"It's amazing that a speaker company has come right through to 2014 and is still very successful," said Celestion managing director Nigel Wood at a presentation honouring two of its key staff on the second day of the Frankfurt show. The Ipswich-based loudspeaker manufacturer was celebrating the occasion of its 90th anniversary of building components at Prolight + Sound.
Consulting engineer Ian White was presented with a 30 years' long service award by Ian Doggett (MD, Vox Amplification). White is pictured, left, with Doggett.
"Ian has been one of the most influential speaker designers of the last generation, certainly for all of us as customers or suppliers," said Doggett.
Receiving an even more impressive award – for 40 years of service – was Dee Potter. Nigel revealed that, since the days she started with the company on 6 February 1974, Potter had built, or supervised the building of, over eight million speakers. Jon Ellery, MD of Marshall Amplification, presented the award to the production manager, who was visiting Prolight + Sound for the first time ever. "Eight million speakers? Nigel, I want 50p for every one…" she announced to cheers and applause from the assembled guests.
Potter went on to cut a cake specially baked in the shape of a subwoofer.
At Prolight + Sound, Celestion unveiled the FTX range of coaxial loudspeakers, as well as the new CDX14-3030 ¼-inch ferrite compression driver.
John Paice, marketing/artist relations for the company, said Celestion was currently selling around "1,000 compression drivers a day", with the target for the year 2014-2015 set at "half a million".