still are in Scan-Speak’s current product offerings.
thought that such a thing would occur again, but after more than a decade in Pandrup, it happened again. In 1987 the factory burned down to the ground. The fire took everything; the entire building, all manufacturing equipment, inventory and technical instructions, etc. New machinery was purchased and a new suitable location was found in Aabybro in northern Jutland. To Scan-Speak’s credit only 2 months later speaker models were delivered to customers and after only 5 months, all existing products were again in stock. Kevlar cones In 1988 Scan-Speak launched a line of drivers with an in-house manufactured Kevlar membrane. The major benefit of using Kevlar as material is the ‘low distortion’ due to its high stiffness and good inner damping. The line of drivers became popular fast and many customized versions were made for several of Scan-Speak’s high-end customers. Several of these ‘Kevlar woofers’ are still produced today for various OEM customers.
Acquired by Vifa In the 1980s Videbæk Højttalerfabrik A/S (Vifa) under Magnus Nesdam’s management was very successful and a strong driving force in the Danish audio industry. Nesdam envisioned a great synergy between the Vifa brand and the more high-end Scan-Speak products and in 1989 Scan-Speak was acquired by Vifa. In 1991 Scan-Speak moved to Videbæk and even though Scan-Speak did not move in with Vifa there was a certain amount of integration and many of Vifa’s more industrialized ways of doing things were adopted, especially regarding documentation, production line setup and administration. Lian’s final effort In 1990 the D2905/9000 tweeter was launched as the last Scan-Speak product designed by Ragnar Lian. It was a 28mm dome tweeter that with its characteristic sticky dome filled an important gap in ScanSpeak’s product range as the company until then had not had a dome tweeter in the popular 1” size. This tweeter became one the best tweeters of its time and laid the groundwork for many tweeter designs that
110 — The Danish loudspeaker 100 year anniversary
New product development In 1992 a young creative Engineer, Lars Goller, started as R&D Engineer at ScanSpeak after holding positions at DALI and Vifa. From the start it was clear that Goller often saw things in a different way and often challenged the traditional ways of making loudspeakers. In his first year Goller invented and patented the second generation Symmetrical Drive, consisting of 3 copper rings placed in specific positions in the magnet system. In the early to mid-1990s a range of tweeters based on Lian’s D2905/9000 were developed. A top version featuring SD-2 Symmetrical Drive and a large waveguide faceplate was launched in 1995 and became the iconic -9900 Revelator tweeter that at its time was regarded as the best tweeter available. These tweeters continue to be offered in Scan-Speak’s product line. Goller invented the linear spider that is a key element in Scan-Speak’s Low-LossLinear Suspension which became one of the prime features in most of Scan-Speak’s woofers. This technology enables the suspension to have the same tension during the entire cone excursion allowing the woofers to have the same sound characteristics at low volume as at high volume. In 1997, based on another Goller idea, the first Revelator mid-woofer with sliced cone was introduced. Cutting a number of slices of uneven length and angle through the cone paper and then applying glue to the slices eliminated cone breakup modes which meant a huge improvement in sound quality. The next development was Ring Radiator tweeter technology which was co-developed with Vifa and resulted in Scan-Speak’s R2904/700000 tweeter that took high frequency reproduction to a whole new level and once again made a ScanSpeak tweeter famous for being the best available at the time. Moving in with Vifa In the late 1990s the company’s name was changed to Vifa/Scan-Speak to signal the mutual ownership and close relationship between the two brands. In 2000 Peerless was acquired and merged into Vifa/Scan-Speak. The resulting combined company changed its name to Danish Sound Technology (D-S-T). That same year Scan-Speak moved from its own location into a new extension of the Vifa factory making the merger complete.