As I mentioned in my previous post, Tannoy makes each pair of Westminster Royal Special Editions special for each customer as an order is received, so it takes a while from the time you place an order until they make your pair, test them, and ship them to their eagerly awaiting new owner (me in this case).
I settled in for the long wait ... well it really wasn’t that long, it just felt like it because I was so excited about getting a pair of Tannoy Westminster Royal SEs. I ordered the big West’s October 19, 2009, and I got a call from FedEx on December 30, 2009, that they had made their way safely from Coatbridge, Scotland, and were now in town and ready to be delivered to my residence.
The FedEx driver helped me get the big shipping containers for the Westminsters into my entryway. I made a call to my buddy Chad asking for some help to get them uncrated. The Westminsters sit upon interlocking pallets, and given that each of them weighs over 300 pounds, Tannoy recommends 5 people to lift them off their pallet.
Chad and I stared at the crates for a while trying to figure out how just the two of us were going to do what Tannoy recommended for 5 men. First we lifted of the cardboard shipping containers and set them aside. Then we removed the internal foam packing that is shrink-wrapped to the speakers and set it aside.
According to Tannoy’s directions, essentially you have to do a dead lift of the loudspeaker straight up off the pallet to clear the interlocking blocks, remove the pallet, and then set the speakers down. That means that each of the 5 men recommended would only have to dead lift a little over 60 pounds each.
But there were only two of us. Chad, an engineer, looked over the foam beams that protected the corners of the loudspeaker during shipping and noted how robust they were, and that they were the same length as the speaker. “Aha!” he said, “We can place the beams under the back of the speakers, lay the speaker down on them, and because the speaker pivots on its axis it means each of us only has to lift 75 pounds.” Brilliant. So that’s exactly what we did, and then pulled the pallet out and set it aside, and tipped the speakers back upright.
We wheeled the Westminsters in place (they have casters on the bottom) and did a rudimentary setup and got them up and playing. Holy cow! What great sounding speakers! We listened to record after record and were blown away with the Westminsters - and they weren’t even broken in yet!
As I would find out later, they get significantly better with more time on them, and now they are sounding positively otherworldly.
