Hey, we couldn't have scripted a more outrageous tale, one which rivals
Meanwhile, sometime last year, it was decided that we would mark the passage of time with a display of vintage hi-fi equipment, a mouthwatering collection of products which reflect the evolution of the audio industry since 1956. Independent of the celebrations, we'd been planning to relaunch 'The Anachrophile' and I had been involved in refurbishing my own hi-fi museum, so the projects went hand in hand. Mike Poynter at Station Sounds had already started work on my collection of vintage hi-fi equipment, when I suddenly found myself the owner of another pair of Quad IIs, a bunch of Quad preamps and a pair of the original ESLs. (See the feature in the Classic Hi-Fi Supplement.) Mike told me that he could restore whatever I gave him, but the speakers really should go back to Quad.
And then it happened: Quad was sold to the Verity Group. The turmoil which ensued, the rumours, the gossip on the Internet, the paranoia among collectors - it circled the globe and the usual batch of doomsayers heralded the end of Quad before even giving Verity (parent company of Mission, Wharfedale and other British brands) a chance to announce its intentions. So, to test the waters, I loaded up my car with old gear and headed Cambridgeward, ducking the flying bullshit to learn first-hand whether or not Quad's legendary service department had survived the transition.
Just when the idea hit me I can't say, especially since it was long rumoured that various retailers, distributors and customers had been begging Quad to revive the valve products for years and the answer was always a resounding, "No." I figured it was a lost cause, but I also knew that if it could be pulled off,
So then I withdrew and waited for the finished product. Right on cue, reality intervened, strongly enough to make me fearful that the project might not go beyond that lunch. The original ESLs, I was told, couldn't be brought back, particularly since ICI had stopped producing certain materials needed in its manufacture (again, see the supplement). Then, the pre-amp fell by the wayside, Quad's engineers agreeing with audiophiles the world over that the original valve pre-amp hadn't worn quite as well, by current standards, as the power amplifiers. But the power amps themselves? They were given the go-ahead, with utter secrecy incorporated into the plan to protect the surprise value of re-launch. And of our June 1996 cover...
Under the auspices of Nigel Simms (?) and Ross Walker, the prototype Celebration Quad II Power Amplifier was hand-assembled by a team including David Timms and Roger Hill. It was over 25 years since the last of the original 100,000 Quad IIs were produced. No tooling survived, the correct valves were scarce (the KT66 was long gone in its original form) and none of the staff from that era still worked at Quad. Even the exact paint was no longer in production. And the great Peter Walker himself was enjoying his retirement.
Even so, given the commotion caused by a change in ownership and the need to re-establish Quad's links with the past, the project survived. Mission's Dave Marchant - surely the hero in this saga - nearly drove himself to drink co-ordinating everything, Quad staffers stopped at nothing to source the hard-to-find parts. Transformers were hand-wound. New metalwork was fashioned. Valve substitutes were evaluated and tested, the rare GZ32s and the even rarer KT66s replaced with the finest of modern equivalents. And less than 100 days after that momentous lunch, the Celebration Quad II was completed.
Albeit in pre-pre-pre-pre-production form.
Lest for a moment your nostrils suggest that you detect a rodent, note that the only details still to be finalised at the time of writing are primarily cosmetic. What you see in these photos is pretty much what you'll get: brand-new Quad IIs. Only they're probably better than the originals because they're entirely reworked, hand-built and, well,
Yes, it's a dead-ringer for the original, although the new nameplates will be fashioned from brass rather than plastic. The old speaker sockets, which only accepted banana plugs, have been replaced with multi-way binding posts of the highest quality. Those ornery Jones plugs, which carried the signal and the on/off switching from the pre-amp, have been replaced with gold-plated phono sockets and a separate on/off switch. By doing so, the Quad II has been rendered more easily useable with all sorts of pre-amplifiers.
