On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 21:00:02 +0000, Nick Gorham
wrote:

Fleetie wrote:

I would be interested to know what the ESL-57s sold for (* 2 for a pair)
back when they were a current model, and what that'd be "in real terms"
today. I suppose they'd be pretty expensive, but that's a guess.

And the point of that guess is ?

To establish a reference against coonventional speakers, I guess.

According to my handy-dandy Hi-Fi Choice from 1976, they sold for £276
plus VAT. In comparison, the Yamaha NS1000M (which I owned in the late
'70s) was £444, the Spendor BC1 was £205.80, the Chartwell LS3/5a was
£125, the KEF 104aB was £185, and the Tannoy Cheviot (with 12"
dual-concentric driver) was £254.

If you compare that to modern equivalents, I guess the '57 would sell
for about £1500-2000 today, which may put it into context for you. I'd
forgotten how horribly expensive the Yammy was in those days - in 1976
that was about a month's take-home pay for me as an electronics
engineer at Marconi! That's probably a better general benchmark for
what things really cost - how many weeks do you have to work to make
the price of the speaker?

I would be interested to hear the squawky abominations again just to confirm
my suspicions that they're overrated and ugly antiques. They ought to be
"cheap as chips", apart MAYBE from the fact that they are undeniably a
milestone in hi-fi.

I agree with Stew, thay have been improved on, I prefer the next model
myself, and I haven't heard the current ones enough to have a opinion.
But one thing I have never heard a electostatic do is make any noise
that could be described as a "squawk", unless maybe its being used to
play a BBC sound effect record :-)

Well, to my ears, the '57s do 'squawk' in the sense that the midband
is dominant, and they have horrible comb-filter peaks and troughs due
to the panel arrangement, but they were of course a landmark in sheer
clartity, in an era when 'dead' cabinets and low-resonance drivers
didn't really exist. Things are different now, vide the B&W Nautilus
series and many others.
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering