Meet Your Maker: Bowers & Wilkins

Although most of what Bowers & Wilkins manufactures now comes out of China, the prestigious 800 Series and Nautilus loudspeakers are still made by hand in a factory in Worthing, on the south coast of England. We had a unique opportunity to look around the factory and follow the process from beginning to end.

The company makes many of its drive units in house (unfortunately, the production line for that section wasn’t active on the day of the visit) although it constructs its tweeters using custom diamond diaphragms sourced elsewhere in the UK. The 800 Series construction process is lengthy and painstaking, with testing at every stage and extensive documentation to determine who built what on each pair of loudspeakers. The cross-layered ply used in the cabinets is shaped in house, then cured, painted, polished, and finished to the highest standard before assembly. The shaping process places such tension on the cabinet that its manufacture requires a custom-built counter-tensioning jig for final assembly, and even using that itself slows the construction process down. A typical 800 loudspeaker takes several weeks from raw materials to end product.

Few companies in the high-end sector of the audio industry have this size of plant to call upon, and it shows in every aspect of the product. The consistency Bowers & Wilkins can realise from this south coast plant is difficult to achieve without this kind of dedicated factory.