The Classic Petite and Elite SX models share many components, as well as a long lineage. The original Petite, introduced in 1991, broke new gound in several aspects of its design. Its compact, rigid cabinet housed a 168mm bass midrange drive unit in an 8 litre cabinet, tuned via a 32mm diameter port as a controlled leak rather than a traditional reflex tuning. The choice of tweeter and its implementation were very important in the original version, as the rendering of high frequencies contributes very strongly to the integrity of the system as a whole. The bass/midrange unit was a simple treated paper cone device, with 25mm voice coil and a ferrite magnet. Simple, but perfectly optimized for it’s purpose in the Petite. The tweeter being a modified Audax unit, with a plastic dome coated with Titanium. This was mounted on a specially-designed aluminium faceplate and mounted to the cabinet with a silicone sealant rather than screws.
When the floorstanding version, the Elite, appeared in 1998, many of these principles were transferred from the Petite, as well as several other original solutions. The Elite featured a dual-port staggered tuning arrangement, one narrow-band low-Q, and one wide-band high-Q port, the latter located on the bottom of the cabinet, firing downward onto a solid slate plinth. The cabinet being supported above the plinth by aluminium spacers.
These aspects of the Classic designs continue to the present day, though the drive units and crossovers have evolved over the years so that the SX suffix now represents these models at the pinnacle of their capabilities.