As the current owners of several celebrated British hi-fi brands, the Chinese-based (but UK-headquartered) IAG has proved itself to be sensitive to all the heritage it has inherited. Its latest Audiolab models are faithful to the thinking of the original designs, while moving the technology on; the Quad brand has gained both a recreation of the classic 33/303 preamplifier and power amplifier, reviewed in these pages a couple of months back, and a new version of that company’s classic electrostatic loudspeakers, the ESL-2912 making its debut in finished form at the recent Bristol Show; and other names such as Leak, Luxman and Mission continue and develop under IAG’s stewardship.

And the same goes for the company’s oldest brand, Wharfedale, which was founded in 1932: as it inches towards its centenary, it has seen the launch of a line-up of Heritage speakers. Drawing on classic designs of the past, but with substantial modern engineering input, the range has as its flagship the Dovedale model, first launched in 1959, and passing through several generations in the 1960s and ’70s: revived and engineered a couple of years back, the latest iteration is even made in the UK, rather than in IAG’s huge Chinese plant, a substantial production and engineering facility having been established at the company’s HQ in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.

Below it sit several re-imagined classic designs, including three iterations of the Denton speaker, and two Lintons – of which the model we have here, the Super Linton, is the latest.

Readers of a certain age may remember the original Linton, a three-way standmount design first launched in the mid-1960s as a combination of high-quality performance and an attractive price, and surviving in various versions through to the end of the ’70s; those with shorter memories might be aware of the Linton Heritage model introduced in 2019 as part of the current Heritage project, and the subject of an enthusiastic reception from critics and users alike.

The Super Linton, as the name suggests, is that Heritage design taken a stage further: it’s larger, has improvements from drivers and crossover to the enclosure, and sells for £1999/pr complete with stands (of which more later). The ‘standard’ Linton Heritage continues in the range, at £1249/pr with the same stands.

I mentioned before the role of IAG as ‘keeper of the flame’ when it comes to these reworkings of products from its brands’ past, but within the company much of this project has been driven by the company’s British Director of Acoustic Design, Peter Comeau, who has also been responsible for revival of classic Mission speakers, and indeed that Quad pre/power amplifier. Comeau wouldn’t argue if I described him as a time-served hi-fi enthusiast: he’s played similar roles with Heybrook and Mission all the way back to the late 1970s, and for a while was a ‘gamekeeper turned poacher’ as a hi-fi reviewer.

Those in the know describe him as one of the best speaker designers in the business, with an innate ability to recognise problems with a design and come up with solutions – plus he also remembers the originals of many of the speaker designs his team has lately revived, and is able to build on their strengths while addressing their weaknesses.

The Super Linton is a thorough rethinking of that Linton Heritage model of a few years back, itself currently the company’s best-selling design. For the new version, as with the short-lived original speaker of this name in the 1970s, the Super Linton cabinet has been enlarged by 4cm in height to the benefit of the bass response, twin layers of fibreboard are joined with ‘lossy’ latex glue to enhance damping, and long-filament fibre damping is added within.

A new high-frequency tweeter is installed, drawing heavily on that used in the flagship Dovedale, with a 25mm soft dome, a ceramic magnet motor system and a damped chamber behind it to absorb rearward radiation. It’s mounted in a re-profiled short horn for a smooth response down to the upper midrange, with a new front plate design to enhance high-frequency dispersion.

The 13.5cm Kevlar-cone midrange unit of the Linton Heritage is retained, but is now mounted in a cylindrical chamber, within which graded layers of long-hair fibre cancel out the back wave from the rear of the cone. Meanwhile the 20cm bass unit, also Kevlar-coned, is treated to a more powerful motor, this working with the larger cabinet to extend the bass response and superior bass control and impact for improved transient performance.

Crossover components have also been improved, and the network itself split into separate mid/treble and bass sections, to avoid electromagnetic interference from the bass crossover components affecting higher frequency signals. Even the grilles have been improved, with better shaping within to enhance the integration of the drivers – these are speakers tuned to be used with their grilles in place.

Finally, the cabinets are finished in a choice of three hand-matched real wood veneers – walnut, mahogany and black oak – lacquered and polished to a satin sheen. Matching finishes are available on the stands, which double as storage for LPs in best retro style; you can buy the speakers without the stands, saving £150, but there seems little point when they match so well, and choosing to buy the stands later will cost you £349/pr.

PERFORMANCE

Placed on their stands, the Super Lintons assume the proportions of compact floorstanding speakers, standing some 1.3m tall and with a 30x33cm footprint. The speakers are ‘handed’, with the tweeters offset from the mid and bass drivers, and should be used with the tweeters innermost, away from walls and with a degree of toe-in to firm up the stereo image. But they’re pretty easy to drive, thanks to 90dB/W/m sensitivity and 6ohm nominal impedance: I used them with my ‘vintage’ Naim NAC2/NAP250 combination, and the set-up worked like a dream.

There’s nothing retro about the sound here beyond a sense of ease and smoothness of music-making: there’s nothing rounded off or softened, but rather an effortless flow of sound belying the huge levels of detail on offer. Rarely does one have so much information delivered, so complete a view of a performance, without some hint of artifice or ‘edge’ overlaying the sound, but the Super Lintons just sound natural, unfettered and simply massive. They deliver a full orchestra with the same ease as a solo piano, shape voices with exquisite realism, and are as adept with the bite of a violin as they are with the rasp and blare of massed brass.

The retro looks here, with the speaker grilles set into the face of the front baffle and those ‘oversize bookshelf’ proportions, may be at odds with more conventional modern rivals, but there’s no denying that the Super Lintons have an appeal all their own, as much for their captivating sound as that striking style.