Our Favourite Classic Speakers - #1 Allison Six

This a new series we are going to run ...particular loudspeaker gems from our last 30 years in the Hifi industry. Not in any particular order, just as they come to mind.

#1 The Allison Six / CD6

Allison CD6

 Allison were an American manufacturer formed in the early 70s and were known for quite quirky designs, they didn't make much of an impression in the UK initially, some of the models were quite odd looking and the larger versions were renowned for being difficult to drive.

Roy Allison started out at Acoustic Research and you can see similarities in the use of drivers ...both used inverted paper cone treble units, which although not exactly the same did use very similar design principles.The bass units too, were almost identical.

Acoustic Research Treble Unit

Allison treble unit 

The Allison 6 (and later Allison CD6) were the smallest and cheapest models, roughly 12 inches cubed they seemed to break a lot of rules ... the treble was on the front and the bass unit on the top. Even their cuboid cabinet shouldn't have worked, equal dimensions always throw up all sorts of acoustic issues. But actually the Six was quite astonishing, huge soundstage and almost unnerving bass extension that gave a very realistic dynamic to recordings... they needed a high mass stand, lots of space around them and against convention again, worked better seated quite low, perhaps on a 12-15 inch stand, so you looked down on them.

Quite rare secondhand now as most suffered from denaturing of the bass unit surround, which is quite common on 70s era designs ... if you find a set, reconing is fairly straight forward and well worth doing.