GLL Imagio IC 120, a wacky small Dual Concentric 3-way from England 

has 89dB SPL at 6 ohms, rubber suspension, poly cone and tweeter horn lens reminiscent of  Lowther speakers' old sound dispursment cones.  GLL IC speakers have that sinking feeling like fake Swiss watches and appeal to that same customer, as the fake is rewarding, the IC 120 performs, does have 3D images and a real generous 35Hz bass, as the old GLL Arena bass unit was a market leader in its own right.  -The GLL Arena speaker looked strange and examples are not proudly displayed on-line, if ever!  GLL Arena were like a Celestion SL6 mock-up with a black plastic box, old Rola Celestion were cool and in record shops you could marvel at the sound of a GLL Arena but Hey, was it ever plastic?  

'SAY IT LOUD!  I'M PLASTIC AND PROUD, HEY SAY IT L-O-U-D, I'M PLASTIC AND...'

Inside the IC 120 enclosure, the driver basket is Mica filled plastic - not all it has in common with the U.S. Soliloquy, the cabinet is even braced to give 35Hz from a ported reflex design but the 'wood' is dull vinyl!  The plastic trim around the rubber suspension is meant to limit diffraction as is the angled box edge.  Allen key speaker bolts.  Bi-wire connections on the IC 120, Single wire on the rarer IC 115.  Other speakers in the range are the IC130 with two woofers and a Mid/High unit like the one above, the single driver IC 110 and bookshelf IC 100 both with the bass/high single driver version of the Mid/Hi unit above.  These speakers have something, maybe like the British TSR-2 aircraft had something, maybe they could have been great, if just developed more?

IMAGIO speakers are short horn dual concentrics as opposed to Tannoy long horn dual concentrics.  The short horn ought to be better.  KEF had put a co-axial tweeter in the centre but it wasn't very satisfactory at first.  People ask 'What the Heck is KEF?'  It's a British loudspeaker company that made the x-over for their BBC LS3/5A equivalent of the AR-1.  Whether or not KEF speakers appeal to you now depends on the speakers you are used to, in the past KEF crossover networks were way too complex for good sound and the KEF bextrene drivers had slow transients, meaning there was no attack and today they were useless for Home Theater.  The rosewood GLL IC 120 appears on Ebay around £35, way way down from its original £500 retail price.

The IMAGIO horn driver was cutting edge Inductive Coupled Technology, or I.C.T., a pure gimmick how come Bob Carver couldn't beat the Brits to the mark?  -They weren't a success!

?QUESTION - -  - - So what's really wrong with the GLL ICT?

#1 - it takes just forever to get that tweeter horn run-in and working.

No.2 - the factory effort was bad, bolts on the speakers were loose, needing tightened, if you called and asked the company what size of Allen key to use, they'd tell you to take a walk as you'd lose your guarantee, you had to send too many pairs back and wait for replacements, the company was as nasty as the product!

No.3 - You might try liking GLL ICT, if you're convinced replica Swiss watches rival the genuine timepiece?  A GLL IC 120 versus Lowther Fidelio? - 'Eyes Wide Shut' now, compare Fidelio's long folded horn 40Hz lowest bass note with a 35Hz lowest bass note in the IC 120.  This is real competition, as Tom Cruise was the actor and Nicole Kidman was the actress, a REALISTIC brand may well have graced the GLL IC 120 as 'value audiophile' speakers posing as Hi-End and at a fraction of the cost!  (See Realistic Minimus-1).  But if people dislike REALISTIC, the way it copies hi-End at a lower cost may influence their feelings.  The REALISTIC 'Americana' custom builder chassis speakers are based on 'Utah' units

No. 4  The IC 120 are best mounted clear of walls with no furniture in between the speakers and listener, they have an odd 0-60 watt R.M.S. rating, suiting low power amplifiers and are best with about 60 watts on call.  So you may have a 60 watt RMS amplifier playing at low volumes and that is, a 60 watt RMS amplifier meant to play at low volumes, rather than a Rotel designed to play at high power.  Most amplifiers have a 'one gear' power efficiency but some are more flexible.  Power is the rate of doing work, higher power recommended for an amplifier ought to be observed but GLL specifies that very low power amplifiers may be used.  This is unusual as most British speakers since the late 1970s had needed about 4 watts minimum to work well. The '0' watts means the speakers work with milliwatts like Lowther and the tweeter is virtually indestructable, like Lowther!  In Kubrick's Movie, "Fidelio" was 'the password for entry - but what was the password for the house?'  In a room the size of Kubrick's huge Vatican style one, a folded Lowther Fidelio bass horn, will breathe easy, whilst a GLL IC 120 ported bass reflex, works well in much smaller houses!  While the Lowther Fidelio is watt efficient, it needs a large room.  Lowther are seldom seen on Ebay in North America as their cabinets are heavy to freight and extremely specialist.  Builders of the 'Spruce Goose' could 'just about' manage a Lowther bass horn!  The GLL IC 120 simply uses a conventional ported reflex, it's a trick dreamed up by Helmholtz and also used in hearing aids.  Helmoltz Resonators started to get popular in speakers of the late 70s but were hi-End in the early 1970s, folded bass horns were of the 1950s and 60s.

