Forget the weird Bang & Olufsen x Balenciaga speaker bag, Audio Pro x Andreas Wargenbrant is the audio expert x artist collaboration I want to see. Essentially, it’s a luxurious rose gold and sophisticated black edition of the Audio Pro’s Addon T3 + Bluetooth Speaker – and how Audio Pro makes some of the finest, most talented, retro-styled, leather-handled Bluetooth speakers and sonically gifted I’ve ever heard, this is the beautiful icing on the driver stuffed cake.
In case you didn’t know (and that’s ok! Every day is a learning day: a team member just learned the difference between Holland and Holland just now), Andreas Wargenbrant is an artist, entrepreneur and much, much more. He manages to get more done in a year than some of us do in a lifetime – always thinking outside the box (see what he did there?).
Wargenbrant is best known for his sculptural work with metals such as bronze, copper, and cast iron. Among his works you will find a bijou bronze horse and a chopped platinum card marinated in red wine, but I know him from my first dollara green patinated bronze sculpture displayed at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas.
Perhaps alarmingly for the audiophile lurking in me, his methods often involve letting the metal in his sculptures sit outside for long periods of time, then machining them with different abrasives. But despite the external nature of the press footage, there is no evidence to suggest that such practices are encouraged or have ever been done in the components and/or grilles of the beautiful new Addon T3+ Bluetooth speaker.
Opinion: Finally, an artist/audio partnership to get excited about
Swedish specialist Audio Pro is the perfect vehicle for Wargenbrant (see the A36 floor-standing speakers for reference, though the company can do even better in the portable realm) – and allowing him to express himself through his own version of the popular loudspeaker. The brand’s T3+ Bluetooth speaker is inspired.
The result is a sleek black speaker with luxurious gold grilles over the treble and bass drivers, and with a beautifully rock ‘n’ roll leather headband. I want to take him to work, to the park, to the beach and then home with me.
And the best part for me personally is that on the left side of the speaker, Wargenbrant even added his trademark ‘W’ brushed metal plate.
When you look at Audio Pro’s products, you get a sense of luxury even without Wargenbrant’s welcome involvement – and that less is more metallic and black approach is quite beautiful.
As with all Audio Pro design projects, this specific version of the T3+ is a limited edition product. Each Audio Pro x Wargenbrant T3+ edition has a unique number on a metal plate on the side of the speaker. A future collector’s item? Given Wargenbrant’s growing popularity, it’s certainly doable.
prices? Ah, no one seems to know… and no fee could dull my desire for this particular model. But the original T3+ retails for around $220 / £180 / AU$300 and is an excellent wireless speaker for this price.
How to get my hands on a though: begging? Borrow? Rewrite this piece with the Veruca Salt-style headline: “Somebody buy me this speaker or will I scream and scream until I get sick?” Wish me luck when my editor comes…