Twenty years ago, Ruark gave the world loudspeakers named after ancient armaments: the Broadsword and the Sabre. The latter morphed into ‘MkII' form in the late 1980s, then ten years back it quietly went out of production.
Happily, the Sabre is now back in MkIII form and looking rather different to its predecessor. For a start, it's about two-thirds of the size of the original, which was conceived in the days when beefy standmounts were still domestically acceptable. Just as fundamental is that the newcomer is a reflex-ported design rather than its infinite baffle forebear. Both drive units have changed; the main bass/mid driver is an inch smaller in diameter, with a 95mm pulp cone in a 150mm chassis, and the tweeter that was once polyamide has become a 27mm textile dome.
So, while the name may be the same there is very little in common between Sabres II and III. Apart, that is, from Ruark's high-quality finish, the company using real wood veneers – natural oak or rich walnut as standard, with yew or rosewood available at extra cost – and shiny gold plated fixings to produce a satisfying impression of quality that's more than skin deep.
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But it's not easy to see why this speaker is as good as it undoubtedly is. There are no hi-tech drivers, fancy materials or silver-plated terminals for retailers to point out, just down to earth, proven technologies and a high standard of finish.
This, however, could well be the key to its success. Many speaker designers pick on something to ‘big up', something that they can describe as new and able to solve all the ills of what's gone before. But when you go back to what actually went before, those problems don't seem so horrendous – in fact, if they hadn't been highlighted you'd hardly notice them. Simple solutions often out-perform the latest whizz-bang technologies if they're well executed.
Ruark puts it down to a number of factors. The voicing, for instance, is done almost entirely by ear; Ruark uses measurements to make sure that things don't go too awry, but the balance that the company chooses is a subjective one. The treble is lifted, apparently, which Ruark can get away with thanks to the quality of the SEAS tweeter – a new design with a larger than average dome and no ferrofluid. This allows the dome to be quicker and more agile than fluid-damped designs but also means that power handling is limited.