No.5  The horn seems to need about +2db of treble tone boost on all amplifiers.  That is your treble tone knob pointer is at 2 o'clock with a gentle slope knob.  The harman/kardon 330c has an old tech tube world 'treble cut' tone control and that is real useful for control of treble, in fact the 330c has a sweet amplifier but harman tuners were always hissy and not too great, though in the early 1980s they had one with a whole big dial scale that changed from orange to green when you were tuned into a program!  That was really something, it wasn't their flagship model either, just one of the low down ones!  IC 120 are good with a REALISTIC STA-2000 (that model is particularly good) but 6-ohm impedance doesn't let you use the Eastern Electric M520.  (See Google Image).

No.6 - The IC 100 Bookshelf - You've got to try the single driver ICT version with a big powerful Marantz amplifier, the sound is different, good - it's good, but it's like maybe, you just drunk some Monte Alban , as there's something weird about IC 100 sound!  Say the late 70s speaker sound had been released like a prisoner after doing 15 years and was a bit more Hi-End than it had been, take him as your speaker? - one weird speaker - not prestige, a kind of 'cheap Hi-End', like forced through on a low budget hoping to conquer the world!  Maybe someone ought to adopt the concept as Hi-End?  How about the French doing it right?

Why the French?  -A reference to the British Class 370 APT-T tilting train research never reaching production, the French developed their TGV version, apparently buying the British research as scrap then getting the project up and running in a few months, having taken the British a few decades!  Under President Clinton an X2000 Swedish version was being tried in the North Eastern USA.  The Concorde aircraft also somewhat connected with the TSR-2 was only developed with French help.  The Brits managed to pull their BBC LS3/5A speaker off by themselves, but were reality 'James Bond Desmond Llewelyn Q-style' actors, pottering about with Hi-End projects at the expense of the British taxpayer and like Howard Hughes' "Spruce Goose" - hardly delivering a real service!  Hughes was put on trial but got away with it, the BBC never even wanted the British public to have the LS3/5a loudspeaker -the British public paid for it through television fees but the BBC didn't want them to have it!

No.7 Freight  GET INSURANCE ON THESE ITEMS!  Mica filled plastic speaker baskets are too fragile!  Heavy magnet falls off the back when the basket cracks open.  It's a real sad sight to see your poly-cone hanging forward and it tears easily, no spares on Ebay either! 

I.C.T. are not popular speakers on Ebay, they started out as Autosound units in '92 and moved into Home Theater with the Audiophile 'effort' coming last.  Nobody admits to knowing the brand, the Goodmans company behind GLL were never geared up for individual customer support, they were mass-market orientated and alienated specialist Hi-Fi shops by selling cheaper to mass market stores!  The IMAGIO has a good midrange and bass likened in reviews to Dynaudio.  -But I bet you'd rather have the Dynaudio!

 Right Early Baker Superb, whizzer is narrow dispersion unlike GLL ICT horn

One of the rarest yet most valued late 1970s 12-inch whizzer coned speakers, Made in England, is the BAKER Superb.  Unlike the 15 watt BAKER Deluxe Model II, the second pure gray foam-edge Superb model carried on as the Superb 25 watts RMS, instead of the old 20 watt RMS with white plastic edge, shown above and below.  The new Superb had a better magnet appearance and all these speakers did 20Hz-17KHz with a copper drive, ensuring clearest reproduction of the deepest bass, highs were such that a tweeter wasn't needed in those days - but with CD and modern tuners being what they are, the REALISTIC 1310 Super-Tweeter is an essential tool for improving late 1970s speakers expiring around 17KHz! 

