Fisher XP-55 (1967)

Not much is documented about the Fisher XP-55 beyond period advertising and a single test report. It was a compact bookshelf speaker system introduced in 1967 at $59.50. Fisher pushed that price with an ad campaign in High Fidelity (June 1967, p.13) and HiFi/Stereo (April 1967, p.23). The ad told readers: “If you can spend as much as $100 on a bookshelf loudspeaker, consider the new Fisher XP-55. It’s only $60.”

The XP-55 used an 8-inch woofer with an inverted half-roll surround. Fisher claimed this suspension allowed extra-wide cone excursions and a free-air resonance low enough to give fundamental bass response down to 37 Hz without doubling. The tweeter was a 2¼-inch wide-dispersion unit. High Fidelity (September 1967, p.78) tested the speaker and found the low-end response held up well to about 65 Hz, where a broad rise began. Efficiency was described as fairly high for a small air-suspension system. The XP-55 was rated for use with 10- to 30-watt amplifiers. There were no level adjustments, and the inputs at the rear were marked for polarity.

The XP-55 does not appear in the lists of known XP-series models (XP-1 through XP-10) found in other period sources, which suggests it may have been a standalone budget offering or a later addition to the line that was not widely cataloged. No dimensions, weight, impedance, or crossover details survive in the available documentation, and no driver complement beyond the woofer and tweeter has been confirmed. Whether the XP-55 saw a short production run or was simply overshadowed by Fisher’s larger speakers is unclear — but the two magazine mentions and the test report give it a small, concrete place in the company’s 1967 lineup.