Wharfedale Heritage Series 90th Anniversary Dovedale

LOUDSPEAKER

- JOHN ATKINSON

When I first got interested in audio in the UK, in the 1960s, four English brands dominated the domestic loudspeaker scene: Goodmans (founded in 1923), Celestion (whose first loudspeaker was launched in early 1925), Tannoy (which started making loudspeakers in 1928), and Wharfedale. Wharfedale was the youngest of these brands, founded in 1932 in Yorkshire the land of the Dales-by Gilbert Briggs.

In 1968, following some failed experiments with home-brewed speakers, I was looking to buy a pair of "real" loudspeakers. I was attracted to the large Wharfedale Dovedale, with its 12" woofer, but ended up with a pair of Wharfedale's Super Lintons, the two-way model with the "purple jellyfish" tweeter. I was able to afford the smaller Wharfedales, and they fit on bookshelves in my parents' living room. I subsequently installed the speakers on shelves in my first apartment, then again on shelves in my first house's living room. I used the Super Lintons for several years, until I joined the staff of British magazine Hi-Fi News & Record Review in 1976. But I always wondered if I should have borrowed enough money to buy those original Dovedales.

Wharfedale is still a British brand, with its R&D department in the UK, but it's now owned by the IAG Group, which was founded in Hong Kong in 1991 and is based in Shenzen, China. In addition to Wharfedale, IAG owns the Audiolab, Castle Acoustics, Leak, Luxman, Mission, and Quad brands. In recent years, Wharfedale has been introducing redesigned versions of some of its classic speakers. Herb Reichert favorably reviewed the three-way Linton Heritage loudspeaker in September 2019;¹ then, at the 2022 Munich High End Show, Wharfedale introduced the subject of this review, the Heritage Series 90th Anniversary Dovedale. The original Dovedale I lusted after in the 1960s was a two-way; the new speaker is a reimagining of the three-way Dovedale 3, from 1971.