Elipson 402 Tribute speakers
The French have always been a bit more outgoing when it comes to design, you only have to look at the Citroen DS or the creations of Philippe Starck to see that imagination thrives as well as cuisine in that part of the globe. The same is true of audio gear, the Elipson 402 was originally created in 1966 as part of a range that included several distinctly curvy and organic looking speakers. When AV Industry bought the brand they inherited a lot of those stylish designs and promised to put some in production, the 402 Tribute is not the first, it was preceded by the BS50 tribute, another sphere but with upward firing drivers and a large reflector above them.
The name 402 comes from the 40cm diameter of the spherical cabinet and the fact that it has two drivers, 40cm doesn’t sound all that big but this is a decent sized loudspeaker that runs a 165mm (6.5 inch) main driver and weighs a respectable 15kg. It’s totally spherical shape means that you can’t put it on a regular stand or (large) bookshelf and it is supplied with a short cradle stand made out of transparent acrylic that brings it up to 54cm high on the floor. There is also a taller 88cm stand available made of the same material that brings it up to a more conventional height for a standmount speaker.
The drivers have been made for this project by French company Supravox which has been building field coil drivers for longer than most and created drivers for the original 402. They worked with Elipson to develop the exponentially curved paper cone mid/bass unit and the 29mm dome tweeter hidden beneath the square grille at the top of the 402 Tribute. The tweeter has its own, damped chamber behind the dome with the aim of avoiding reflections hitting the back of the driver. The shape of the grille suggests a planar drive unit but this would appear to be a style choice based on the shape of the housing.
In many ways this curved cabinet with separate tweeter housing looks like it inspired Bowers & Wilkins with their separate tweeter pod on a curved midrange cabinet in designs like the 802. It makes sense to avoid sharp edges around a driver because these cause diffraction when the sound wave hits the edge of the box which can undermine imaging, curved cabinets don’t do this and have been popular in the high end for many years but the 402 could well have been the first example.
The sphere is made out of resin and silica (sand) so it is heavy and inert. The shape of the 402 Tribute on the inside is also spherical which means that there are no parallel sides for sound to bounce across as is the case with rectilinear cabinets. This may look like an exercise in styling but there is some strong acoustic theory behind it. There is a port beneath the single pair of terminals on the rear, but that’s about the most conventional thing about it. The crossover is a high quality affair that combines Jantzen components with Axon cabling, the combination of ‘box’ and drivers resulting in a generous 90dB at 8 Ohms load that almost any amplifier will drive.
Sound quality
Setting up the 402 Tributes involves setting each one in the cradle atop the acrylic stands and orienting them so that the driver sits at the midpoint between two of the stand’s arms, as well as making sure that the top is level. They could be angled up or down of course and if using the small stands provided in the box a bit of upward angling would be a necessity but on the tall stands I found it handy to place a round spirit level on top to get them level in all planes.
Hooking up my Moor Amps Angel 6 amplifier and playing the Johan Lindvall Trio album End proved to the a very enjoyable experience, the 402 Tributes creating a spacious soundstage populated by instruments with body and substance and a musical flow that felt effortless. This is typical of the bigger Elipson speakers in my experience, they are revealing yet relaxed and, in this case, with decent bass girth on Patti Smith’s About a Boy which came through in powerful style with lots of electric atmosphere. I have encountered a more open sound but usually from speakers with a brighter mid and top, here there is good scale and the intensity of the performance is very clear.
Shenandoah by Bill Frisell does escape the boxes well though, which suggests that the 402 Tributes are not prone to exaggeration but tell you what is on the recording rather than giving a more sparkly rendition of it. This live recording (East/West) is very good and that much is patently clear, that and the impressive dynamic capabilities of this speaker, a result no doubt of their high sensitivity which is apparently a Supravox signature. It certainly made me appreciate just what a master of the guitar Frisell is along with the fact that he can interpret standards with so much imagination and flare. Turning it up only makes the sound better, there is no sense of compression or of room reflections getting in the way of the sound, the latter in part due to the absence of any upper midrange peakiness in the response one suspects.
There is plenty of shine when its required, the bells and percussion on Bugge Wesseltoft’s track Render from Am Arebeing open and realistic in tone, and doing so over heavy guitar and synth that bursts out of the white 402 Tributes in highly engaging fashion. At this point I substituted a Soulnote A1 integrated for the Townshend Allegri Reference preamp and Moor Amps pairing, this is a bright and fast sounding amp with a useful 80 watts on tap. This brought out the speed which the Elipsons are capable of as well as a more upbeat, pacy delivery, essentially revealing that these speakers will let you know a lot about the partnering amplifier. Or to put it another way, the apparently mellow sound initially encountered was as much to do with the amplifiers as the speakers. So much so that I felt the need to toe them out a little so that the drivers weren’t directly facing the listening seat.
I played a couple of new (to me) records from International Anthem, Jeff Parker’s The Way Out of Easy and Makaya McCraven’s In The Moment, both are live recordings but the latter is 10 years older and not as transparent sounding, the 402 Tributes make this much clear but also that it images rather better and is clearly compressed. The Parker on the other hand sounds as immediate and natural as you might expect of a simple recording made on a portable Nagra tape recorder, if you enjoy long form mellow improv it comes highly recommended.
For my tastes the warmer sound of the (notably more pricey) pre/power amps was the more fruitful with the revealing 402 Tributes, this pairing made it possible to play all manner of music without any sense of forwardness in the sound. I thoroughly enjoyed the pagan sawing and baying of fiddles on the Erland Apneseth’s recent album Song Over Støv, this has oodles of texture and fabulous tone that the Elipsons rendered with an even handedness that encouraged more tweaking of the volume control.
Conclusion
There is clearly something to be said for a speaker cabinet that has the intrinsic strength of a sphere and which is made of materials that do not resonate as obviously as wood, the original 402 was made of gypsum which was probably good too if heavier and not easy to give the high standard of finish seen in its tribute act.
I initially thought that the Elipson 402 Tribute was a cool marketing ploy, the resurrection of a classic model from the archives that would garner some publicity but not come to much by the standards of modern loudspeakers. It turns out that the fundamental advantages of the design coupled with modern construction and fully evolved drivers make it a whole lot more than that, this is a speaker that has both style and substance, if you like the looks there isn’t much real competition at the price.