The Davidson "Panga" dipole line source

[oivavoi]

Has anybody heard of - or heard - this speaker?

I like dipoles, and I like line sources. So I google searched "dipole line source", to see if something like that existed. Apparently it's not a very common design, since this was the first thing that came up:

For reasons that are unclear to me, the designer chose to greet visitors to his site with a picture of his speaker trapped inside a giant skull. The website also contains many mentions of a mystical "Dr Bambamba", of whom it is said that "...we at Davidson had all become accustomed to his peculiar juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated related observations about Africa, a sabertoothed tiger, and The Panga loudspeaker".

Without the skull though, it looks like this:

It's 233 cm high, and goes all the way up to the ceiling.

The design seems to date back to the 90s. Except for the fact that it's passive (it was the 90s after all), I think it looks like a really interesting design. AFAIK, line sources should go all the way to the ceiling, unless they are curved and are designed by a genius like Don Keele. It's dipole, which I like. The bass is handled by a transmission line tower, which also is said to function as a diffuser for the rear wave, which makes it possible to place it closer to a wall. The whole project also gets bonus points for the sheer absurdity of it all.

So: What happened to this speaker? Has it ever existed in the wild? And are there other designs like it?

 

[watchnerd]

I would put a smoke machine into the top of the transmission line tower to make it look like a choo choo train.

 

[DonH56]

Wisdom makes line sources: http://www.wisdomaudio.com/index.php

Bob Carver, too: http://www.bobcarvercorp.com/als

Most dipoles (ESLs and planar dynamics) "look like" a line source as the frequency increases and the wavelength becomes smaller than the panel.

 

[RayDunzl]

it looks like this:

http://www.angelfire.com/biz/davidson/

"The dipole line source ribbon used in both has the speed and low distortion characteristics of the finest electrostatic while being very reliable and capable of very high sound pressure levels. The unique transmission line enclosure for the low frequencies utilizes six feet of the transmission line as a diffuser for the backwave from the ribbon."

Hmmm. I thought it was one facing forward and one facing the rear.

I've considered putting a round dispersion tube or half-tube behind my panels just to see, but never have, and seem to have lost some interest in that with my recent experience with wide dispersion speakerlets.