UHF No 70 (Net).indd - Ultra High Fidelity Magazine

Wilson Benesch Curve
We recall hearing a pair of
Wilson Benesch speakers
some years ago at the
Montreal show, and it
was the sort of experience that one talks
about after: “Have you heard the…”
This British company was originally
known for turntables, not speakers. One
aspect of its turntables that had grabbed
everyone’s attention was the tone arm.
It wasn’t steel, or aluminum, or even
titanium, it was made from carbon fi bre.
Truth to tell, Wilson Benesch was not
alone in having fi gured out the advantages
of carbon.
Carbon is of course the building
block of terrestrial life. It can also take
on other forms, from coal to diamonds.
It offers a rich portfolio of attractive
qualities. It is light (in the sense that for
a given volume it has low mass), it can
be made very rigid despite its low mass,
and it is self-damping (it will not store
energy for a long period, nor release it
at audible frequencies).
And carbon fi bre is fi nding its way
into a lot of modern products. Race cars
use carbon fi bre parts, as do some road
cars, notably the Jaguar XKR. Motorcycle
panels and entire bicycle frames
can be made of carbon. So are photo
tripods, fishing rods, sailing masts,
flutes, violin bows, pens and battery
plates. The tail of the Airbus A380 is
made from carbon fi bre, and there is a
radar-proof carbon stealth yacht on the
drawing boards. Rumors have it Apple
will make the next Mac PowerBook from
Diamonds are made
from carbon. So are
these loudspeakers.
the stuff. Architect Peter Testa even
wants to build an entire skyscraper from
carbon fi bre.
Of course the material has been
incorporated into high end audio products
too. Tone arms aside, a number
of manufacturers use woofer cones of
woven carbon fi bres, including another
speaker reviewed in this issue. And you’ll
recall that Van den Hul brought out an
entire line or audio cables using carbon
fi bre instead of metal.
The Wilson Benesch Curve uses
this miracle material in two ways. Both
its midrange driver and its woofer have
cones made of woven carbon fi bre. The
two drivers are the same diameter,
17 mm, but the weave is coarser on the
woofer than on the midrange. And then
the cabinet’s structure is shaped from a
carbon fi bre matrix imbedded in epoxy.
In this composite form, it is fi ve times
stronger than steel, weight for weight.
The Curve’s tweeter uses a silk dome,
with a 2nd order crossover between it
and the midrange. A gentler fi rst-order
crossover separates woofer and midrange.
Crossover frequencies are not
stated. The crossover uses polypropylene
capacitors, and air-core inductors that
are not prone to saturation.
The speaker is certainly handsome.
It might be easy to tip over were it not
for the cast aluminum base which is permanently
fastened to the speaker body.
The spikes themselves are gorgeously
machined, with knurled knobs to make
them easy to adjust from the top. The
locking nuts can then be tightened with
the supplied wrench.
Because the Curves are of manageable
size, it seemed possible to try them
within the reduced confi nes of our Alpha
room, and that’s what we did fi rst.
We began with one of our favorite
test LPs, William Walton’s Façade, and
we wondered whether we might have
made a mistake bringing the Curves
here. The piccolo in the introduction
was shrill, but we’ve learned to tolerate
that, at least if what follows is worth
waiting for. And it was…to an extent.
The amount of detail the Curves dug out
was impressive, and Walton’s intricate
counterpoints came out beautifully. So
why weren’t we happy? “The impression
it leaves me,” said Albert, “was that they
ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine 45
Listening Room