Wharfedale Heritage

Gilbert Briggs, who founded Wharfedale in 1932, turned the company into one of the most famous loudspeaker manufacturers in the world by concentrating on quality and value for money. The Wharfedale Denton exemplified these two edicts, balancing fine craftsmanship, natural sound quality and affordability inside a compact loudspeaker that was bought in its millions right across the globe.

Gilbert Briggs built his very first loudspeaker in the cellar of his home in Ilkley, Yorkshire. This sleepy little market town was located in the valley of the river “Wharfe”, an area known to this day as ‘Wharfedale’. This unlikely location would see the birth of a brand that was to become recognised all over the world, synonymous with quality in high-fidelity reproduction. Gilbert Briggs is still much admired and respected throughout the world for his pioneering work in hi-fi reproduction and his endless pursuit of better sound quality,  driven by his love of live music.

Gilbert set up a small factory near Bradford to build his new loudspeaker drive units. Radio was an exciting technology and word of the new transducers had spread quickly around the area. Demand was growing quickly. Initially, the true spirit of the cottage industry, his wife, Doris Edna Briggs was the production department, spending many late nights soldering wires and winding coils.

…ooo…

Now, with more than 75 years of setting the standards in perfecting loudspeaker performance, the most advanced research and development program, and the most integrated and thorough manufacturing and quality control process in the industry, Wharfedale, in order to remain at the forefront of audio, has dedicated a 1.5 million square foot of manufacturing operation in which every single product and process takes place in-house. This makes the design of any new loudspeaker an acoustic engineer’s dream. Instead of having to use off-the-shelf components from a catalogue as most other purported ‘hi-fi’ companies choose to, we are able to build a complete vision. To engineer every single component from scratch to achieve a harmony in performance and balance.