More than just nostalgia from these reimagined 70s speakers
View online review whf.cm/Mission770
We love classic old hi-fi. Give us a chance to hear an original pair of Quad ESL-57 electrostatic speakers or an early Linn LP12 and we simply wouldn’t be able to resist. So what if you take such a classic design as a base, and then execute it with the full might of current technology and improved know-how gained over the decades?
The original 1970s Mission 770 were large two-way standmounters with a 20cm polypropylene mid/bass unit mated to a 25mm plastic-dome tweeter through a relatively simple crossover. The cabinet was made of heavily damped chipboard.
Mission has been faithful to the original’s appearance, and the resemblance between 770 generations is unmistakable. But Mission has chosen a more modern approach to the cabinet design by making the speaker panels a twin-wall sandwich of high-density MDF and particleboard, bonded by a layer of damping glue. The two layers help control each other’s resonances and together (with the glue) form a rigid structure that should avoid the excess richness and slightly loose bass that can result from the original thin-wall construction method, where the cabinet was made of heavily damped chipboard.
While Mission has stuck with the same size of polypropylene mid/bass cone as the original, the one used here is a thoroughly modern design with an open, rigid die-cast chassis and carefully honed motor system. The polypropylene cone is mineral-loaded and carefully shaped to aid rigidity. This cone is then married to a low-density nitrile surround to control any resonances. The same applies to the 28mm microfibre Polyester-dome tweeter, which is a modern vented design linked to the mid/bass via a more complex crossover than before. The crossover point is set at a fairly conventional 2.9kHz. Connection is via a single pair of chunky speaker terminals.
These are big standmounters, and big speakers with big drive units tend to produce big bass. Mission claims a low-end response that extends to 30Hz, well beyond what most rivals can manage.
Articulately rendered bass
As we listen to Massive Attack’s Angel, it is the articulate way these speakers render the bass notes tha
