Tannoy CPA5

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Letter from Italy (22-2): Michele Surdi on THE ONES THAT GOT AWAY

Update Sept 16, 2022 The author provided this excellent link to a complete Brochure of the CPA series!

Editor: M Surdi recently penned for us a fascinating article on his long journey with classic big Tannoy Loudspeakers.

It’s the small fly that slipped through the net and my mind while penning the Tannoy roundup. I forget the year, but it must have been the Nineties since I was enjoying my DMTs hugely. So much in fact that when casing my favorite cash and carry store (remember those?) I spied a brace of midget grey Tannoy CPA5 pro monitors, the perfect foil for my equally grey but gigantic dualcons. I adopted them on the spot, for a forgotten but presumably very accessible sum, and brought them home in a basket, as it were.

This despite their being equipped with only a solitary speaker, which clashed with my Seventies-incurred audio prejudices. Actually the Tannoy dualcons had already freed me from the cult of the multi-way ampere vampire but old attitudes still lingered, and I accepted as a scientific truth that a crossover-less design was suited to car radios at best. Also the speaker surround was foam, and the terminals were spring loaded, if oversized.

Still, the visual effects were irresistible and I perched them on top of the DMTs, much like a Tamarin monkey on an elephant. I remember the auxiliaries I was running then quite well, chiefly because secondary (and beyond) setups were still in the distant future. The dualcons were powered by a Copland 401, a pushpull EL34 integrated which was a poster child for the pitfalls of midfi, while the source was the rather commendable Meridian 506.20 CDP. Can’t recollect the cables I used for the CPAs, British most likely, but I do most distinctly recall the impression the Tannoy tots made on me. Being in the same exact position as the DMTs I found them dead ringers for the big studio monitors in the mids and only very slightly recessed in the highs. Bass, an important consideration then, was obviously limited to some 150 cycles, if that, but surprisingly vigorous and quick-footed. All the same I just knew that one way speakers were an inferior design and after some time I gave them to a fiancée who was setting up her first system. This would be the end of the story if the CPAs had not succeeded in planting a seed of skepticism about the absolute necessity of crossovers. Many many years later that seed was to sprout into the acquisition of the Supravox floorstanding widebanders which currently preside over my second setup (interested readers can google themselves a translation of this link)

As to the fate of the CPAs: my by-now ex-fiancée still listens to them, some thirty years on.

Editor’s Notes: What a Delight for a Tannoy fan. While I have seen and heard the DMT15 (to good effect), somehow I had totally missed the CPA series! If I see this one I’d grab it in a second. In HK the Autograph Mini is very popular but I think the vintage CPA is a much better value! Michele sent me the brochure of the CPA5, but I have (yet) trouble loading it, but it can be found on manual.plus.

Some gratuitous comments: 1) I remember discovering the The Copland 401and CSA14 at HK’s Golden String and admiring their looks. I later owned both as they can be had for very low prices in HK’s second-hand market. The 401 sports early Lundahl trannies but they are fixed bias, and changing tubes need re-biasing. I don’t think I have the biasing procedure anymore; otherwise I’d post it as a service; 2) I had the Meridian 506.20 for quite a while in NYC before selling it to a friend. Solid work, both the 506 and 508 series.