It introduces new cosmetics and an advanced form of the firm's championed transmission-line loading dubbed BASSIC. The Swift is the first new product since Meadowlark's move to upstate's Watertown last year. When his very own in-house cabinet shop finally gave him the necessary control and cost advantage to fashion a new statement $1000/pr tower, he didn't hesitate a brief New York minute. Never meaning to contribute to its shrinking choises for sophisticated music lovers, he was merely biding his time. McGinty remained only too aware that the Kestrel's relocation once again created an arid desertification in the $1K "audiophile floorstander" neighborhood. It escaped into more upscale digs, to greener pastures of weekly mowed designer grass and shiny cars parked curb-side. Squeezed between the twin screws of inflation and the addition of far more expensive parts, it eventually did vacate the hotly contested thousand-dollars-a-month-rent 'hood. It was even called "greatest bargain in all of audio" and similar pet names by more than one reviewer. It became prime example for what an affordable statement fullrange floorstander could be. The petite Kestrel soon endeared itself to thousands of music lovers. That's how loudly and persistently it advertised itself by sheer word-of-mouth. The haste whereby word of the Kestrel spread through the audiophile countryside should have prompted a renaming to "audacious cockerel". Coincidentally, the repute of designer/owner Pat McGinty began to grow beyond the previous confines of SoCal. In 1995 - and with far more than a faintly overheard overhead chirp - the original $995/pr Kestrel put the then-unknown Meadowlark Audio company firmly on the map.
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