The On-Going Story Of The Original QUAD Electrostatic Loudspeaker

The odd-looking QUAD ESL loudspeakers were first introduced in 1957. So why after 62 years are they still appearing at audio shows, and why do they still have such a following?

There were two rooms at this year’s Capital Audiofest that featured rebuilt or reimagined QUAD ESLs. Which brings me to another question, why are so many people all over the world restoring them?

QUADs were hugely popular in the mono age, but it was stereo that brought them from very good to great. Having two speakers, you could play them louder, and they produced a soundstage that was like nothing that had ever been heard before.

My History with QUADs

I’m not going to spend the time to write about the history of QUADs. There are plenty of good articles about them on the internet. If you really want the full story with pictures and such, Ken Kessler did a beautiful book called QUAD: The Closest Approach. It is out of print, but you can pick it up used for somewhere between $75 and $100.

I will tell you a little about my history with QUADs. I fell in love with the sound of QUAD ESLs when I was 17, and I have loved them ever since. Back in 2006 when I reviewed the AudioNote AN-E SE loudspeakers for Dagogo, I wrote:

“There are a lot of speakers that I have liked and owned: Advent, Altec, Celestion, Gershman, Infinity, KEF, Klipsch, Spender, Spica, and Vandersteen. There were many others that came home with me for evaluation, but there’s only one that I wish I had never gotten rid of, the QUAD ESLs. I spent a lot of time trying to find a speaker with the strengths of the QUADs and Klipschs but without their shortcomings. I got off course for a few years and wandered into the land of soundstage and pinpoint imaging.”

In 1971, I was a 17-year-old freshman at Baylor University. I lived in Kokernot Hall (yes, it was a men’s dorm back then). I thought I had a great stereo for a dorm room; a Kenwood receiver, an AR turntable and a pair of KLH 17s. At the time I had never heard of an audiophile or of an English audio company named QUAD. The only stereo magazines I read were Audio, High Fidelity, and Stereo Review, which were all about measurements and build quality.

Things were about to change though. There were three stereo stores in Waco, TX, and I began to hang out at all three. The big change though came when someone asked me if I had met the guy on our floor with the really weird-looking stereo. This was how I met Ken Askew who had a pair of QUAD ESLs with Marantz electronics and a Thorens TD 125 with a Rabco tonearm. Some of you have met Ken, and know who I am talking about.

The first time I heard the QUADS was in a dorm room with the speakers in front of one bed with us sitting on the other bed listening. The first album we put on was Cat Steven’s Teaser and the Firecat and when the song “Bitter Blue” and the second guitar riff came in on the left channel, I knew I had to own a pair of these one day.

During the next year, I saved enough to buy a pair of used QUAD ESLs and moved out of the dorm. I ended up living with the QUADs from the time I was 18 until my late 20s (some of that time with stacked QUADs). My expectations of what an audio system should sound like grew out of the sound of the original QUAD ESLs.

Eventually, I graduated and got married, and we had to move. The stacked QUADs were too big and, to be honest, they needed some work. So, I sold my system, and we moved to a very small house in Alabama, where after a few years we had two sons. We ended up with a Linn/Naim system with a pair of tiny Linn Kan speakers.

QUADS at Capital Audiofest

Well enough ancient history, let’s move on to my latest QUAD ESL encounter. Becky and I were wandering the halls of this year’s Capital Audiofest hearing one great system after another. And by the way, this show had more great sound than I have ever heard at an audio show.

We had just been listening to a couple of rooms with speakers that cost as much as or more than a quarter of a million dollars, and honestly, we were blown away. So when we sat down in Robin Wyatt’s room (Robyatt Audio and Sound Advice), I was shocked. There were Kent McCollum’s restored QUAD ESL 57 loudspeakers driven by the Butler Audio Monad monoblocks. I had been wanting to hear this system Robin had put together, but nothing could have prepared me for how great this room sounded. We reviewed this room here.

First, with my past history with QUAD ESLs on their three little feet or on the homemade stands that I made for my stacked QUADs, I had no idea QUADs could look so nice. Of course, QUAD ESLs are all about their sound and not their looks.

But I really wasn’t prepared for their sound. No, they didn’t blow me away. Instead, they seduced me into relaxing and thinking about the music and not the sound. When Robin put on what he said was the greatest LP of all time, Chad’s 45 rpm remaster of Duke Ellington’s Masterpieces, I was overcome with emotion. I love this LP and this music and was drawn into the performance in a way that I had never been before.

When we got home from the show, I couldn’t stop thinking about the sound of that room. After a week I gave in, and I bought the show pair. No, I didn’t ask for them for review. I just bought them. I also worked out with Robin to review the Butler Audio Monad amplifiers.

So, in the next couple of months, I will review the speakers and then the monoblocks. I can tell you now that the Quads sound fantastic with the PureAudio One Integrated Amp!