Then there are the valves themselves. You don't have to 'phone that many restorers to find that proper KT66s are about as common as Bugatti camshafts, Rolex Bubbleback winding crowns or Leica 5cm viewfinders. The last 'new old stock' pair I heard about had a price tag more in keeping with a pair of pre-war Western Electric 300Bs. What Quad is fitting to the Celebration is labelled a 7581A, not unsurprisingly listed in the
The rest of the tube complement? The GZ32 is now a GZ34, while the EF86s remain unchanged. Again, to silence the naysayers, for a full appreciation of Quad's latest achievement I replaced all of the new valves of the Celebration version with the best KT66s out of my old Quad IIs and the GZ34s with GZ32s. And I could only detect one consistently unmistakable, repeatable change. It's inescapable but I must report: the new output tubes are less powerful than original KT66s, due no doubt to less generous plate dimensions. But not to worry: I was informed by David Timms that the Quad engineering squad still had some final tweaking to perform, so the power output might increase to the old levels. But power wasn't what concerned me so much as sound quality, especially considering that the drop in wattage wasn't debilitating. (The most vivid way to illustrate the power loss is like this: with the old Quad II on the left channel and a Celebration on the right, and the system fed with a mono signal through the McIntosh C22 pre-amp, I had to turn the balance control to just past one o'clock to centre the image.)
Before going any further, a word about the original Quad IIs I used for the comparison. From a half-dozen I owned, two were beyond hope but provided some parts. The remaining quartet was refurbished by Mike Poynter, for my money the best vintage hi-fi restorer in the UK. What appealed to me about Mike was his purism: he restores everything to its original spec rather than perform any hotrodding. I tell you this only to assure you that I compared new with genuine old, the latter being the best standard examples imaginable rather than some warped and/or bastardised rebuild. And the findings, when new was compared to old, were beyond encouraging. They reaffirmed everything that the cognescenti know about Peter Walker: he
After compensating for level differences with my trusty digital SPL meter from Radio Shack (pester your local Tandy for US catalogue number 33-2055) and soliciting a second opinion from SH, the 'new' Quad II was shown to have lost some of the excess warmth and 'rosiness' which makes the old Quad II so loveable. But it demonstrated far better transparency and speed, making it that much more useable in 1990s terms and for 1990s listeners. As David Timms pointed out, many of the materials are superior by virtue of their newness, and the transformers were wound in march of 1996 whereas the transformers in my old Quads dated from the days when the Beatles played the cavern. And that's in addition to the different tubes. Is it any surprise it sounded, well 'newer'?
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Only I didn't use it entirely as a contemporary device. I played the schizo and fed it a CD signal via the Marantz CD-12/DA-12, first into the Air Tight passive ATL-10A pre-amp and then the McIntosh C22 reissue. Speakers? What else could it be but the completely refurbished Quad ESLs? I knew, from experience with older Quad IIs, that they could drive LS3/5As as if designed for the job, but that wasn't the point. In order to make this time travel 100 percent valid, it was only proper that the amplifier be used with the speaker it was meant to complement back in the 1950s.
God bless DCC: the gold CD of
If you want to be truly anal about it, it's arguable that the Celebration is a tad faster, a touch lighter, a shade more detailed. But the differences are more down to the choice of glassware than anything that might have been done in the name of modernisation. And yet all of this is academic, because - unlike the McIntosh or Marantz reissues which address the question of rarity - there is no shortage of used Quad IIs in good condition for relatively low prices for those who just can't believe that the reissued Quad II is so, so right. Which brings us to the reality of putting back into production a component which has been history for a quarter century.
Quad knows its market well enough to recognie that only two types of customers will buy the Celebration instead of a decent pair of originals: (1) insane collectors who'll vacuum-pack their sets, stick 'em on the mantlepiece and never use 'em, and (2) enlightened collectors who'll cherish the Celebrations for what they are but won't be afraid to use them. And it's even money that all of these guys already own original Quad IIs. So Quad has, after much deliberation, decided on the following policy:
To be sold only in numbered pairs, the Celebration Quad IIs will be offered in the original grey, or gold-plated for an extra fee. Other finishes might be offered for an extra charge. The Celebration Quad IIs will be supplied in very special packaging; a lavish wooden case has been considered, while I rather like the idea of leather suitcases to match the Frank Sinatra Reprise-era box set. Each set will come with a certificate signed by Peter Walker. Only 600 pairs will be made, and that's it. Quad is still working on the price as we go to press, but they're expecting a pair of Celebration Quad IIs to sell for something not unadjacent to 6000. Whether or not this represents good value is as daft a question as whether or not a reproduction Mk II Jaguar is worth 40,000-plus. The people who want and can afford this audio
And you can expect riots in the Akihabara district of Tokyo when the Japanese allocation is exhausted.
