The Story of Malcolm Jones, his early years at KEF and the birth of Falcon Acoustics.

Falcon was conceived in 1972 at one of the Heathrow Audio Fairs that I was attending. At a late night after-show 'relaxing' session, and after a few relaxers talk got onto money, where it became clear that a newish sales person was earning £1000 p.a. more than me and had a company car. This was just about the time of the best-selling Reference Series104. How hard was it to sell that? 
At Audio Fairs I always had people asking where to buy capacitors, inductors and other bits of DIY speaker items, but unless they were items used by KEF in production, they were not available. It’s still the same now every time Falcon is at a Show.

While at KEF, I had designed self-bonding inductors as we had repeated cases of speakers coming back as faulty due to the ferrite cores falling out of the bobbins. This became worse when we changed from paper to plastic bobbins. Self-bonding involved a controlled heating up and softening of the insulating enamel round the wire and then letting it set solid. KEF however was not interested in taking this idea up for production.

I initially used the old hand coil winding machine bought to wind the first KEF voice coils in 1961, and being unsure of the strength of the bonding they were at first epoxy coated after the bonding process. To help curing, I used a couple of bare wires connected to a transformer for nominal safety and after dipping in epoxy, hung them over the wires. The heat from the wires speeded up the curing process. Any excess epoxy dripped down onto newspaper. After a few months, and as production increased, the epoxy was dropped as tests proved that the basic bonding was more than adequate. It was a lot safer too!

KEF’s coil supplier was having problems winding the Reference Series104 main LF coil. This was a tapped inductor wound with 21swg (0.9mm) wire on a ½” ferrite core. At KEF’s request, Falcon wound the first 100 which were self-bonded, but KEF still wanted them wrapped in PVC tape. KEF’s later inductors were taped after winding and then dipped in adhesive to prevent unravelling. I was sure self-bond was easier to make, better acoustically and more permanent. I had naturally told Raymond (Cooke) that I had started Falcon Acoustics, and being the astute business man he was, he altered the KEF technical enquiry routine. Up to that time I had spent part of Fridays answering the enquiries that Sales were unable to deal with. After Falcon the letters (these were the days before fax and emails) were separated into those that KEF (i.e. me) could answer and help with, and the rest were given to me to answer at home as Falcon. This worked really well, Falcon got sales from the KEF enquiries and KEF regained productive time from me. This kept both sets of customers happy.

Although Falcon Acoustics had been initially formed to supply the retail DIY market with a range of components and items needed for repairing and building a speaker system, the main advance and technical break-through was the production of Self-bonded Ferrite Cored Inductors to individual customers requirements. 
Falcon grew rapidly, then LNB, an old KEF customer, asked if we would wind some inductors for them. Another manufacturer asked, and Falcon continued to quickly expand with both manufacturer and retail orders. 

By 1974, it became obvious to me that it was impossible to carry on with both jobs. As the Reference 104 systems I designed were doing really well I thought that I would be able get another job in the speaker industry if Falcon did not succeed. So having talked it through again with Raymond I left KEF to concentrate exclusively on Falcon Acoustics.