Blast from my past – Anthony Gallo's Reference 3 floorstander [$2'599] which I wrote up in 2004 was one of those watershed products. "It first debuted at HE2003 and then in final production version at CES 2004. The Ref 3 heralds the return of one of the most unique speakers in history – the original Gallo Reference aka Twin Balls. By fitting the ground-breaking 330° CDT tweeter atop an aluminium sphere that housed the Dynaudio woofer, auxiliary woofer module below, it conjured up visions of stick-insect Martians with stacked cyclops eyes and a Mohawk of one lone hair-sprayed tuft sprouting on the bald head. Though universally acclaimed for its sonics, the cosmetics of the first-generation Reference proved grounds for endless aesthetic revisions. They all were attempts to essentially hide from view what made the speaker unique in the first place; shoehorn its appearance into something more boxy, conventional and demure." The 88dB Reference 3 really wasn't that other than surprisingly demure at 3 feet tall, 8" wide and 14" deep. It combined an MTM array of spherically loaded carbon-fibre mids bracketing Anthony's foil tweeter above a sidefiring woofer loaded into a minimal metal canister all mounted to a back-leaning metal spine. The woofer's second voice coil had a separate set of binding posts to be bi-amped through a 60Hz external low-pass. Today Gallo Acoustics are owned by their former UK distributor and I don't know whether Anthony still works in the sector possibly uncredited behind the scenes. His unique tweeter remains available in the Strada 2, essentially the updated head array of the Ref 3 as a small desktop or stand-mount monitor or turned sideways, centre channel. The actual Ref 3 proved too difficult to continue building cost-effectively so discontinued. But in my memory it still stands proud as a premium example of high value and out-of-the-box thinking. Who is today's Anthony Gallo?
