Monitor Audio Bronze 3 Towers — Shot-Loaded, Made in England

Monitor Audio Bronze 3 — An English Tower Somebody Took the Trouble to Shot-Load, and It Shows

A pair of slim floorstanders made in England, mass-loaded with shot by a previous owner and weighing fifty pounds each because of it.

The Bronze Series

Monitor Audio launched the Bronze series in 2000 as the entry point to its range, and the Bronze 3 was the small tower in that line — a two-way column just seven and a half inches wide that disappears into a room far better than its bass output suggests it should. The tweeter is a one-inch C-CAM gold dome, ceramic-coated aluminium and magnesium, a Monitor Audio signature that pushes dome breakup well clear of the audible band. Below it sits a six-and-a-half-inch Metal Matrix Polymer mid-bass driver — a polymer cone stiffened with a metal matrix, the company’s route to a rigid, well-damped cone at a price the Bronze range had to hit. The result reaches down to 40 Hz and stays clean at the top, which is a good deal more than the original asking price implied.

Placement

Two practical points follow from the design. The port fires from the front, so these can sit closer to a wall than a rear-ported tower without the bass turning boomy — genuinely useful for a slim floorstander in a real room. And at 90 dB sensitivity they are an easy load: a modest integrated amplifier drives them properly, and there is no need to go shopping for power to make them work.

What Was Done to This Pair

What makes this particular pair worth talking about is what somebody did to them afterwards.

Shot-Loading, Explained

These cabinets have been mass-loaded with shot, and the mass sits in the bottom of the cabinet. From the factory a Bronze 3 weighs about thirty-one pounds; these weigh fifty each on our own scale. That is nineteen pounds of added mass per cabinet, and it does exactly what the people who do this are chasing: it damps the panels so the box contributes less of its own character to the music, and it drops the centre of gravity so the speaker sits planted rather than perched. Putting it in the base is the right place for it — it leaves the acoustic volume of the enclosure alone, so the bass tuning is exactly as Monitor Audio intended. On a slim, light, tall cabinet — which is precisely what the Bronze 3 is — it is the single most effective thing an owner can do. It is not a factory option and we make no claim that it is. It is a previous owner’s work, and it is good work.

The Weight, and Why It Is Pickup Only

The practical consequence is that these are heavy. Fifty pounds in a cabinet this narrow feels startling the first time you pick one up, and it is worth knowing before you plan where they are going.

Condition

Tested here and working properly. Cosmetically the pair is graded Very Good — they present well, with only the standard signs of use.

A few relevant specifications:

An English-built tower that somebody took the trouble to make better, and the weight is the proof.

Monitor Audio Bronze 3 Specifications

• Two-way front-ported bass reflex floorstanding design, sold as a pair
• Made in England, stamped on the cabinet
• 1″ C-CAM gold dome tweeter; 6.5″ Metal Matrix Polymer mid-bass driver
• Frequency response 40 Hz to 25 kHz, ±3 dB
• Sensitivity 90 dB / W / M
• Nominal impedance 6 ohms
• Power handling 100 watts continuous, 150 watts peak
• Mass-loaded in the base by a previous owner
• Introduced in 2000
• Dimensions, each cabinet: (Height x Width x Depth) 32.8 x 7.5 x 9.0 inches (834 x 191 x 229 mm)
• Weight: 50.0 lbs each, as weighed here — factory specification is 31 lbs

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