01 September 2025

KENWOOD LS-1900 (1980) | State-of-the-art

 

Front view of Kenwood LS-1900

The LS-1900 from Kenwood is a rare example of the art of high quality speaker design. Kenwood was not claiming another "revolutionary break-through" in speaker design but there's no doubt that the design techniques used to aid the creation of this remarkable system are state-of-the-art. To maintain linearity of the speaker cone movement at all inputs, the LS-1900 woofer features a 33cm diameter cone with an accordion shaped edge support, driven by a massive Alnico V magnetic structure encased in a pot yoke. Since the mid-range driver's area covers most of the frequencies we actually hear in music, it is one of the most important elements of a speaker system. For this Kenwood developed a mid-frequency driver with center support for linear cone movement. It is the high frequency driver that gives a high fidelity system its "presence" by its ability to reproduce musical overtones. Kenwood engineers designed a ring-diaphragm driver for wide dispersion and low distortion. In order to isolate vibrations produced by the woofer and its enclosure the mid-range and tweeter are mounted in a separate housing that can also be rotated for optimal sound in your listening room. The LS-1900 is designed to be placed directly on the floor. There are two ways of using the LS-1900 loudspeaker system.
One way is to use the loudspeaker normally with a stereo amplifier in which case one will use the dedicated inputs marked "internal network". A more sophisticated method is to use a cross-over network inserted after the control amplifier which will feed separate low-range, mid-range and high-range power amplifiers with dedicated input at the back of the LS-1900.

Looking for more? Head to 1001HiFi.com for everything vintage audio.


Cut-out view of Kenwood LS-1900

woofer detail of Kenwood LS-1900

mid-range detail of Kenwood LS-1900

tweeter detail of Kenwood LS-1900