Mach Two tweeter look-a-like, spherical baffle Bi-radial diffraction horn

The Fostex Super-Tweeters used by Lowther speakers for SACD resemble the REALISTIC Mach Two tweeter and 1310 Super Tweeter.  A Mach Two type tweeter aims at the widest dispersion around rooms, helping the 'Live' quality a great deal.  By the late 70s, large cone bass drivers were losing ground to smaller diameter, Long Throw drivers, taken to the extreme in the REALISTIC Minimus-7, evolved from '65 year Goodmans Maximus-1.  Smaller drivers have wider dispersion of sound than big ones and mounting speakers through the front of a baffle has a wider dispersion than a speaker mounted on the back!  Looking at the early BAKER Superb below, it may not be made to fit real easy in front of a baffle, as the back of the mount gasket doesn't look to be flat!  Many old speakers will fit through the front, just remember they need an air tight seal to be added on the inside of the driver and sticky back felt is one option!

 R-A-R-E!  Baker Superb, Audiophile Hi-End whizzer coned Single Driver

The dies for casting these incredible speakers were strangely kept for long enough in the shop that made them, the Radio Component Specialists on the Whitehorse Road in Croydon near London, they designed and built Group Solid State and Tubed amplifiers, selling their fair share of the E.M.I. 13 x 8 ellipticals and so many other curios;  the EMI plastic cone tweeters the shop still had in the late 1980s, piled high in a tin bucket at £1 each as if poured in from a box!  They sold more Motorola piezo horns as used in Savard Custom-Build speakers and the REALISTIC Optimus 10, 30 and X-200.  Motorola were an American console company behind the Golden Voice sets and offered some very stylish radios, their car radios known all over!  Horns were all the rage in '79, around the time Dr Bruce Edgar began thinking about making the speakers leading to his Edgarhorn of today.  Bruce Edgar don't seem to like rectangular horns, his are round like the very first Motorola piezo horn throats.

'Sold in a market down in New Orleans... You should have heard me...'

In the U.S.A. very rare speakers to come from a mere shop, are the Louisianan Savard Custom-Built horn hybrid speakers, ranging from the small Phase 12 (below) with single 10-inch woofer to large tower speakers fit for a castle, some 6 ft high with three woofers!  These feature the American Motorola Piezo-Electric horns from the late 1970s, when these speakers were built, real cutting edge technology!  They're more common in disco speakers and always specified different from other drivers, using strange resistors and neon bulbs in the hook up, some folks couldn't get comfortable with!  The REALISTIC Optimus X-200 (see Ebay Optimus X-100 guide) also adopted Motorola Piezos making an ideal U.S.A. High Tech tweeter in 'back of through' and 'front of' baffle mounts.  The round original seen in the early Optimus 10 below, was viewed the only Hi-End driver, others seen in the Savard tower below not held in the same regard for Home Audio.  Today with SACD's upper ultrasound tweeters, we've gotten beyond piezos, their appearance in Hi-Fi speakers like Savard, is about equal to a Lincoln Continental IV being a runaround and as respectable Hi-End, these things are going to appeal to some folks;  like the Continental IV is a beautiful land barge, piezo-electric Motorola horns aren't going to seem out of place, in the right places!

 REALISTIC Optimus 10 with Motorola horn for 'unsurpassed clarity', 1980 year

Louisianan Savard Phase 12 and tower speaker with Motorola horns

These Savard speakers have their horns outside of the speaker drivers while Dual-Concentrics, have the horn inside the driver like Altec 604 or Urei 809.  The advantage of outside horns is a bigger mouth but the sound don't travel as one form like a Dual Concentric or co-axial speaker and the Tannoy concentric horn uses the bass cone as an extension of the treble horn throat!  So if they're not coaxial, concentric or Full Range, if they're like Savard or the Optimus 10 Mk1, the treble and Midrange arrive at the ear a lot later!  In the Optimus X-15, there was some attempt shown at time alignment, fact is today with tower speakers like the well known American Soliloquy, we're just not putting tweeters inside of the small diameter speakers as GLL tried.  Back in 1980 Savard were still putting Motorola piezos in Hi-Fi speakers and the REALISTIC Optimus 10 adopted them too, giving 36Hz-27KHz from a ported reflex design with 8-inch, 8-ohm rubber edge, the woofer handling 90 watts peak or American. 

