Finkteam have announced that David Jefferys will be joining them. David brings many years of experience in the Hifi business and the in-depth knowledge of distributors and retailers in Europe that Finkteam need to find suitable partners to bring the WM-4 and future products to market. You may not have heard of Finkteam themselves, but you will probably have listened to a speaker they have been involved with.

Finkteam explain more about their background and how their own speaker came about: “As a division of Europe’s premier loudspeaker design consultancy, we at Finkteam are involved in the creation of many different speakers across a wide range of prices. Loudspeaker manufacturers hire us because of our expertise, experience and extremely well-equipped simulation and measurement facilities. But we are ‘backroom boys’ so much of our work is, in the nature of consultancy, confidential: only if the client elects to mention our involvement are we credited”.

“But events took an unexpected turn when Marantz Europe’s brand ambassador Ken Ishiwata heard an early and not very eye-pleasing prototype (it was known internally as ‘the washing machine’) and asked us to create a properly finished version which he could use to demonstrate his electronic designs. This speaker, the WM-3 – with industrial design by Kieron Dunk of IDA in England – we unveiled at the Munich High End show in 2016, and it was so well received that we were forced to rethink. Like a car maker who shows a concept car that wows press and public alike, we realised that there was unexpected demand for what we had created. So we set about making it a ‘real’ product, a process which involved much more than creating a small- scale production line. We decided to enhance the design in key respects: by swapping the WM-3’s nice, but not perfect bass driver for a design of our own, by improving the midrange driver chassis, and by selecting a different AMT (Air Motion Transformer) tweeter. Of course, all this required changes to the crossover and cabinet too. The result of our efforts, the WM-4, is the best loudspeaker we currently know how to make”.