Stephen Mejias

The KEF Blade

Stephen Mejias  |  May 22, 2009

At last year's Consumer Electronics Show and Festival Son & Image, British loudspeaker manufacturer KEF caught a lot of eyes and ears with their shimmering, $140,000/pair Muon. Now the company has unveiled the Blade, an artful, sleek, stealthy looking thing, poised to draw similar attention.

KEF's engineers were given complete creative freedom and spent three years toiling over the development of the Blade. If you're thinking of buying it, however, hold your horses. And your checkbooks. And your horses' checkbooks.

The Blade is not for sale!

I guess that makes it just for art. Check out the dedicated webpage and explanatory video for more information, and watch out for our report in the August issue's "Industry Update."

COMMENTS
Studio's picture
Submitted by Studio (not verified) on May 25, 2009 - 3:04pm

Uhhmm, carbom fibre, glass fibre cabinet: $5k building cost. Drivers and extras: $5k building cost.So it shouldn't cost more than $45-50k in stores.

Linn's picture
Submitted by Linn (not verified) on May 28, 2009 - 9:09am

Can't see how Blade is better than Muon. No spec. No comparison. Only stories.

David Gulliver's picture
Submitted by David Gulliver (not verified) on May 31, 2009 - 8:32pm

Your cost estimate overlooks one important thing:Recovery of R&D costs.It is possible that a million dollars (just a nice round number) went into the man-hours for R&D, the testing, the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc., trial models that were built and the scrapped when they didn't perform as planned...Let's say they sell 100 pairs of these speakers over time - that's another $10,000 per pair in costs they need to recover. Figure typical mark up for the importers, wholesalers, retailers, and we are easily adding $50,000 more to the consumer cost.And then don't forget the sheer "wow" factor that allows a manufacturer to double, triple, or more the cost when you are dealing with an extremely low-volume unit where a handful of wealthy potential buyers are willing to pay more in order to join an elite group of owners of a limited-run, top-performance, group.

KJ's picture
Submitted by KJ (not verified) on June 5, 2009 - 10:58am

Not that I could afford a Muon, but if I could, I'd buy the Blade instead! Far cooler-looking, IMHO.

Bill Philip's picture
Submitted by Bill Philip (not verified) on June 5, 2009 - 11:24am

I'm still trying to just find out who can mount a quality demonstration of KEF 207/2's in the northeast. Emailed questions to KEF don't seem to get answered.

Graeme's picture
Submitted by Graeme (not verified) on July 30, 2009 - 1:25am

Hmmm, a lot of this technology has already been seen in Vivid Audio's speakers, notably the absorber horn loaded tweeters and reaction canceling driver arrangement. (Vivid have used these technologies for more than 6 years I think). The other "cutting edge" technology is using a composite sandwich material for the cabinet. The Vivid Audio Giya uses a cored laminate as well.

david moran's picture
Submitted by david moran (not verified) on September 1, 2009 - 1:17pm

haha, with the woofers up that high, guess how much of a power suckout notch there is going to be in the octave below middle C?? Bad cello sound, but that's okay, you get that totally unnatural increase in clarity, or something....

markus beck's picture
Submitted by markus beck (not verified) on October 25, 2009 - 6:03am

I have listened to it at the Munich Hi End show this May and I have to say that it really was one of the best sounding speakers. (I also liked the big TAD speaker system). What really impressed me was the new design. The look of the Blade is technical and elegant at the same time and it is not just another monster speaker like the FOCAL UTOPIA

Greg's picture
Submitted by Greg (not verified) on November 2, 2009 - 10:46pm

I also listened to th blades at the show, but I have to say I was really disappointed. To me it sounded overly bright and the upper mids were borderline unbearable with their chosen setup. I like tonally neutral speakers for music, the blades struck me as more suited to the big-bang-slam sound of home theatre... I also liked the TADS, completely different class...

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