See  8-inch Twincone top right, 8-inch coaxial far right, 12-inch near below 45 w peak, 25Hz-20KHz

The QUAD II Power Amplifier is a strange old unit, looks like part of a '61 B 52 , it's a Class B push/pull, the big Beam Tetrode, KT66, is just amazing when lit and powered full range Goodmans speakers - awesome units!  QUAD II warm up real slow and the heated cathodes are like a base-lit pink perspex tube, not like the red hot metal tube they are!  Shoulders of British Made B.V.A. G.E.C. KT66 are awesome, on Ebay we see other output tubes -M.O. were neat too.  These are kind of eye candy, they're like a train set or something so it's not real easy to come to terms with vintage audio being second best to SACD Home Theater, many owners just want to listen to old stereo as it looks so much better.  Home Theater systems are worth a listen.  Two glasses of beer might remind us of some output tubes - but which is better?  Then there's a show "Overstallin" where old U.S. cars are rebuilt as street rods.  Now just say, at the end, there was a choice of the new stylish built Hot Rod (and Ralph Nader death trap), or restored German Super-Car, what would they prefer?  -That's about even keel with Home Theater against tube audio vintage set-ups.  Put it another way, compare them both on the race track - totally rebuilt BMW M5 against hero builder team '57 Chevy Street.  Well with 55 m.p.h. top speed, the gas guzzler will do just nicely Thank you; have a nice day!

SACD Home Cinema engineers have done a great job and affordable, 'better than tube stereo systems' are available in stores today at a very reasonable cost!  How do you want to spend your precious spare time?  Are you someone like the protagonist in H G Wells' book "The Time Machine"?  If so you can listen to vintage stereo all day, and do nothing else!  Who is so lucky?  -The retired Bank Manager?  With Home Theater you'll soon be lost in the world on-screen, not so much amazed at vintage stereo, as in the program being broadcast or reproduced from a video source.

45 watts power handling means a speaker is good for 20 watts RMS, but with a difference.  What volume position do your present speakers stop working at?  Not zero, they go silent above zero, maybe at position 1 on the scale?  The old Hi-End speakers are much better than that and loud as they are at 1 watt and far too loud for you - they can get louder yet - but only with an amplifier putting out 20 Hi-End watts!  Way too expensive for most people to buy and today, they'll still go beyond most budgets, even the Leak TL12 is the best sounding of all Leaks though the least powerful!  To get a tube amplifier to do 20 Hi-End watts is going to cost you a great deal of money!  Speakers didn't have power handling then but were loud for a few watts put in, high power amplifiers were designed for an 'effortless' few watts out.  So a 75 watt REALISTIC STA-2000 receiver idled at 0.1 watt and a 100 watt Peter Walker QUAD 405 did Class A up to 5 watts!  But modern speakers are not so sensitive and the power being handled by SACD Home Cinema speakers will not seem loud - until you try to talk!  You can't!  It's too dern loud!  So much for the idea that Whisper 2000 has a role to play with modern TV, in keeping it quiet.  In a Sony Specialist Store you won't care about watts, just about experiencing one of these systems with HD satellite viewing! 

 'Old tech' baffle slot let speaker's back wave increase SPL

See Coral  Electro voice EV+  Jensen speakers  Altec  Goodmans  University  Utah  

In the days of SACD all drivers have equal importance, the hiss that goes along with a bass note is what creates its 'Live' presence.  Some folks though, still buy the KSN 1165 for their custom tweeters, the crossover frequency can be made very high, sometimes above 20KHz, it's all that is needed to create their 'Live' quality - and that's above what we can hear!  The secret behind the case for SACD can be traced to a scientist called Fourier who found that sound travels as a whole form.  For Hi-Fi geeks, even sounds above what we can hear have to be present in the reproduced form.  The Japanese electronics giant, Pioneer, made a CD player to artificially add SACD sounds to plain old style Compact Discs!  It's an approach that hasn't gotten everybody convinced yet as some Hi-Fi buffs go to extraordinary lengths, putting bits of paper under the feet of their equipment!  Another widget absorbs energy from the top panel of a speaker's enclosure and there are other ways to tweak better performance out of Audiophile orientated systems.  Silver speaker wire is good for full range drivers, just incredible by compare!

Coming back to where we started out, the tweeter in a GLL IC 120 is another widget, real strange it's been called a 'milk bottle top'.  The changing flux in the main speaker drives the widget with no power of its own.  Back in the days of E.M.I. speakers, certain models had what was called 'a parasitic tweeter' but the GLL Imagio speakers' Inductive Coupled Technology, tweeters, seem much more so!  Maybe all the best names had been tried in the far distant past - a bit like Ebay member names!