There are quite a few who still tend to show interest in the fabulous Rauna transmission-line speakers made of concrete which date back to 1982 and bear the signatures of the late Mr Bo Hansson, Mr Lennart Bergstedt and Mr Olle Neckman.
To those, I have some news. The expression ‘It is not over until the fat lady sings’ can perhaps apply to Rauna of Sweden.
The fundamental idea behind the Rauna speakers was that, by building them using concrete instead of wood as the relevant construction material, it was argued that you could create a cabinet that would result in great acoustics while providing more stability than similar constructions made from wood. The retail price could at the same time be kept rather low as the concrete used for the cabinet was much cheaper than wood. The Rauna inventor wanted thereby to demonstrate that it was possible to attain first-class sound without having to spend a fortune.
The name ‘Rauna’ originates from the family name ‘Raunavaara’ on Mr Bo Hansson’s side. Mr. Hansson wanted at the same to find a name to be associated with the Nordic countries and runic letters carved in stone. It was an immediate success. Rauna of Sweden could at the time claim almost half of the market for upper-class speakers in Sweden. This represented some 20 percent of the production. The rest went on export predominantly to the US.
The slogan used by Rauna at the time (which allegedly originated from an American visitor of a hifi exhibition in the US) was: ‘The worst thing you can make from six particle boards is a speaker’.
Despite the success of the Rauna speaker, tensions started to grow between Mr Bo Hansson and his colleagues, and Mr Hansson decided to start a new production under his own label – Opus 3 – in 1984. This was also the label that he used for the record company that he had founded together with Mr Jan-Erik Persson. Mr Jan-Erik Persson is still today running this record company under the Opus 3 label.
The production of the Opus 3 series, which was located to Degerfors in Sweden, resulted in the birth of the Delta series, with the Credo, Chorus and Chaconne speaker models. Even the top-of-the-line model, Cresendo, was produced at this facility. However, the producton of this speaker ceased after a couple of years. A further product which has been developped at the Degerfors facility is the Continuo turntable.
During the banking crisis in Sweden in 1990, the company went into liquidation and the moulds used for the production of the speakers were sold to another company which eventually also included Rauna. In 2003, Mr Bo Hansson bought back all the moulds along with the Sinus driver manufacture. Mr Hansson had previously used the Sinus drivers in his Opus 3 speakers.
Following his successful recuperation of the moulds and the Sinus drivers, Mr Hansson took up a small-scale production and developped new, bigger high-end models such as CaveRex, Ukko, Hugin and Munin. The operation also included a limited production of a turntable and the Credo and Tyr speaker models.
The idea was to ressume production at full scale in 2011. Unfortunately, Mr Bo Hansson passed away in May that year. The turntable production was taken over by Mr Håkan Agborg at Nykroppa Snickeri in Sweden. Please refer to http://www.continuo.se for further details.
Existing stock of Sinus drivers, tools and moulds were taken over by the two brothers Mr Lennart Niklasson and Mr Martin Niklasson, where Lennart is in charge of product development and after-sales service while Martin concentrates on sales and finance. Given that the two brothers have worked with Mr Bo Hansson since the mid-1980’s, they are both very familiar with Mr Hansson’s visions.
The two brothers are hopeful to further develop Mr Hansson’s idea and concept and take it to the next level. Work is progressing to develop new drivers and filters to be used with existing speaker models, and upgraded kits are now available for Chorus, Credo, Leira, Tyr, Njord and Ymer.
Last, but not least, the two brothers are in the process of producing new concrete cabinets to be able to soon offer complete speakers to the custoners! 🙂
http://rauna.mamutweb.com/default.htm
http://rauna.mamutweb.com/Shop/List/Rauna/10/1
http://rauna.mamutweb.com/Shop/Product/ChorusCredo-uppgraderingssats/CHORUSKIT
http://rauna.mamutweb.com/Shop/Product/Leira-uppgraderingsats-2-inkl-front/LEIRAUPPGRADERING2
http://rauna.mamutweb.com/Shop/Product/Njord-kit-v-2/NJORDKIT
http://rauna.mamutweb.com/Shop/Product/Ymer-Kit-v-2/YMERKIT