GNP Loudspeakers, anyone familiar with them?

They sound like the speakers that were designed by Bill Gross, a CalTech grad and former part owner of an audio/video store in Pasadena, CA called GNP Audio Video (still in existence, I think). Their top of the line speakers featured a cylindrical, lead damped midrange enclosure and separate enclosures for the other drivers as well.

Well.....I've been into the high-end since the early 70's, and had DQ-10's, Maggie 20,..etc. I was at a friends home recently(he used to be a rep. for several high-end companies) and we were listening to some FM Jazz through his system with GNP speakers...Sunday A.M.,...coffee, the Sunday paper..etc..and I found myself REALLY listening to Sarah Vaughn..and realized how good his 10+ year old GNP speakers are.

Hope this helps. I know nothing of these speakers, other than my friends captured my attention in a most enjoyable way!

If the upper bass and midrange/tweeter modules fit together to form a triangle (front profile) with rounded corners, you probably have their top model, the Valkyrie. There were at least four versions of this speaker, the last retailing for $2295/pr in 1990. The upper bass/midrange module featured an internal Lead Cylinder construction with the "Cone of Silence" to kill rear wave reflections. The bass section had a sealed enclosure with a pair of 6.5" woofers. All crossovers were parallel, first-order, for phase coherence. The bass was very tight, but not very extended and without much slam (the chosen tradeoff against going with a bass reflex design with larger woofers).

Stereophile reviewed the Valkyrie, as did IAR, and possibly TAS (sorry, I'm can't recall the issues, but none of them were rave reviews). When I auditioned them at GNP's Pasadena store, I admired their cleanless, their imaging and focus, and smooth, forgiving delivery (think Vandersteen-like), but felt that they were exceeded by other designs in lively dynamics, bandwidth extention, and low level detail. The cloth dome tweeter and midrange units are probably dated relative to modern designs. Still, it'd take a Vandy 2CE to beat it these days.