Built under license from the BBC, ourt LS3/5a V2 was our first design collaboration with Derek Hughes. Derek drew on his extensive experience of the LS3/5a which reaches back to his work for the BBC in the 1970s. He has achieved something very special by retaining the legendary sonic character of the original, capturing the much loved vocal abilities of the classic 15 ohm version, whilst combining this with the faster more modern sound of the newer 11 ohm. As a result our LS3/5a V2 has improved and extended bass response with greater handling of dynamics.

Mass-produced versions of the LS3/5a used a compromised cabinet with 12mm walls - in contrast the Stirling LS3/5a cabinets adhere to the “lossy” thin walled cabinet design philosophy developed by BBC Research Department at Kingswood Warren, although the rear panels are now glued instead of screwed as this has found to yield more consistent results without loss of performance.

The Stirling LS3/5a cabinet is modelled on the famous 001/002 pair featured in Hi Fi News which were built in-house by the BBC and used as their references. Our LS3/5a V2 combines the very best of the traditional BBC LS3/5a with a modern design by using custom high quality drive units in thin wall (9mm) birch plywood cabinets, damped using double layers of bituminous pads. The high-quality crossover followed extensive development with both computer aided design and traditional A-B listening used to voice the Stirling LS3/5a V2 against BBC 001/002.

The LS3/5a V2 comes with a 5 year warranty and the assurance of the future availability of spare parts.

The Product Brochure for the V2 can be found here and the Installation and Care Instructions can be found here. All brochures and instructions can be found here.