Page 111 - Hi-Fi_News_-_December_2020 video

OPINION

Steve Harris

Contributor
Steve Harris edited Hi-Fi News between 1986 and 2005. He loves jazz, blues music,

vinyl and vintage hi-fi and anything that makes good music come to life
Speakers cornered

The 2010 encounter with the Lowther speaker set-up in a former Hi-Fi News editor’s old house
was a memorable one for Steve Harris, who recalls the company’s history and personalities

ow well I remember the fi rst
time, in the mid 1980s, that I
heard a Lowther speaker. Then,
Hhorn-loaded loudspeakers
seemed mostly a quirky anachronism
– appropriate, to earlier times when
amplifier power was limited, but

irrelevant now that you could have as
many watts as you needed. And the work
of audio pioneer Paul Voigt, which was
the foundation of the Lowther speaker
concept, had been all but forgotten.
In the 1930s, Voigt collaborated with
OP Lowther to offer Voigt speakers with
Lowther’s amplifiers. After World War 2,

Donald Chave, who’d been Lowther’s
chief engineer, took over the Lowther
company, while Voigt, in poor health ABOVE: John Howes stands next to an original Voigt corner horn (left) and one of the vintage
and fed up with conditions in the UK, Voigt corner horns in the home of the late David Khan, who bought the house from John Crabbe
emigrated to Canada in 1950.
Lowther in the mid-1950s, when it was writing to me. He concluded one of his
REVELATORY SOUNDS still being used as a testbed for drivers, letters, in which the “i” had broken off
There was then an agreement that and went on to acquire several. his typewriter, by soldiering on and fi lling
Lowther could continue to sell Voigt’s In 1969, he’d got Voigt’s address in them all in by hand…’
Domestic corner horn as well as building Canada from Companies House, and had
drive units under Voigt’s patents. But written to him. ‘It was a bit of a fan letter,’ TWO AND SIX
inevitably, Chave developed his own David said, ‘I explained that I’d collected David’s experience seems to echo that
Lowther speaker models and the Voigt three of his loudspeakers, and how of the American horn speaker expert
horn was all but forgotten. wonderful I found them.’ Bruce Edgar. In early 1981, having

I first had a chance Voigt replied and corresponded with Voigt and tried to
to listen at length to the ‘He utilised the correspondence set up an interview for the DIY quarterly
Domestic corner horn continued. ‘I would write Speaker Builder, Edgar received a letter
when I met the late David John Crabbe’s him fairly short letters, from Ida Voigt informing him that her
Khan [‘Hi-Fi @ Home’, horns as bass begging answers to husband had died suddenly. But Edgar
HFN Jun ’10]. This was questions. And he would already had enough material to put
a revelatory experience extenders’ reply, page after page of together the ‘pseudo interview’ that ran
compared with my fi rst detailed accounts of his in the magazine’s last two issues of 1981.
Lowther encounters. experiences, and his new Here in the UK, Voigt’s work is much
It was David who, in 1978, bought ideas about gravity. Which were what more known and appreciated than it
ex-HFN editor John Crabbe’s house, was now preoccupying him! I was asking was then, thanks in great part to John
complete with a pair of built-in bass him about the latest developments in Howes and his Lowther Voigt museum.
horns, running from ceiling to fl oor. Later, audio, but he’d given up audio. Meanwhile, the Lowther brand is active
with the help of John Howes, organiser of ‘He explained the circumstances of again, thanks to its new owner Martin
the Audiojumble, he successfully utilised his ill-health, his emigration to Canada Thornton in Northamptonshire.
those Crabbe horns as bass extenders for and the problems that he had there, And things have certainly changed
a pair of Quad ESL63 loudspeakers. which completely changed his plans. since that far-off day when a schoolboy
At the other end of the room, though, The original drive units and horns that David Khan trekked to Bromley and paid
he still had his Voigt corner horns. He’d he had planned for Canada, I think, were half-a-crown for a set of plans to build his

first heard one by chance on a visit to still in their packing cases when he was first Lowther Acousta.

DECEMBER 2020 | www.hifi news.co.uk | 111