Perhaps what some have been waiting for...

[Al ears]

New Acoustic Energy AE1 40th Anniversary speakers now available for £1499.
I am seriously considering a pair as I am old enough to remember how good the originals were and never did get around to owning them.
www.kronosav.com/products/acoustic-energy-ae1-40th-anniversary-speakers

 

[Revolutions]

Wow, yes they could be awesome. All I need to do is move into a bigger flat with a spare room to necessitate a 2nd system. Then these would be the perfect piece to pare with a Nait 50 or similar in the spare room - a collection of reimagined hifi classics.

 

[Gray]

Front ports mean I'm more interested than I should be (as I don't need new speakers) 🙂
...a better price than most 're-imagined' things too.

 

[davidf]

I'm looking forward to getting reacquainted with them - haven't heard them since selling them in the early 90s.

 

[makinmusic]

Would love to be able to spend that kind of money on a set of speakers, one day Talking about getting reacquainted with previous systems I just purchased the amp I had many moons ago as I had fond memories of the sound quality it belted out attached to two warfdale speakers so I went on the hunt and found another NAD 3225PE Integrated Hi-Fi Stereo Amplifier Separate Amp while not as fancy as some. Probably more realistically within my current budget for me and the sound it produced perfect for what I want out of a system. I regret giving it away to a mate when I moved and probably could of asked for it back but no one wants to be that guy. Question is now do I start hunting for my old speakers.

 

[Al ears]

Would love to be able to spend that kind of money on a set of speakers, one day Talking about getting reacquainted with previous systems I just purchased the amp I had many moons ago as I had fond memories of the sound quality it belted out attached to two warfdale speakers so I went on the hunt and found another NAD 3225PE Integrated Hi-Fi Stereo Amplifier Separate Amp while not as fancy as some. Probably more realistically within my current budget for me and the sound it produced perfect for what I want out of a system. I regret giving it away to a mate when I moved and probably could of asked for it back but no one wants to be that guy. Question is now do I start hunting for my old speakers.

Not unless you can find A pair in excellent condition. Driver surrounds can fail with age and sometimes it's not money well spent...

 

[nopiano]

They sounded great at the Cranage show. Very cleverly they’d assembled a system of 1980s kit, including an early Michell turntable and a vintage Exposure pre-power amp, and playing music from the period, like The Wall by Michael Jackson.

 

[The_Lecht_Rocks]

I’d agree about the NAIT 50 pairing……they do look lovely excepting the text surrounding tweeter

 

[AEJim]

I’d agree about the NAIT 50 pairing……they do look lovely excepting the text surrounding tweeter

It's been a talking point for sure!

We had all kinds of variations sketched out on the design front - originally they were matte laquered, black bolts etc and more low-key, then in chatting with dealers, distributors and a few AE "fans" they unanimously wanted something more special like the old Signature models for the Anniversary Edition. I'd already designed about a dozen combinations of materials so we had options...

The biggest difficulty was the old 45 degree badge because that doesn't work with the current logo and after fighting for years to get all our distributors using the newer one we didn't want to go back to the old (((AE))). We came up with the circular tweeter text - originally just etched in and anodised black with the rest of the tweeter plate, but I gave a gold (actually just light brown from laser-etching) option and that won out overwhelmingly along with the gold bolts - I managed to keep the inner bolts black on the tweeter plate at least! I felt that was verging on overkill.

Final pre-production samples approved last week. Full production starting next!

The font is smaller than the one shown at Cranage and performance improved a fair bit from then too, it's reasonably subtle from the listening position, even in contrast to the piano black.

 

[nopiano]

Thanks for these insights @AEJim . Will there be a wood and a piano black option?

I think at Cranage the guy I spoke to said you’d no longer got the tooling for the original stands, so what thoughts do you have on that?

 

[AEJim]

My pleasure @nopiano . The two finishes will be the piano black in the pics above and piano walnut here (these pics are with the previous slightly larger font around the tweeter).

That's right about the tooling, it was given to our old Chinese distributor at some point but it's since disappeared along the way somewhere. No plans at the mo to do a similar stand as the tooling alone would likely by in the £100k ballpark, the thick cast aluminium costs on top would make it all prohibitively expensive to produce. The original column was actually a cooling pipe tooling which was purchased relatively cheaply! I have thought about options to make a similar stand in a more cost-effective manner but as yet nothing on the horizon.