The idea before the cabinet
The P17 ambition dates to around 2010. The attraction was already architectural: open radiation, vintage green cones and the scale of a large bass driver.
30 November 2022
The drivers were first wired and played before final mounting. The diary immediately identified live character, control, energy and extraordinary vocals. That matters because the sonic premise existed before the final cabinet could influence expectations.
February 2025
The cabinets were completed on 6 February. The first assembled test the next day produced the most emotional note in the archive: “They feel like living creatures.”
5 March 2025
The mounted crossover and final wiring complete the reference pair. The final note shifts away from attributes altogether: “The songs feel like stories.” That sentence defines the project better than a list of audiophile adjectives.
The chronology matters because the final speaker was not the first speaker
The P17 ambition dates back to around 2010, but the first actual wired listening note arrives on 30 November 2022. At that stage the drivers were not mounted in the finished cabinets, yet the notes already emphasised live presence, vocal realism, balance and energy.
The cabinets were commissioned on 2 January 2025 and completed on 6 February. On 7 February the assembled test-rig listen produced the “living creatures” description: wide, deep, immersive and emotionally real. The completed crossover and installation followed on 5 March 2025.
The crossover was part of completing the dream, not an accessory
The reference network used a 4 µF IPL Supersound high-frequency cap, Alcap + IPL combinations in midrange and bass, silver-plated internal wiring and the documented second-order high-frequency inductor. Only after that network became a listening reference did the later capacitor tiers make sense.
The next development therefore begins from evidence
A full-film ClarityCap/Monacor route and a later ODAM-heavy V-Cap route remain valid experiments precisely because the original network stays available as the baseline. The build history prevents component prestige from rewriting what actually worked.