To celebrate the company’s 25th anniversary, Focal-JMlab has produced three new special specification Electra models as part of a numbered, limited-edition series to be called Electra Be. The series will run parallel to the current Electra range and will include a two way stand mount - Electra Be 907 – and two floor standing speakers – the Electra Be 927 and 937 with 165mm and 210mm bass drivers, respectively.
Electra 907 Be
Electra 927 Be
Electra 937 Be
The new speakers will be offered in a choice of two unique high quality finishes and with a host of technical upgrades including the superb Beryllium tweeter normally reserved for the Utopia Be range.
The worldwide availability for the Electra Be products will be strictly limited, with just 1000 units of the Electra 907, 500 units of the Electra Be 927 and 300 units of the Electra Be 937 being produced. The Electra 907 will launch fi rst in March 2004 with the 927 and 937 following on shortly afterwards.
By producing the series to such a high specification and in limited numbers Focal-JMlab is confident that the Electra Be line-up will deserve the status of a collector's item.
The first 25 years of Focal-JMlab have marked out the venture as a high technology enterprise, in part due to the long list of developments pioneered by the company including: the creation of the reverse dome tweeter, the sandwich construction composite W cone, the OPC filter and the gamma structure and focus time enclosure designs. All of the new technologies were a result of the company's ongoing search for real progress in the quality of sound reproduction. Once developed, Focal-JMlab then heavily invested in the production techniques required to continually reduce the cost of the new ideas, allowing them – over time – to reach lower priced product ranges and potentially a larger audience.
This demanding policy has lead to all of Focal-JMlab's products being recognised as having exceptional levels of technology and quality relative to the normal standard in their respective category. The new Electra Be products not only celebrate a special occasion but also continue with the policy of moving technology into lower ranges. The new products bring together nearly all of Focal-JMlab's hiend technologies and in particular are the first products outside of the Utopia Be range to use the pure Beryllium reversed dome tweeter.
The Electra 907
The Electra 907 Be closely follows the silhouette of the existing Electra 906 model. Both are relatively compact two-way stand mount speakers (with the option of the dedicated SME stand) - sharing the Focus Time technology to achieve coherent phase and Gamma construction to ensure a mechanically inert cabinet. However their specifications have little else in common.
New Pure Beryllium Tweeter
The Electra Be range is the first to introduce the new TCE Be tweeter which adopts the same pure Beryllium reversed dome used by the TBU design - found in the Utopia Be models - and with the same ability to cover 5 octaves, from 1kHz to nearly 40 000Hz, thanks to this exclusive material's unique combination of light weight, extreme rigidity and excellent damping.
All of the motor parts (voice coil, suspension) are again taken directly from the TBU's design with the exception of a high-energy ferrite magnet which replaces Focus Ring technology, with its Samarium Cobalt assembly and ring of Neodymium.
The TCE Be has benefi ted from Focal-JMlab's evolution of Beryllium technology which has allowed the new tweeter to comfortably reach down to an exceptional 850Hz, optimising it's coupling with the midrange driver and keeping the two membranes close together to reduce phase distortion. A removable magnetic grill is also provided to protect the tweeter.
New Sandwich construction Composite W Cone
W cone technology debuted in 1995 as part of the launch of the original Grande Utopia; however, the technology has been continually evolved over the past eight years. By varying the number of layers of glass or the thickness and structure of the internal damping foam, W cone technology allows the almost infinite adjustment of rigidity, damping and weight characteristics so that each membrane can be optimised according to the precise frequency range it is to reproduce. For the first time, the new Electra Be range will introduce a W cone with a new sheet of denser glass and with a foam layer two times thicker, to jointly optimise rigidity and damping.
New cabinet detail and finish
The technological association with the hi-end Utopia Be range is continued by the superior quality finish of the products, with the sides of the cabinet in an exclusive burr ash and the main body in a gloss black lacquer. Two finishes are available: Signature with the sides in red burr ash and Classic which is effectively a light gold colour somewhere between the Utopia Be's Classic and Avant-Garde options. Both finishes ideally complement the gloss black of the main cabinet and the large brushed aluminium mounting plate for the tweeter.
OPC Filtering and New Connectors
The exceptional quality of these new loudspeakers, with their pure Beryllium tweeters and new W cone, gives them excellent linearity and wide frequency response but with very low directivity, this allows the use of Focal-JMlab's OPC filtering to optimise phase. The result is a natural and deep stereo image that has an almost holographic precision. Electra Be is also the fi rst product to use Focal-JMlab's new heavy duty speaker terminals which were specially designed to offer better grip and increased torque to ensure a better quality contact. They are compatible with standard «banana» connectors, forks or stripped cable.
About Focal-JMlab
Since its foundation in 1979, Focal-JMlab has grown to become one of the World's Top Three hi-fi loudspeaker companies. Headquartered in Saint-Etienne, France, it is now internationally recognised as a world leader in the design and manufacture of specialist drive units for hi-fi loudspeakers. It is also pre-eminent in the design and manufacture of specialist loudspeaker drive units for car-audio and pro-audio; and in the creation of highly advanced, complete hi-fi loudspeaker enclosures priced from 125 to 70,000€ and 99 to 900€ for car-audio.
It is the market-leading (15% by value) loudspeaker system vendor in France, but already exports over 60% of its output (a growing proportion) to territories such as Europe, North America and Southeast Asia.
The company's key strength is its complete integration and quality control of the loudspeaker manufacturing process, from the design of drive units, cabinets and electrical fi lter networks, to the assembly of fi nished product. Focal-JMlab maintains an intense, continual programme of research and development into drive-unit technologies, and holds several patents. Focal-JMlab currently employs over 234 people and in 2004 relocated to a new, purpose-built, wholly unifi ed, 12500m2 (134550 ft2) production, design and management facility.
For further information, images and review samples please contact:
Andrew Burslem
Complete Marketing Communications
Tel: 020 7924 7448
Email: andrew@cmcpr.co.uk
Didier Flacon
(33) 04 77 43 57 00
d.flacon@focal.tm.fr
Reader response telephone number for publication: 0121-616 5126