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In June 2012 we were contacted by a customer in Japan who had bought a used pair of our Unicorn Mk I loudspeakers. These were 14 years old at the time and long out of production. This model used one titanium diaphragm DDD driver to cover the entire range from 21,500Hz to 55Hz. In all other German Physiks loudspeakers, the DDD driver is rolled off at around 200Hz and the bass is handled by one or more conventional woofers. This is because the stiffness of the DDD driver’s surround limits the diaphragm excursion, thereby limiting the low bass output. On the Unicorn Mk I, the DDD driver was coupled to a horn system that extended the low-end response down to 55Hz. On the current Unicorn Mk II, which uses a carbon fibre DDD driver, the bass is extended to 40Hz. A more detailed explanation of the Unicorn horn design may be found in Newsletter number 5.
The original titanium DDD drivers were quite fragile and those on this customer’s Unicorns had sustained some minor dents in the diaphragm. While they still played perfectly well, they looked unsightly. The customer wanted to restore his loudspeakers to their original condition, so he ordered a pair of new drivers. This was not a problem, as we can repair or provide a replacement for any DDD driver we have ever made.
About a month after these had been shipped the customer got back in touch. He was extremely pleased with how his restored Unicorns sounded. The DDD drivers we shipped to him were an improved version of those originally fitted and they sounded noticeably better. Our customer turned out to be a very enthusiastic audiophile who ran an audiophile group in Tokyo. He had a lot of equally enthusiastic audiophile friends and had invited a number of them around to listen to his “new” loudspeakers. Several liked what they heard so much, that they wanted Unicorns for their own systems.
A discussion followed with our customer and he ordered six pairs of the Unicorn Mk I for his friends. Building a product that was long out of production posed a few challenges, but we got there. The picture above shows one of the “new” Unicorn Mk Is in the owner’s home. The box on the floor is a Studer D730 CD player. Click here to visit the Unicorn Mk II web page.
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