Star Bamboo Singapore

I came across bamboo speakers by a Japanese designer Fumi Masuda this morning while having my daily dose of green blogs. Sounds like a good idea.

When friends heard I was in the bamboo flooring line in 2001, a few of them audiophiles came asking for bamboo speakers and LP turntables to be fabricated.

Now, I’m not sure whether there’re any actual audio benefits to using bamboo. The high density and strength of bamboo could dampen vibrations and contribute to a purer sound.

Well, our company was (and still is) focused on producing flooring and never got around to this little project.

I did a Google search and it turns out that Fumi Masuda wasn’t the first. But there are some interesting differences among them.

Masuda made his speaker boxes using bamboo material similar to our bamboo flooring:

There’s also the Bird-Electron EZ-TAKEGTF2, which made clever use of a bamboo pole as the speaker body:

and even a bamboo speaker diaphragm created by Panasonic:

I don’t know how commercially successful the above products will be, but it’s certainly a great showcase of the versatility of bamboo.