More Information about Keesonics 701A vintage loudspeakers
I have owned and used these continuously since 1982, when I auditioned them in Peter Keeley's living room, comparing them with the "golden sample" pair of 701A speakers he had permanently connected to his hifi system.
Peter was the founder and designer of Keesonics and was especially proud of the 701A as he spent so much time perfecting the design, going through no less than fourteen bass cone profiles in their development to reduce any resonances. His design idiom was to make the speaker reproduce exactly what came into the rear terminals.
The built-in stands are open backed and foam filled to suppress any cabinet resonances, according to Peter's description.
The screen printing says "701B" although Peter always referred to these as 701A. Maybe he had an update in mind that never materialised. Keesonics went bankrupt after Boots suddenly stopped buying his smaller domestic speakers for their hifi systems, which incidentally won a design centre award for the speakers.
These are more like reference speakers in that they can faithfully reproduce awful source material and subsequently sound awful - an example is the ubiquitous BBC Top of The Pops compilations that are quite unpleasant to listen to with their lack of bass, HF and compression. However when fed with a really good source they are quite stunning - an example is The Rolling Stones SACD of Little Red Rooster, you can tell that the strings on the slide guitar are new.
These were one of the few speakers I heard that reproduced classical strings that sounded like individual instruments rather than a unified mushy string sound.
They have small marks due to household use for nearly forty years, but no damage. They work fine and can be demonstarted to interested buyers. They have a recent covering of grey grille cloth but I will supply the original brown cloth covers that I have kept safely bagged.
Collection is from Tadworth, Surrey.
Sorry but the pictures have rotated 90 degrees in the advert, and I can't find a way to alter this!