Floorstanding loudspeakers — Tannoy KENSINGTON GR-OW

The KENSINGTON GR-OW belongs to the Prestige GR line of Tannoy floorstanders and is finished in oiled walnut veneer. Tannoy describes its 10-inch Gold Reference Dual Concentric driver as the top 10-inch unit in the range, identified by a PepperPot WaveGuide and powered by Alnico magnets, in a cabinet of walnut veneered plywood with solid walnut trim.

Key specs that matter

The bass section has a 250 mm cone of paper pulp infused with fibres to raise rigidity, held by a twin roll surround of impregnated fabric, with a 52 mm round wire voice coil. At its centre sits a compression driver with a heat-treated 52 mm aluminium-magnesium alloy dome. Tannoy rates the response at 29 Hz to 27 kHz (-6 dB), sensitivity at 93 dB (2.83 V at 1 m) and impedance at 8 ohm nominal with a 5 ohm minimum. Power handling is 125 W RMS continuous and 500 W peak, with 20 to 250 W per channel recommended. Dispersion is 90 degrees conical. The distributed port cabinet holds 105 litres and measures 1100 x 406 x 338 mm.

Engineering and use context

Tannoy builds the filter network as a low loss passive circuit, hard-wired and bi-wired, with time compensation, second order slopes on both sections and a crossover point of 1.1 kHz. It uses custom ICW ClarityCap MR capacitors with PCOCC copper conductors, laminated core inductors with low losses plus thick film resistors, and the whole assembled board is Deep Cryogenically Treated. The cabinet combines particle board with an 18 mm high density birch ply baffle and rear panel, internally cross braced and heavily damped, with walnut inlays on the front. A machined metal high power switch gives two treble adjustments, a +/-3 dB shelf from 1.1 kHz to 27 kHz and a slope of +2 to -6 dB per octave from 5 kHz to 27 kHz. The terminal panel is acrylic glass fitted with WBT NextGen WBT-0703 binding posts, and a grille and Prestige wood wax are supplied. All Prestige cabinets are designed and built at the Tannoy factory in Coatbridge near Glasgow. The GR series trim carries the original Tannoy lightning strike logo, and Tannoy says the GR upgrade draws on technology developed for its Kingdom Royal.

Pairing

The high sensitivity and benign minimum impedance make modest amplifiers usable, and since the terminals are split for bi-wiring, the low and high frequency halves can each get their own cable pair or their own amplifier channel.

Alternatives

The Tannoy Stirling GR is the entry floorstander of the Prestige GR series, with a 10-inch Dual Concentric driver in an 85 litre cabinet.