Mission 770 Standmount Speakers
The Mission 770 represents one of the most iconic models in the long history of Mission loudspeakers. A model that embodied the Mission pioneering research through the late 70s and 80s, with a bloodline dating back to 1977. The original Mission 770 debuted in 1978. It quickly became Mission’s best-selling speaker, and gravitated naturally into MK2 and MK3 alterations with improvements to sensitivity and power handling. After that, the design eventually migrated to Freedom and other variations, but none of them made the sales impact or notoriety that the original 770 received.
The project’s design and engineering team was led by Peter Comeau, Mission’s current Director of Acoustic Design. Peter was a young reviewer for Hi-Fi Answers when the original 770 launched and well remembers its impact (he subsequently co-founded loudspeaker maker Heybrook in 1979). For Peter, the new Mission 770 is a labour of love; just as it was for Farad Azima all those years ago.
Made in the UK
The new 770 heralds the return of UK-based manufacturing for the Mission brand, where a 25,000 square foot production facility has been purpose-built in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire – the home of British Hi-Fi.
The Mission 770 has always been manufactured according to the Mission principles of quality and value for money. New Mission 770 further exemplifies these two edicts; balancing fine craftsmanship, natural sound quality, and affordability inside a beautifully proportioned loudspeaker that has been bought in its millions right across the globe through its various incarnations.
The original 770 was well known for its warm, rich and natural sounding character and the new Mission 770 retains that standing but imbues it with an open, detailed performance that will entice you to explore your whole music collection, once more.
Emphasis on Design
The emphasis for the design of the new Mission 770 is, indeed, that combination of polypropylene cone and resonance controlled cabinet. Accordingly, Mission has developed a new polypropylene driver, mimicking the extended response and low colouration of the original, while upgrading the motor system to take account of modern power handling and dynamic requirements. Naturally, like the original, the driver is built onto an 8-inch die-cast chassis with larger rear ‘windows’ to reduce early reflections back through the cone. Special care has been taken to marry a low-density nitrile surround to the cone to match its impedance and reduce reflections from the cone edge.
Drivers Anew
A new 20cm polypropylene mid/bass driver was developed for the re-engineered 770, mimicking the extended response and low colouration of the original, while upgrading the motor system to take account of modern power handling and dynamic requirements.
Like the original, the driver is built onto a die-cast chassis with large rear ‘windows’ to reduce early reflections back through the cone. Special care has been taken to marry a low-density nitrile surround to the cone, to match its impedance and reduce reflections from the cone edge.
The new polypropylene cone is loaded with minerals to make it stiffer than the original, yielding fast, tight bass that enables the listener to hear exactly how bass instruments are being played. This is balanced by tuning the cabinet and reflex port to a very low frequency, avoiding the ‘one note bass’ that is typical of a lot of bass reflex systems. In addition, the port is strongly flared at both inlet and outlet to smooth airflow and eradicate distortion. Bass extends powerfully and cleanly to below 30Hz in room, which is remarkable for this size of speaker.
The Woven textile soft dome treble unit – true to form, with a high flux ferrite magnet, is engineered for smooth, detailed HF extension. This new treble unit uses a lightweight, damped microfibre dome with an ultra-smooth response, backed by a damped rear chamber that pushes the fundamental resonance well below the crossover region. The quality of this 28mm dome marries perfectly with the mid/bass driver to ensure evenness of character throughout the range of the whole speaker.
