If you didn't follow Paul Messenger's 2006 Hi-Fi News Show Report—and really, you missed some fine reporting if you didn't—you may be unaware of the fact that Apogee Acoustics has been reborn in the Antipodes.
Graeme Keet (aka Graz), long known for his repairs and rebuilding of Apogee's magnetic planar loudspeakers, has obtained the rights to the Apogee brand name and the domain name www.apogeeacoustics.com. At the London show, Graz demonstrated his first new product, the $25,000 Synergy 1.5 loudspeakers, which, Graz says, "used the 1 ohm Scintilla as the benchmark."
"The Scintilla was always my favorite of the old Apogees—at least when it was driven properly, which was rare. So I polled Scintilla owners about what they loved about this 20-year-old design, not to mention what they would want to change. What I came up with was a full-range planar with 94dB sensitivity and a tight impedance curve with a nominal value of 2.5 ohms. It's faster, friendlier, and heavier than the Scintilla—and you can drive it with a 30W tube amplifier."
Or several of them, since Graz supplies the Synergy 1.5 with two sets of tri-wire binding posts so the speaker can use passive or active crossovers. "Or you can operate the 1.5s in several combinations of active and passive configuration—although I have a soft spot for full active mode with six channels of amplification with zero to 1mV DC offset," Graz laughed.
The speakers Paul Messenger heard in London utilized an external outboard crossover called the X-Plinth, which featured parts from North Creek (and only one resistor in circuit)—and design input from Apogee alumnus George Short.
Graz's main business at present is repair and modification of existing Apogee loudspeakers (except for the Stage and Studio Grand hybrids, which he feels are bettered by the hybrids he markets under the Perigee brand). He can also supply replacement ribbons to Apogee owners worldwide, and even has regional installers to handle the replacements. Apogee also constructs updated versions of classic Apogee speakers to order—the Classic 1.5DS (Duetta Signature), 1.5S (Scintilla 1 ohm), and 1.8D (Diva) being the most popular models.
There will, Graz says, be additional Synergy models in the near future. "Jason Bloom was a visionary, but we've made a lot of progress in the last 20 years, on materials and on precision manufacturing. The older speakers were virtually hand-made, which was both their glory and their biggest weakness. I don't just rebuild classic Apogees, I make them better than when they were new—and the new ones will be even better."
At present, Apogee has no North American distribution, but you can keep tabs on the company at its website.
