Lowther Manufacturing Co. 
Lowther House, St. Mark’s Road, Bromley, Kent. (1930 -      )

Lowther  Loudspeakers 
Northamptonshire (2018 -     )

Lowther Loudspeakers has a reputation as one of the top British hi-fi designers and was started by a collaboration between engineer Paul Voigt and O. P. Lowther.
The two men collaborated on their first project, the Lowther-Voigt Radio, producing a range of high-end radiograms, amplifiers, tuners, and loudspeakers offering many different adaptations for home use including custom cabinets.

The company is still in business manufacturing and supplying hi-fi loudspeakers around the world.

Lowther started producing hi-fi amplifiers and tuners in the early 1930s in the large wooden radiogram-style cabinet that was popular at the time. What was unusual was that the better-quality sets did not generally have built-in loudspeakers.

Voigt stated in his interview with Bruce C. Edgar in 1981;

I first met the young O. P. Lowther at RadiOlympia in 1934. It was his ambition to market the best possible radiogramophone, which naturally needed the best possible speaker.
This meeting developed into a very friendly alliance with the Lowther Mfg. Co.
Their excellent tuners and amplifiers, together with Voigt speakers, made up the Lowther-Voigt Radiogram, which set a very high standard of performance.[1]

A version of the Paul Voigt Corner Horn loudspeaker was incorporated into the radiogram. [2]

This loudspeaker was an amazing unit, with its small, six-inch full-range cone and very large, powerful electromagnet. Later modifications included fitting a 'Whizzer' cone to the centre of the main cone to improve high frequencies and produce a response that extended past 13kHz.

Voigt explains the development of the permanent magnet driver unit;

In 1939, when Hitler walked into Poland, Britain had sterner tasks on hand and speaker research stopped in its tracks.

By the time the war was in its last stages, newer magnetic materials, known variously as Ticonal, AIcomax, and Alnico V, had proved their worth and were able to provide a magnetomotive force far exceeding that obtainable with 40-50 watts of electrical excitation. When research could be resumed, it was with these newer materials in mind.

This time I concentrated on producing a permanent magnet unit with the magnetic material in the centre. As a matter of policy, I retained the old stylus as far as possible.

I thought it might eventually be practical to convert existing excited field speakers to PM, thus enabling Voigt speaker owners to bring their speakers up to date at minimum expense.

Our policy on diaphragms had been similar, and when the twin cone came out in 1933 they were mounted so as to make them interchangeable with earlier single cones. When we introduced the light coil twin in 1938 that too was interchangeable.

As it required a gap of 1½ mm., we made liners that could be fitted to existing magnets. With these the flux density went up to the 18,000-19,000 gauss.

In the post-war period Mr. Chave, Mr. Lowther's former chief technician who now owned the firm, shared my opinion that the excited-field speaker would be regarded as obsolete and therefore we needed a PM version.

He pushed on with experiments on a version using the magnetic material externally, while I carried on with my experiments using an internal magnet block. At my suggestion, we worked independently and did not compare notes till completion.

The outcome of his work was the Lowther PM series (British Patent #618,802 and #628,432); the outcome of mine was reviewed in Wireless World, March 1949. I subsequently improved the design still further, but it is no longer in production as my company became dormant some years after I emigrated to Canada. [1]

The American designer Stewart Hegeman then became involved and produced a new flagship horn known simply as 'The Hegeman'. This relied on the same basic twin-cone driver allied to the new PM4 magnet unit, which has the most unbelievably powerful gap-flux of 24,000 Gauss.

The Hegeman has a huge monster of a cabinet, four feet tall, four feet wide, and two feet deep. It has a folded bass horn to the rear (or, more correctly, underneath) the driver and a plaster-of-Paris midrange and treble horn.
It is believed that it had a short production run in 1950/51 and only 20 to 30 units were produced. They were three times the price of the most expensive Lowther speaker at the time.

Lowther made valve power amplifiers, pre-amplifiers, and FM/AM tuners in the 1950s.

Their first transistor amplifier followed in October 1956.[3]

They manufactured an Organino electronic keyboard instrument under license to Neonvox Holland in the early 1970s.

Martin Thornton acquired Lowther Loudspeakers Limited in late 2018, following the retirement of the previous owners. The manufacturing process and warranty period remained unaffected by the change in ownership.

In 2021 the company was still doing research and development for new Lowther products and will release a brand new flagship range of speakers designed for the modern era of audio reproduction along with the return of a few timeless favorites. [4]

[1] An Interview with P.G.A.H. Voigt, Bruce C. Edgar, Speaker Builder 3/81. Page 18.
[2] Wireless World Mar 3, 1938 Page 201.
[3] Wireless World Oct 1956 Page 74.
[4] Lowtherloudspekers website, accessed Sep 2022.