David Price warps back in time to one of hi-fi's classic budget blockbusters, the original Wharfedale Diamond.

It is 1984, and times are a changing. In fashion, politics, design and music, people are finally waving goodbye to the 1970s and moving on. In hi-fi, Compact Disc is beginning to hit the shops but is still very much a high end pursuit. Rather, turntables rule the roost and the ones to have include Dual's CS505, Rega's Planar 3 and Linn's LP12.

Best selling amplifiers include NAD's giant-killing 3020 and A&R Cambridge's mid-price A60. Speakers are evolving too - Mission's 70, Boston Acoustic's A40 and Heybrook's HB1 are all walking off dealers' shelves. 
 
With a stream of popular designs from the 1970s still in peoples' homes, Wharfedale is an incredibly popular loudspeaker brand. The feeling in hi-fi circles however is that the glory days of five years previous, when the XP, SP and E Series were the stars of every Lasky's showroom, are gone. What the famous Leeds company needed badly is another killer budget box. 
 
It was into this world that the new Wharfedale Diamond was launched. Derived from research undertaken for the company's high end TSR102 project (trainspotters get fifty Olde Worlde points if they know that TSR stood for 'Total Sound Recall'!), they were essentially that speaker's treble and midrange unit in its own bespoke box. 
 
The result was a loudspeaker in miniature, with a claustrophobic box space of just 5.2 litres to play with. Into this went a 19mm Son Audax plastic dome tweeter and Wharfedale's bespoke 120mm long throw mid/bass driver, sporting a (then almost state-of-the-art) polypropylene cone.

Built on a rigid steel frame, it wasn't a bad little unit at all and gave the Diamond a fighting chance of producing a nice noise. Cabinets were thin 12mm chipboard complete with the compulsory wood effect vinyl wrap. A ducted port, 30mm long and 65mm wide, fired out of the rear panel to give the Diamond a semblance of efficiency. 

In true eighties audiophile tradition, the crossover was just two elements, plus a resistor to bring the tweeter level down. Lest we forget, five years earlier no self respecting loudspeaker went without a hopelessly complex, multi-element affair that sapped more power than an oven on Christmas morning. On the back were good old Seventies style spring clip terminals! 
 
The result was a dinky little loudspeaker, just 240x185x205mm, which worked with amplifiers between 15 and 50W and had a relatively benign impedance of (nominally) 6 ohms. Sensitivity was just 86dB, meaning its 50W maximum input power was never going to sound very loud, but then again if you wanted disco power you bought JBLs!
 
Neither was bass anything to write home about; by around 75Hz it had all but disappeared. Hardly a startling set of statistics then, so why was the Diamond ever conceived?
 
The answer came when you listened to a pair. For under £80 you got loudspeakers that really took you to the heart of the music. In many hi-fi respects they were ropey - bass was notable by its absence and treble extension and clarity poor - but in the musicality stakes they were corkers. 

That polypropylene mid/bass unit was clean enough to give you a window on the music that you just had to peer through. The Diamonds really capitalised on their design strengths - small cabinets meant a fast, tight sound with little overhang, and those tiny drivers made for near point-source imaging. 
 
Wharfedale started changing the Diamond almost from day one. A year later the more balanced, sober sounding Diamond IIs came out, and thus followed the Super Diamonds complete with stronger, real wood cabinets and veneer, for nearly twice the price. 
 
The following Active Diamonds were an incredibly good idea before their time. Few audio sources back then had line-level audio outputs, but now there are millions. A series of new Diamonds followed, each less focussed and audibly inferior to the originals. 

Buy the Is or IIs for around £20 to £50 depending on condition, and you'll have got yourself some eighties design classics. The new 8.1s sound much better, but for some of us dewy-eyed nostalgia merchants, the originals will never be surpassed.