'Finally, heritage-look speakers without the elite asking fee': KLH's Model Four floorstanders come with a decidedly retro 1970s price — and I want them | Tech Radar
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'Finally, heritage-look speakers without the elite asking fee': KLH's Model Four floorstanders come with a decidedly retro 1970s price — and I want them
Stunning 1970s cabinetry meets thoroughly modern audio
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KLH Model Four is the US brand's gorgeous new floorstanding speaker
Model Four takes the smaller Model Three's woofer and mid driver/tweeter of the bigger Model Five
At just $999 / £899 each, they're less expensive than I'd expected (although you're going to want to buy two)
Just look at those beautiful speakers! The angled up built-in stands; the three-way design; the glorious front baffle and wooden cabinetry. I haven't felt this way about speakers since I gazed upon the Leak Sandwich 100 — but those are standmount boxes, and they carry a similar price point (depending on where you live) to the much bigger beast you came here to read about: the KLH Model Four.
Finally, a set of heritage-look speakers but without the super-elite asking fees we've come to expect from such a design. I could also list the reimagined Audiovector Trapeze as one of the last times I felt so moved by a pair of hi-fi speakers. And like that charming family affair, I really want this legacy hi-fi brand's newest series to be a return to form inside as well as out.
I have a somewhat troubled relationship with KLH Audio — one of my first reviews as a full-time writer for our sister publication, What Hi-Fi?, involved helping to give the standmount 2019 KLH Albany a lowly three stars out of five. But that was then.
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This beautiful hand-made floor-standing speaker ain't cheap, but I can't take my eyes off it and I haven't even heard it yet
At that time (and despite being huge in the early 1960s, selling up to 30,000 loudspeakers per year) the company name had fallen away, until the former president of Klipsch bought it, back in 2017. Since April 2025, however, Victrola CEO Scott Hagen acquired the company.
Let's just say that the firm has moved on since I first had the pleasure. And wow, do these speakers show that…
You really are going to want to buy two though… (Image credit: KLH)
Impeccable specs for that asking fee — and I need to hear them
There is a reason that the quoted price —
KLH's reintroduced Model Five (2021) is the founding member of the Model Series, after which came the Model Three, a bookshelf solution. Then came Model Seven, the three-way flagship built around what KLH claims is the "industry's first acoustically suspended 13-inch woofer in an exceptionally narrow, wall-friendly cabinet."
Why say all of this? Because the Model Four aims to marry the strengths of those, in that it's built around the eight-inch woofer introduced in Model Three, it's a three-way speaker and it shares the same midrange driver, tweeter and crossover architecture as the acclaimed Model Five. Its cabinet also uses the wide baffle and shallow depth proportions of Model Seven, a profile "purpose-built for placement closer to walls".
Essentially, KLH wants you to know it's a speaker (or pair of speakers) built for people who want floorstanders but don't have the luxury of placing their towers of power as far away from the walls of their home as possible and still being able to walk around the room. The promise here is "tight, accurate bass with as little as a few inches of rear clearance". Woof!
Model Four boasts a 13-inch-wide front baffle and shallow 8.25-inch cabinet depth. The six-degree slanted riser (which comes with your purchase of each speaker) means that the total depth comes to just under 11 inches — the shallowest in the Model Collection.
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What of the drivers? Of course: each speaker comprises an eight-inch pulp-paper cone woofer with "reverse roll rubber suspension", a four-inch pulp-paper cone midrange and one-inch aluminum dome tweeter. A three-position Acoustic Balance Control switch — a KLH original introduced in the 1960s — also enables listeners to fine-tune the speaker's mid and high-frequency character, to suit your room's unique acoustics (and hopefully of course, your ears).
KLH's Model Four will be available in the US and select international markets beginning September 2026, and again, the retail price is
They'll also be on show at High End Vienna (yes, Vienna, although you're quite right — it used to be called High End Munich) and oh how I wish I was attending this year. Don't worry though, I've got other members of the team on it…
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Becky became Audio Editor at Tech Radar in 2024, but joined the team in 2022 as Senior Staff Writer, focusing on all things hi-fi. Before this, she spent three years at What Hi-Fi? testing and reviewing everything from wallet-friendly wireless earbuds to huge high-end sound systems. Prior to gaining her MA in Journalism in 2018, Becky freelanced as an arts critic alongside a 22-year career as a professional dancer and aerialist – any love of dance starts with a love of music. Becky has previously contributed to Stuff, Four Four Two and The Stage. When not writing, she can still be found throwing shapes in a dance studio, these days with varying degrees of success.
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