Tannoy Stirling Prestige Gold Reference loudspeaker

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Founded in 1926 by Guy R. Fountain in London as the Tulsemere Manufacturing Company, Tannoy—a portmanteau (footnote 1) of “tantalum” and “alloy,” after a tantalum-lead alloy used in rectifiers—took on its current commercial identity in 1928. Through the war years and beyond, the company specialized in public-address (PA) systems. Indeed, today, “tannoy” is a widely recognized generic term for a PA system in the UK; there’s an entry for “tannoy” in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Tannoy was 20 years old when the company introduced, in 1947, its Dual Concentric drive unit, the basis of much of the company’s subsequent commercial success, at home and in studios. By the ’70s, Tannoy was one of the world’s best-known manufacturers of studio monitors. In the 1990s, Tannoy expanded its reach into commercial and home audio installations; their in-ceiling speakers made their way into many restaurants and churches. In a way, it was a return to the company’s PA roots.

Tannoy’s orientation toward installation and pro audio led to its takeover, in 2002, by Denmark-based pro-audio company TC Electronics; the resulting new company was renamed TC Group. Then in 2015, TC Group was acquired by Music Group, a Philippines-based, pro-audio–focused holding company that, a couple of years later, renamed itself Music Tribe.

After this last acquisition, the new owners announced that Tannoy production would be moved from Scotland to China and the Scottish factory would be closed. That led key Tannoy personnel—quite a few of them—to leave the company. It became a major local controversy: Even Pete Townshend went to bat to keep Tannoy Scottish (footnote 2). Subsequently, Music Group announced that products would continue to be produced in Scotland, at a new manufacturing facility.

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Today, the old Tannoy factory still exists but seems destined to become a housing development. So, where are these speakers built, specifically the classic, wood-body Tannoys—the Canterbury, the Westminster, and the speaker under review, the Stirling Prestige Gold Reference ($6990/pair)? Did that that new factory ever get built?

“There is a new factory in Scotland,” said Kevin Deal of Upscale Distribution, Tannoy’s US distributor, in an email. “The cabinets have been made in a furniture factory in Poland for decades and continue to be. Tannoy cabinets, drivers, and crossovers are handmade.”

On the back of each speaker, a sticker reads “Designed, engineered, and manufactured in the United Kingdom.”

Tannoy’s technical history
The original Dual Concentric driver—the Monitor Black from 1947—was developed by Tannoy engineer Ronnie H. Rackham. This driver combined a 15″ woofer with a compression tweeter, the woofer cone acting as a wide-dispersion horn for the tweeter; a 12″ version was introduced the same year. Coaxial designs were not new, but most others suspended a tweeter in front of a woofer or attached a compression driver on the backside of the woofer magnet. Tannoy’s Dual Concentric design allowed the voice-coils of the tweeter and the woofer to share the same magnet and the woofer cone to horn-load the tweeter. The goal was to simulate a point-source transducer, with optimal dispersion characteristics.

First used as a calibration instrument for testing microphones, the Dual Concentric driver was eventually employed in many classic Tannoy loudspeakers, including the Cheviot, Balmoral, Caernarvon, Arundel, and Edinburgh. Tannoy refined its design for decades, creating drivers that are now regarded as collectible: the original Monitor Black, the Silver, Red, Gold, HPD, Royal Blue, and K and D lines, among others.

Tannoy’s timeline chronicles its achievements and milestones: a major redesign of the Dual Concentric driver in 1967, with the Monitor Gold; the 1973 recording of The Dark Side of the Moon, which utilized Tannoy studio monitors with the Gold concentric drive unit; the introduction, in 1978, of Anisotropic Barium Ferrite magnets, replacing the Alnicos in high-end Tannoy models; the 1982 introduction of the Prestige range; the introduction, 10 years later, of the Tulip Waveguide Prestige series, including the very first Stirling; the 1999 introduction of the Prestige Dual Concentric Driver with hard-edge twin-roll fabric surround; in 2006, the introduction of the Prestige SE series, including the Stirling SE; in 2013, the introduction of the Gold Reference series—including the Stirling Prestige Gold Reference loudspeaker, the speaker under review, which incorporates all the technologies mentioned above including Dual Concentric drivers, Barium Ferrite magnets, Tulip Waveguides, and HE fabric surrounds.

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There have been no giant parties I’m aware of, but there’s a lot to celebrate: The Dual Concentric drive-unit is 75 years old this year; the Tannoy Stirling family is having its 40th anniversary. The current iteration—the Stirling Prestige Gold Reference—remains unchanged as it approaches its 10th anniversary, next year. How is Tannoy doing?

Design
The Stirling may have been introduced in 2013, but aesthetically it’s a product of the mid-1970s. The handsome cabinet is constructed of MDF and birch ply finished in oiled-walnut veneer. With Tannoy, you’re getting both its sound and its cosmetic legacy. One decidedly untraditional aspect of the Stirling is its front-firing ports, which consist of three wafer-thin slots cut along the beveled front edge of the cabinet on either side, spanning almost its full height. “Yes, the ports are … [slots] on the … sides of the baffle,” Deal of Upscale Distribution wrote. “Dimensions aren’t given, but it’s calculated to provide the best bass response from this cabinet.”

The Stirling’s 1″-thick grille, which is inset flush with the cabinet edge, is the heaviest and thickest I’ve ever seen. It’s covered in a tweedlike fabric that reminds me of a blazer worn by a character from a ’60s TV show. The grille snaps into place magnetically and is also held in place by the same mechanism found on earlier Tannoy speakers, released with a gold-plated key near the bottom. “This is a classic Tannoy design,” Deal explained. “Fans like the big grille and key for removal. Tannoy avoids the use of plastic pins in this design. … Owners leave them either on or off.”

Around the back, four large, sturdy binding posts allow for biwiring; a fifth post enables optional earth-grounding to the amplifier chassis, presumably to reduce EMI reception. Four thick, color-coded wire jumpers were included to connect high- and low-frequency posts.

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Also included are two small booklets in a faux-leather sleeve with a wraparound gold string. One is a quality certificate, dated 11/19/19—presumably the date these speakers were built—which includes approval signatures for various stages of production: cabinet and grille inspection, driver assembly, termination-panel assembly, and acoustic test including high-power switch. The other is an information-packed owner’s manual, which includes a section on Tannoy’s history, replete with vintage photos of Tannoy’s old factory and detailed setup instructions. A tin of wood wax is also supplied. The Prestige Gold Reference arrived very well packaged.

The driver
“Tannoy’s Dual Concentric [design] is a two-way, time-aligned, partially horn-loaded, coaxial driver,” Deal wrote in an email. “Dual Concentric doesn’t refer to a two-way driver or a coaxial driver, but to a driver that is concentric (shared center) in two dimensions: on-axis and perpendicular to the axis. The center being the point of propagation of sound. This makes the Tannoy Stirling a true point-source loudspeaker and not just a coaxial loudspeaker. By integrating the high-frequency driver within and on the same axis as the low-frequency driver, Tannoy aligned phase and locked in imaging.”

Footnote 1: Although Wikipedia prefers the term “syllabic abbreviation” for cases like this.

Footnote 2 “I feel that the quality of the product will inevitably suffer without the skill and experience of the local workers” if production were to move to China, The Who’s guitarist said, according to an article in Scotland’s Daily Record. “The Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin, The Clash—we all used Tannoys to make our records that 50 years later still generate income and kudos for the UK.”

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