To be fair, the audio industry itself nurtured that attitude. Party naturally, as it expanded, it became commonplace, and a good part of the "cool" attitude rests on the premise that you have something while many others don't.
Just look at audio industry's record for cool products. Almost zero. Even if they tried here and there, it always boiled doen to a black pressed steel box with a brushed aluminium facia and big knobs.
Who remembers efforts from people like Lecson (design by Boothroyd), the rainbow pot/switch preamp and the cylindrical power amps? Or the totally futuristic receiver from France's Jack Setton? Or the unique designs ny Italy's Glactron? Not to even mention Denmark's Bang & Olufsen, or Britain's much lamented Armstrong?
In those days, brute Butch design ruled supreme. Everybody and their dog wanted to be "professional" with 19" rack designs. Only now, as you pointed out and I agreed, does the audio industry seriously consider industrial design, and being just 40 years too late, it is now going overboard with wild case designs and sheer metal waste.
Top one is a preamp, bottom one is power amp.
Fully separate units, only coordinated front panels.
The front panels were designed and executed by Helgi Joensen from Stavanger, Norway.
I really dig his work, have several art pieces from him that have nothing to do with audio
.Jan
Yamaha B6, which I audited in a regular electric appliance store around '79/'80. I can post examples all day if you like.
Same same for the RCS-X1000, seen it, heard it (and know just about everything there is to know about Jacky Setton).
It's the current day and age that lacks any imagination.
I helped someone design an amp recently . Asked if he had a competitor I said Pioneer . After a pause I said he should relax as no one would be interested . The Pioneer looks for all the world like any eBay secondhand amp since 1979 . Beautifully made with zero imagination . A friend has a Mazda RX 7 car . There is a photo not unlike a 1950's one . It is Bob , me , RX7 engine bay and a Garrard 301 . Some guy came up and said " what is that all about " . My dearest friend Martina said " that is joy " . RX7 proves it can be done . It is around the engine that looks like Ferrari must have helped/inspired them . Neat , but not inhuman .
The late 60's and early 70's were a period of real originality. I think this was to some degree a progenitor of the Setton: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wVe9yxFNnQ . JBL at the time took industrial design seriously and was very much a leader. It all faded away as the mass market for audio grew. The really interesting edgy designs actually would put off many conservative customers. An industrial designer told me back then that GE made two versions of a clock radio, one really modern and cool, the other with wood grained plastic and not very attractive. The wood grain outsold the slick design 100:1.
Audio customers are similar to those conservative middle American buyers of the 60's and 70's. Really not into the unfamiliar stuff. Even today the massive front panel or heavy machining is necessary to tell the target consumer the contents are worthy.
Audio customers are similar to those conservative middle American buyers of the 60's and 70's. Really not into the unfamiliar stuff. Even today the massive front panel or heavy machining is necessary to tell the target consumer the contents are worthy.
It is now RX-8 . This RX 7 is 410 BHP . A bit daft as it is dangerously too much . This guy built Concords and now builds the Garrard 501 . Bob is more dyslexic than me . When he said how did he pass the interview it was the BSA Gold star he owned and maintained , beyond that wasn't important . He never mentioned 9 Concorde's at the interview ! It was the flight deck instruments and wiring .
The 7 became the RX8 and now no more ...
I still love the look of McIntosh stuff and my Thresholds, i have a fondness for polished alloy, even on racecars , prefer the look over carbon. Modern day electronics look too pedestrian , funny , years gone by , each manufacture had their own identity, i mean you could tell who was who from across the room , now most if not all mass market stuff is generic looking dodo , well for the most part, the identity thing is still strong in the hi-end...
I still love the look of McIntosh stuff and my Thresholds, i have a fondness for polished alloy, even on racecars , prefer the look over carbon. Modern day electronics look too pedestrian , funny , years gone by , each manufacture had their own identity, i mean you could tell who was who from across the room , now most if not all mass market stuff is generic looking dodo , well for the most part, the identity thing is still strong in the hi-end...
