Vintage

The NS-1000 [near right] and NS-1000M were the first of Yamaha's beryllium-driver loudspeakers, but there were spin offs. In the early '90s the Japanese market offered the NS-1000X, which was effectively the NS-1000M with an improved carbon fibre woofer and gloss black finish. Other speakers in Yamaha's range were fitted with the beryllium tweeter, the smaller NS-690/II being a case in point, while the huge FX-3 shared its tweeter and midrange driver in a vast reflex-ported cabinet with a 15in bass driver. All versions are of interest to collectors, but for many the NS-1000 is the original classic. More recently, however, Yamaha launched the NS-5000 [HFN Jun '17, pictured far right]. This echoes the look of the NS-1000 but sports new Zylon drive units, Zylon being a synthetic fibre created in Japan that's said to be the world's strongest. This is then vapour-coated with a proprietary Monel alloy. Yamaha says the result has a very similar acoustic velocity to beryllium.