news
Richter
Richter Excalibur S6SE & the new black
Australia’s Richter has been busy in the design room to celebrate its 35th anniversary, and the results are now announced — two Series 6 ‘Special Editions’, one of which is an entirely new range-topping floorstanding speaker design, the Excalibur.
“We’ve had this bigger floorstanding project on the table for a number of years now, ” Richter’s Managing Director Brian Rodgers tells us. “Many times we were asked, is there going to be a larger floorstanding speaker — a Series 6 Dragon? But I wasn’t interested in a Series 6 Dragon, and nor was Martin [Dr Martin Gosnell, chief designer]. In the Mk V Series we’d had too many close floorstanding models, with a Wizard, a Harlequin and a Dragon: they cannibalised each other a bit. Martin wanted to do something even better, and so after many discussions, many design meetings and many drawings — as well as being able to get the new drivers built to deliver the vision — we settled on the new design for the larger floorstanding speaker.”
Cutting edge
The new larger and more heavily-woofered speaker resurrects a name not used by Richter since the 1990s — ‘Excalibur’.
“It seemed fitting, since it’s just over 25 years since the last Excalibur, ” says Brian Rodgers. The Excalibur was the biggest production Richter speaker back in 1996 — “although there were other models that never really went to production, like the Secret Weapon, ” notes Rodgers.
The Excaliburs stand 115cm high on their S6 stabilisers, their volume some 28% greater than the Wizards which, together with the additional drivers, should significantly extend the Excalibur’s bass performance, especially as the new ‘Special Edition Black’ Excaliburs boast improved drivers over the standard Series 6 range: a new more efficient and more sensitive 25mm soft-dome tweeter, and newly revised 165mm (6½-inch) SE drivers.
“They use the same cone material as those on the rest of the Series 6, but everything else about the new driver is different, ” says Rodgers of the new SE drivers. “We’ve got bigger voice coils — about 1.2-inch over 1-inch: you don’t want it too big because it
