BBC ES-224
A designation that turns up in the archive attached to one very unusual electrostatic loudspeaker - and it isn't a BBC monitor at all.
Overview
The ES-224 starts out as a mystery and ends up as a correction. The designation "BBC ES-224" is what brought most readers here, but the period record points somewhere else. The ES-224 was an electrostatic loudspeaker built by Amcron, the professional audio arm distributed in Britain by Macinnes Laboratories of Stonham, Stowmarket. It is not a BBC monitor, and it does not belong to the Corporation's celebrated LS series. The archive flagged this entry because the two get confused.
What the ES-224 actually was: a full-range hybrid electrostatic, listed in the trade press in 1973 and 1974 as part of the Amcron range alongside the DC-300A power amplifier. According to a Macinnes trade listing reproduced in Studio Sound (July 1974, p.11), the speaker used two 10-inch drivers plus a 24-HF-150 high-frequency unit, crossed over at 350 Hz. The claimed usable response was 22 Hz to 30 kHz, with a recommended maximum amplifier power of 150 watts. Those are the numbers the distributor put in print. A 22 Hz bottom end from an electrostatic hybrid was not a common claim in 1973.
The more interesting figure is the one Macinnes used to sell it. The same listing claimed the ES-224 could absorb the full output of the DC-300A - a 200-watt-per-channel amplifier - and survive sustained high-level program material for hours. The copy described a test in a 12-by-25-foot living room where sound pressure levels of 116 to 122 dB were measured with the amplifier below clipping. It noted that the speaker "showed no signs of stress" after the full DC-300A output had been run through it with music for several hours. That is the kind of claim a distributor makes to reassure buyers that an electrostatic won't arc over and die the first time someone plays a drum solo. Electrostatics of the period were famously fussy about load and level, and the ES-224 was pitched as the exception.
The physical package was big. The same Studio Sound listing gives the tweeter section as 26 by 39 by 12 inches deep and the woofer section as 26 by 21 by 16 inches deep. It was a two-box arrangement, with the electrostatic panel sitting above a conventional bass cabinet. That size explains why the ES-224 shows up in dealer stock lists next to AR LSTs and Bose 901s rather than in domestic hi-fi roundups. It was sold through professional audio agents rather than high-street shops.
By the mid-1970s the ES-224 had become a fixture on the British pro-audio dealer circuit. The KJ agency listings in Studio Sound (June 1974, p.15; July 1974, p.11; August 1974, p.21) name "AMCRON ES224" among the monitor speakers they stocked, alongside the Rogers BBC LS3/5, the Celestion Ditton 66, the IMF Professional and the JBL Studio. So it was sold as a monitor, not a domestic loudspeaker, and it sat in the same dealer catalogues as the small BBC-designed monitors that working studios actually used. It was the big, loud, electrostatic alternative in that market, for rooms that needed level and headroom rather than the LS3/5A's near-field sound.
The archive's own record of the ES-224 is thin on the things collectors care most about. There is no confirmed production start or end date in the source material, no original retail price, no serial-number data and no service documentation. What survives is the trade-press footprint: the 1973 launch listing, the dealer stock entries through 1974, and the occasional used-market appearance. Note the name there: Crown, not Amcron. Amcron was the export name for Crown equipment in some markets, and the ES-224 was sold under both badges depending on territory.
The ES-224 is a large, high-power-capable electrostatic hybrid from the early 1970s, sold through professional channels, and it is uncommon. Expect the usual electrostatic caveats. Panel condition is everything, and the high-frequency electrostatic section is the part most likely to need attention. The bass cabinet is a conventional dynamic design and easier to service. The archive has no confirmed current market data and no documented restoration history, so any purchase should be treated as a project until the panels are verified.
The "BBC" in "BBC ES-224" is almost certainly an archive artefact, a misattribution that attached a Crown/Amcron professional loudspeaker to the BBC's monitor lineage. The BBC's actual small monitors of the period, the LS3/5 and LS3/6, were Rogers-built designs with completely different specifications and a completely different design brief. The ES-224 is a big American-designed electrostatic hybrid that happened to be distributed in Britain by a company that also sold BBC monitors, and the two got tangled in the record.
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