayer printed circuit board, and UK-made polycarbonate capacitors are fitted using a film that has been out of production for over a quarter of a century. What's left—not a lot—has been incredibly expensive to get hold of, so this really is the last opportunity to hear what the BBC intended the LS3/5a to sound like.

"The 2024 LE sports US-made Ohmite NI Audio Gold resistors and close-matched UK-manufactured BBC R&D-spec transformer inductors. The latter are roughly double the size of standard production inductors. Internal wiring is TPE-insulated fine multistrand oxygen-free copper, with Falcon Rose Gold plated binding posts."

So this is it, Jerry Bloomfield declares: "The 2024 Limited Edition is the best LS3/5a they know how to make and will ever make."

Listening: The first time I heard Falcon's Limited Edition LS3/5a, I was walking into the room at AXPONA 2024. Before I sat down, I knew: The 2024 LEs were more brightly lit and transparent than my Gold Badges at home. A few minutes later, I began noticing all the nuanced miracles happening in the bass.

After my review pair arrived, visitors to my studio immediately noticed the LE's high-toned Knightsbridge style. One friend, a speaker manufacturer himself, said, "Well look at that! Now they're really pipe'n'slippers. I bet Ken Kessler has a pair!" I presume Ken is still using Falcon's Kingswood Warren Edition, released in 2019. (footnote 4) Those have screwed-on backs and teak veneers "to ensure that the build, looks, and sound are exactly as they would have been in 1972/74."

According to Bloomfield, "The Kingswood Warren Edition follow the original LS3/5 cabinets from 1968, which were stripped down and reused by the BBC Design Department to make the first LS3/5a."

I can appreciate high-backed chairs, Meerschaum pipes, and sleepy fox hounds dozing by the fire, but I've never understood British music composer Gerald Finzi. I know he's regarded as an important British modernist. I'm probably too steeped in raw Chicago blues to "get" his more refined creations. On my grumpy, where's the art? days, his compositions seem intentionally bombastic and pretentious. Nevertheless—LOL—I've purchased every one of his recordings on Lyrita, and I listen to them often—just to marvel at their perfectly sorted sound. The vibe on my Finzi-Lyritas is full-on British, so of course when I played Finzi's Concerto for Cello & Orchestra (Lyrita LP SRCS. 112) through Falcon's 2024 Limited Edition '5a's, I added milk to my tea and dreamed along to the sounds of Yo-Yo Ma's 1722 Goffriller cello and Vernon Handley conducting the Royal Philharmonic as if the future of the monarchy depended on it.

The creamy clarity of Falcon's Limited Edition LS3/5a forced me to listen closer than usual and showed me how what I perceived as Finzi's stretched-out ponderousness is actually a carefully calculated backdrop for showcasing the drama of his invention.

I had a feeling the Lyra Delos cartridge (see below) and Falcon's fanciest-ever 5a would flesh out every spec of the Lyrita's tonal and textural delights—which they did. What I wasn't prepared for were the nuanced, wide-range dynamics that came with that. Most of Finzi's snooze factor was eliminated by the 2024 LE's vibey, "active" clarity. Finzi's restrained ponderousness now felt urgent and purposeful. The Delos cartridge, SIT-4 amp, and LE speaker combination converted Finzi's bombast into a memorable deep-listening moment that well reflected what the 2024 Limited Edition brings to BBC monitor history.

Now I imagine you want to know: What was it like when I switched back to my paint-smeared Gold Badges?

The short answer is, these two manifestations of the LS3/5a sounded more different than alike.

The first things I noticed were how dark, grainy, and compressed the Gold Badges sounded and how much more speed, light, and nuanced detail the Limited Editions were putting into both bass and treble. The next thing I noticed was that I'd have to give the edge on absolute tone quality to the Gold Badges.

But jeez Louise, the difference in transparency was radical. Besides hot-shot bass and fancy packaging, all that extra Limited Edition cash is buying rarefied parts and a quality of transparency that is uniquely pure and extremely sensual. I've been using LS3/5a's since 1980, and none even came close to the LE's level of invisibleness.

As Jerry Bloomfield declared: "The 2024 Limited Edition is the best LS3/5a we know how to make and will ever make." (footnote 5)

The Lyra Delos
At $2195, the Delos is Lyra's lowest-priced cartridge. It was introduced in 2008, and every time I've heard it in someone else's system, I sensed its speed and detailed attack, but it never seemed like a Herb cartridge. Historically, I'm more of a Denon DL-103/Koetsu Rosewood kind of guy. Recently, I've evolved into more of a Dynavector/Hana/Benz Micro type.

The most important things I know about Lyra cartridges (footnote 6) are that they are designed by smarty-pants wizard Jonathan Carr and that each one is built in Japan by the venerable duo of Akiko Ishiyama (primary build) and Yoshinori Mishima (final build, testing). This is important because the Delos presents like it not only was assembled precisely but that it was also tuned—very precisely—to sound a certain exact way.

On the Lyra website, under specifications, the Delos is described as a "Medium weight, medium compliance, low-impedance moving coil." It says it uses a solid boron "rod" with a nude Namiki MicroRidge line-contact stylus and a one-point suspension. The coil is described as high-purity 6N copper with a self-impedance of 8.2 ohms and 9µH self-inductance. The stylus is a surface-mounted "Namiki MicroRidge line-contact nude diamond" with a 2.5µm × 75µm tip. Its threaded mounting and body are a "one-piece machining from a solid aluminum billet." It weighs 7.3gm. The recommended tracking force range is a narrow "1.7–1.8gm (1.75gm preferred)." As for loading, there's a discrepancy between the website and the detailed instruction manual. The former recommends "97.6 ohm–806 ohm straight into a preamp or a step-up transformer designed for a 5–10 ohm cartridge." The latter recommends "91–47k ohm determined by listening," or "91–510 ohm" when used with a step-up transformer. Compliance is specified as 12×10^–6cm/dyne at 100Hz.

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Footnote 1: See falconloudspeakers.co.uk/history.

Footnote 2: Falcon Acoustics, Mallories, Pound Lane, Stanton St. John, Oxfordshire, OX33 1HF, United Kingdom. Tel: +44 (0)1865 358001. Email: sales@falconacoustics.co.uk. Web: falconacoustics.co.uk. US distributor: Fidelis Distribution, 460 Amherst St., Nashua, NH 03063. Tel: (603) 880-4434. Email: nsales@fidelisdistribution.com. Website: fidelisdistribution.com.

Footnote 3: See youtu.be/8LGVnsdoSCQ?si=cZdaoGWxtoBFfxfL.

Footnote 4: See kenkessler.com/blogs/blog-no-14-an-ls3-5a-for-the-ages.

Footnote 5: According to the Falcon website this special edition is now sold out.—Ed.

Footnote 6: Lyra Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan. Web: lyraaudio.com. US distributor: MIBS Distro LLC, Gig Harbor, WA. Tel: (253) 209-6792. Web: mibsdistro.com.