UPDATE: Wharfedale celebrates 80th anniversary with new Denton speaker

Update 18.06.12

Wharfedale has confirmed the UK price of its Denton 80th anniversary speaker at £499.95.

It will be available from July in "strictly limited" numbers and will be finished in a mahogany wood veneer.

Design highlights include a 'sandwich' construction of wood materials to reduce panel resonance, a deeply inset front baffle, rear-firing twin reflex ports, offset biwire terminals and a crossover based on Linkwitz-Riley filters.

Wharfedale also says the main mid/bass unit's chassis has been enhanced with a very large flange secured using six screws for maximum stability.

Further details in our original news story from the Bristol Show below.

Published 25.2.12

Wharfedale – founded in 1932 by Gilbert Briggs – is celebrating its 80th anniversary with the launch of a new version of its original Denton standmount speaker.

Although the new model has the traditional looks of the original, with a mahogany wood veneer finish to the chipboard cabinet and a Tungsten cloth grille, Wharfedale says it's very different under the skin.

The bass unit features a woven Kevlar cone mounted on a rigid die-cast chassis, while the high frequencies are handled by a woven textile soft-dome tweeter with high flux ferrite magnet (rather than Neodymium).

Peter Comeau, head of acoustics at Wharfedale's parent company IAG, says: "In voicing them, I had in mind the original Dentons, which sounded musical but with a touch of warmth. The ferrite magnet tweeter gives a cleaner, softer, smoother treble than Neodymium designs."

The 80th Anniversary Wharfedale Denton will be available in May for "less than £500".

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Andy Clough

Andy is Global Brand Director of What Hi-Fi? and has been a technology journalist for 30 years. During that time he has covered everything from VHS and Betamax, MiniDisc and DCC to CDi, Laserdisc and 3D TV, and any number of other formats that have come and gone. He loves nothing better than a good old format war. Andy edited several hi-fi and home cinema magazines before relaunching whathifi.com in 2008 and helping turn it into the global success it is today. When not listening to music or watching TV, he spends far too much of his time reading about cars he can't afford to buy.