GamuT L-3 Mini-Monitor

Plum Danish

You may have noticed that I’ve been reviewing a lot of two-way loudspeakers lately—the stand-mounted Focal JMlab Electra 1007Be (Issue 176), the floorstanding planar-magnetic Magnepan MG12 and MMG (Issue 177), and, now, the stand-mounted GamuT L-3, with the MAGICO Mini II standing (or stand-mounting) in the wings (Issue 179). Why so many? Well, I have my reasons.

To begin with, I just plain like two-ways. As I’ve said before, they tend to disappear more completely as sound sources than multiways, and by “disappear” I don’t just mean that they sound less boxy because of their smaller enclosures (although they do). Thanks to their inherent simplicity (two little drivers, one crossover), they also tend to sound more of a piece than multiways—lower in driver and crossover colorations and, hence, more coherent top-to-bottom.1

That said, two-ways also have inherent limitations. Precisely because of their diminutive enclosures and smallish drivers, most (though not all) have trouble with large-scale dynamics, imaging, power-handling, and low bass, all of which tend to get “cut down to size,” as it were, scaled to less than lifelike dimensions. These are trade-offs I can generally live with, although they are tradeoffs and I understand where many listeners—particularly fans of larger-scale music—prefer a different set of compromises. (Often, I do, too.)

The other reason I’ve been sampling a variety of two-ways has to do with the question of value. When I raved about the then-$22k two-way MAGICO Mini I back in Issue 163, I set off a veritable storm of support and protest at our Web site (AVguide.com). Some folks were as wild about the Minis as I am; others were downright incensed that anyone would have the temerity to charge more than twenty-thousand dollars for a speaker that starts rolling off around 50Hz—or that any reviewer would recommend same. As wrong-headed as I thought these complaints were (most of the folks who denigrated the Minis had never heard them), they got me thinking.

Let’s face it: In almost every issue of TAS, someone on our staff raves about a stand- or floor-mounted two-way that costs a fraction of what the MAGICOs do. Could it be that life in my gilded ultra-high-end cage had blinded me to less-expensive options that really were competitive with the Minis? My review in Issue 176 of the excellent $4500 Focal/JMlab’s Electra 1007Be was a first step toward answering that question. This review of the $6700 GamuT L-3 is another.

What makes the GamuT speaker particularly intriguing is that it uses the selfsame tweeter as the MAGICO Mini—the ScanSpeak Revelator ring-radiator, making for even more of an apples-toapples comparison. Furthermore, GamuT’s current owner, Lars Goller, was formerly chief engineer at ScanSpeak and had a hand in designing the Revelator and many other ScanSpeak drivers! One would think that a man with these credentials would make a very fine loudspeaker. And one would be right.

While the L-3’s tweeter is the same as the Mini’s, it is only fair to note that everything else about the speaker is substantially different. Where the Mini I uses an exotic 7" titanium/Rohacell sandwich mid/woofer and the Mini II a proprietary and even more exotic 7" carbon-fiber/Rohacell one, the L-3’s mid/woof is a somewhat more conventional 7" ScanSpeak Revelator sliced-paper cone, fitted with ScanSpeak’s patented SD-1 magnetic engine and an “aerodynamic aluminum” chassis mounted on spikes inside the cabinet. That cabinet itself isn’t as sophisticated as the Mini’s (but then what cabinet is?). A small (15" high), surprisingly hefty (34 pounds), vaguely tear-drop-shaped box beautifully finished in real wood veneer and eleven coats of hand-polished, high-gloss lacquer (piano-black in the set that I received), the enclosure is constructed from high-density fiberboard (HDF) with internal skeleton braces and bitumen and acoustic damping. At its back are the woofer’s port, set (somewhat unusually) near the top of the rear facet,2 and two pairs of WBT binding posts mounted on an aluminum plate toward the enclosure’s bottom—one binding post for the tweeter and one for the woofer. Both posts have to be used, meaning you can either jumper them, bi-wire them, or bi-amp them.

GamuT also supplied me with a pair of its $1k (!) speaker stands, about which the less said the better.3

Unlike the stands, the GamuT instruction manual is quite professionally done. In it you will find useful tips on breaking the speakers in and setting them up. For instance, GamuT does not recommend listening to the L-3s directly on-axis, which is sound advice. I knew from experience with the MAGICOs that the Revelator tweeter is designed to be listened to slightly offaxis, where its response is flattest. (On-axis it has a slight rise in the top octaves.) Initially, the Gamut L-3 sounded a little dark in balance but very beautiful, less like the MAGICO Mini and more like the ultra-expensive Kharma Mini Exquisite. As I said in my review of the excellent Focal/JMlab Electra 1007Be’s, one of the keys to two-way success is striking a proper balance between the bass and the treble. The Focal leaned a bit toward the treble (as did the Mini I); the Gamut seemed, at first, to lean a bit toward the bass, although this bias was somewhat less noticeable as the speaker broke in. It took a good 20 hours of hard run-in before the L-3 began to sound its best, and another 60-80 hours of play before the drivers fully settled down. Throughout the process, the L-3s never stopped sounding lovely.