The mas­si­ve front with the cur­ved metal gril­le com­bi­ned with the slim stands made of nickel-pla­ted tubu­lar steel defi­nes a high­ly aes­the­tic design and thus also visual­ly cor­re­sponds to the abso­lut­e­ly natu­ral and clear spa­ti­al music repro­duc­tion of elec­tro­sta­tic spea­k­ers. The design of the Braun LE1 with its clear form lan­guage has lost none of its fresh­ness to this day and in a his­to­ri­cal con­text is undis­pu­ted­ly the inspi­ra­ti­on for the design of today’s Apple computers.

klares design

Tech­ni­cal data LE1: WHD 83 x 77 x 32 cm. Power sup­p­ly 220/110 Volt 50–60Hz. 2 woo­fer sys­tems, 1 midran­ge sys­tem, 1 twee­ter sys­tem. Metal frame light gray, front per­fo­ra­ted metal pla­te gra­phi­te. Foot frame steel tube nickel-pla­ted. Trans­mis­si­on from 45 – 18000Hz. Power hand­ling 15 watts into 15 ohms.

Elec­tro­sta­tic loud­spea­k­ers with a foil that is set in vibra­ti­on by high fre­quen­cy were a tech­ni­cal inno­va­ti­on that was signi­fi­cant­ly deve­lo­ped by Peter J. Wal­ker at the Eng­lish loud­spea­k­er manu­fac­tu­rer QUAD in the cour­se of the 1950s and later pro­du­ced in series under the desi­gna­ti­on ESL-57. Braun’s mar­ke­ting depart­ment reco­gni­zed the poten­ti­al of this new type of music repro­duc­tion with its rec­tan­gu­lar dia­phragm sur­face and licen­sed QUAD’s tech­no­lo­gy, which was alre­a­dy more matu­re at the time, in 1959.

staging

The puristic pre­sen­ta­ti­on of the ste­reo sys­tems in the Braun pro­duct cata­logs from the 50s and 60s is one of the inspi­ring insights for vintage enthu­si­asts. In this cata­log pre­sen­ta­ti­on, the LE1 with the Stu­dio 2 is pre­sen­ted sober­ly and unpre­ten­tious­ly, cle­ar­ly fol­lo­wing the ‚less but bet­ter‘ prin­ci­ple. Abso­lut­e­ly tim­e­l­ess, ico­nic, still under­stan­da­ble and com­pre­hen­si­ble today.

Braun LE1 loud­spea­k­er and Stu­dio 2 (CV 11, CS 11 and CE 11)
Illus­tra­ti­on: Braun 1959 catalog

In this cata­log pre­sen­ta­ti­on, the LE1 with the Stu­dio 2 is pre­sen­ted sober­ly and unpre­ten­tious­ly, cle­ar­ly fol­lo­wing the ‚less but bet­ter‘ prin­ci­ple. Abso­lut­e­ly tim­e­l­ess, ico­nic, still under­stan­da­ble and com­pre­hen­si­ble today. Elec­trostats are opti­mal­ly pla­ced in lar­ger rooms in rela­ti­ve pro­xi­mi­ty to a wall, wher­eby the spa­ti­al hea­ring and the out­stan­ding repro­duc­tion qua­li­ty is best play­ed out and experienced.

cabling

The CSV tube ampli­fiers have spe­cial out­puts for elec­tro­sta­tic loud­spea­k­ers. With a 4‑pole cable the loud­spea­k­er signal is led par­al­lel to the mains vol­ta­ge direct­ly from the ampli­fier to the loud­spea­k­ers. This is actual­ly not a good idea under today’s safe­ty aspects, espe­ci­al­ly sin­ce the­re is no pro­tec­ti­ve earth con­duc­tor on the ampli­fiers and the LE1. The­r­e­fo­re it is recom­men­ded to do wit­hout this spe­cial wiring and to run the spea­k­er cables and the power sup­p­ly sepa­ra­te­ly. For this pur­po­se, the­re are cor­re­spon­ding 2‑pin DIN spea­k­er jacks with the neces­sa­ry 15 ohms for the LE1 on the back of the­se amplifiers.

turntable

The Ori­gi­nal Braun turn­ta­ble model PCS 5 is an impres­si­ve pie­ce of craft­sman­ship. The tone­arm has ela­bo­ra­te adjus­t­ment opti­ons for per­fect record play­ing com­fort and has been equip­ped with a tone­arm lift for manu­al ope­ra­ti­on. Tech­ni­cal main­ten­an­ce in a qua­li­fied work­shop ensu­res that the PCS 5 turn­ta­ble will func­tion as it did on the first day, and will con­ti­nue to do so for deca­des to come. Need­les can be reor­de­red. When this ste­reo is then posi­tio­ned on a Kan­ga­roo side­board, the inno­va­ti­ve spi­rit of the 60s is defi­ni­te­ly evoked.