Back on track, my postal yellow high-gloss version was just as finely cut. Even under direct light, it showed off flawlessly even lacquer. The egg-yolk tint impressed with deep color intensity from which sunlight reflected off tiny glittering metal particles. It won't be everyone's cuppa but I found it very fresh and attractive, much like the Californians' motto 'bold is beautiful'. Indeed. Further options regardless of color are satin, flat and high-gloss textures. Obviously shared are 11kg of mass and reasonable compactness of 38.5cm height on a 18×25.8cm WxD base. The overall geometry isn't a squared-off box but combines a slightly raked baffle with a lightly trapezoid foot print which narrows toward the back. Included in the shipment are screw-in aluminium footers and a pair of cotton gloves. For all its chamois softness, the satiny surface of the black speaker does absorb skin oils. Keep your hands off if you don't want to clean.

Around back, the cab's upper half vents through a flared aluminium port below which sits a plain but finely furnished single-wire terminal plate. The incoming signal encounters oxygen-free hookup wiring with halogen-free sleeving from Germany's Sommer Cable. Past the filter, the wiring continues at different diameters to the three drivers. 90dB/W/m sensitivity is higher than expected. Here Wiggins doesn't pursue name doping with exotic parts but finessed filter layout. "We only use properly not loosely wound polypropylene non-polarized Erse capacitors, air- and iron-core Pulse X and SuperQ coils, non-inductive resistors and air-core inductors with solid-core OFC copper. More important is proper orientation to insure that capacitances and inductances don't cross-couple via their stray fields.”

Compact 3-ways are relative rarities. Off the top of my head, I only remembered Nubert's nuVero60 and nuPro A-600, a few coaxial Cabasse and KEF models and perhaps Rosso Fiorentino's Fiesole s2 even if its third way is just an "ultrasonic generator" aka super tweeter. Regardless, the IC-H1 Elite's crossover divides at 300Hz and 2'900Hz with a 6th-order acoustical treble high-pass, a 4th-order high/low-pass on the midrange and a 4th-order low-pass on the woofer. "All slopes are Bessel types since we find those best for steep roll-offs without compromised group delay." At 90dB without horn loading, the Starke Sound is more efficient than most compacts by design. "Rather than sacrifice sensitivity by pursuing unrealistic bass extension, we focus on higher efficiency and excellent +60Hz quality for typical close-wall positioning. Too many brands chase very low bass from tiny boxes. It's possible of course but throws away efficiency. And the fact is, no 13cm woofer will rattle your windows in the first place. So we don't even try for the impossible and prefer to optimize the possible." That explanation had a very reasonable ring to it.