Floorstanding loudspeakers — Tannoy STIRLING GR-OW

The STIRLING GR-OW is the entry floorstander of the Tannoy Prestige GR range, which continues with the Turnberry GR, Kensington GR, Canterbury GR and Westminster Royal GR. Tannoy calls it a compact floorstanding design, supplied in oiled real walnut veneer with solid walnut trim and edging. Its Gold Reference Dual Concentric driver traces its lineage to the 1967 Monitor Gold, and the cabinet is hand-built from plywood using traditional joinery with machined metal trim.

Key specs that matter

A 10-inch driver combines a treated paper pulp cone, held by an HE twin roll surround in impregnated fabric, and a 42 mm voice coil wound on edge, around a coaxial 25 mm aluminium-magnesium alloy dome tweeter, also edge wound, loaded by a Tulip WaveGuide. Tannoy rates the response at 39 Hz to 46 kHz (-6 dB) and sensitivity at 91 dB (2.83 V at 1 m). Nominal impedance is 8 ohm with a 5 ohm minimum. Continuous power handling is 85 W RMS and peak handling is 340 W, with 20 to 170 W RMS recommended. Dispersion is 90 degrees conical. The dual distributed port enclosure has a volume of 85 litres and measures 850 x 397 x 368 mm.

Engineering and use context

The crossover is bi-wired, hard-wired, passive and low loss, with 2nd order low pass and 2nd order high pass filters meeting at 1.8 kHz. For GR it received upgraded components, including capacitors built to a Tannoy specification. An adjustable HF control shelves the output by up to 3 dB over the band from 1.8 kHz to 46 kHz. The cabinet is internally cross braced and heavily damped. Tannoy designs and builds its Prestige cabinets at its factory in Coatbridge near Glasgow, which has been its base since 1978, and each model comes with matching woven grille cloth and a Prestige wood wax for maintaining the oiled finish. The binding posts sit on an acrylic glass terminal panel introduced for Prestige GR for its damping and dielectric properties. Tannoy says engineering for the GR upgrade took several years and used technology from its Kingdom Royal.

Pairing

The benign impedance minimum and good sensitivity allow low powered amplifiers to be used, and the bi-wire terminals take two separate cable runs.

Alternatives

The Tannoy Kensington GR is a larger Prestige GR floorstander with an Alnico 10-inch Dual Concentric driver and a 105 litre cabinet.