GNP Loudspeakers, anyone familiar with them?

As a fellow Caltech grad (went to school with Bill Gross), I saw the developmeht of GNP speakers and have listened to most of the different versions and owned a few.

I think the Valkyries with the laad cylinders were the last of the speakers designed by Bill Gross of GNP. The earlier ones were called 'Sound Mirrors' and featured rectangular particle board satellites with 5" Bextrene Midranges and 1" soft dome tweeters. These were sold with 'bass cubes' with 10" or 8" drivers, and an internal crossover (which accepted an input from the power amp and had an output for the satellite (with the low frequencies filtered out)

The key features of these speakers were outstanding phase accuracy/imaging, sonic accuracy and high efficiency. Not flashy, just perfectly real sounding. The key element was the manner in which they were phase corrected - not all drivers and electronic components with the same specs are created equal, and by measuring and carefully matching the drivers with the capacitors and resistors and custom winding the inductors, you could make a given speaker phase accurate (so long as you don't replace any of the drivers or parts of the crossover.

These sounded like incredibly more expensive speakers, did not challenge the amplifiers (over 100WPC was a waste and a 25WPC Class A amp was all you needed for great sound). Most of these were 6 ohms with efficiencies over 90 dB/watt.

These didn't sell that well since they were'nt well promoted and didn't have any sound characteristic that jumped out at the listener - people seem to like speakers that exaggerate sound part of the sound vs. provide extremely accurate reproduction. In fact, when playing a direct-do-disk LP the imaging is incredible - you can tell where all the musicians are sitting. Really.

GNP audio is still located in Pasadena

GNP used to be located in Pasadena, Calif. Check the net for a web address, they also sold computers.

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.

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!

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.