Last edited:
Demian, it WAS the "average" US customer who forced the looks on all of us. USA was by far the bigest market for audio gear throughout the 70ies, accounting for well over 60% of Japanese audio industry exports. It is therefore to be expected that the looks of the gear will be dicateted by the majority customer. Not condaming or blaming anyone, it's a simple fact of life for any mass manufacturing industry.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch ... the Germans in particular are a true enigma regardig audio industry. In terms od design, they were literally centuries in front of the Japanese, but outside Germany, they failed to even raise any eyebrows. For reasons I cannot explain, much as I would love to, the Germans never caught on what sells, so even by the late 70ies, they were still offering very well designed products, powered by weedy electronics nobody but them even considered as half serious, such as receivers with power ratings of 25W into 4 Ohma nominal, but with 33W "music power". And most were still capacitor coupled. In a world in which 60-70W/8 Ohms was considered as medium power, offering 20W/8 Ohms (if that) is suicidal.
Germans are genrally cautious, but not late; in the audio industry, they were late by say 20-30 years at least, on average. Of course, there were small designers who did the right thing, but they were too few and generally too expensive to seriously threaten anyone, even if some of their products were truly magnificent (e.g. LAS, Restek AKA Restek-Thorens, and eventually Burmester). To add insult to injury, they remaind faithful to the foreclosure to DIN connectors, when nobody but them had any except for a token DIN conncetor for the tape recorder. And as was to be expected, most went banrupt or simply gave up on audio.
The first step was getting the Japanese to OEM whole product lines; for exampls, the BASF line was designed and manufactured by Luxman of Japan, Austrian Eumig was designed and made by Denon, and Wega was sold off to Sony, so beside the Lab Zero series which were German designed, the rest of the product line were repackaged and not very well redisgned Sony models. Harman International bought Uher of Munich (well known for their open reel tape machines) and Becker, a highly respected German auto audio brand, Sony bought out Wega, and so forth, while other worthy players, such as Telefunken, struggled on for a few more years and eventually abandoned mass produced audio.
For a peek at what the said companies made, look here: </titlehifi> <link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/x-icon" href="http://wegavision.pytalhost.com/favicon.ico"> <title>HiFi Archiv .
Last edited:
I will admit its hard to look at this and not love carbon thou..
Honestly Wayne, I beg to differ. It's very easy to look at it and dislike it all.
If course, it has nothing to do with the technical achievement behind it.
Dvv . Did you know 1000's of tape decks were built by Garrard ( perhaps millions ) . They were cheaper than Japan could do . You will have seen them in most of the better all in one Japaneses stereo systems . All would appear to be of Japanese origin . BSR also supplied nearly all of the cheaper turntables ( 70% total world production , 6 million unit per year if I wasn't lied to ) . Both these companies were unbeatable in what they did . Seeing the awful Chinese turntables that fill that vacuum BSR was a class act . The BSR with an OK ceramic PU sold to Japan at £6 . Sony attempted it's own version in the SQP 20 . What a pile of junk . What happened is industrial relations were poor . No one invested and that brief moment of glory lost forever . As far as I know Garrard were ahead of the game . They pioneered this stuff and were in the driving seat . These items were strictly secret as the Japanese would have lost face . If I can find an example I will show it .
BIC . The guy used to write to me . His gripe was he was left with all the work and no thanks . It is remarkable how he cloned the design in short time and made money He wrote to me about being the one who made Porsche a winning racing car . The big win for Porsche was the Garrard Porsche before the spit . BIC was about Garrard UK not wanting to help with that . He estimated it worth $50 000 000 in publicity . Garrard thought it a waste of money. 1972 if I am correct ? 50 M is a bit exaggerated ( now terms I think he meant ) . I can understand Garrard wondering . He was a very driven person to be this successful .
NoGripRacing :: GTR2 Downloads - Porsche 911 RSR Daytona 24h #59 for GTL-GTR2
BIC . The guy used to write to me . His gripe was he was left with all the work and no thanks . It is remarkable how he cloned the design in short time and made money He wrote to me about being the one who made Porsche a winning racing car . The big win for Porsche was the Garrard Porsche before the spit . BIC was about Garrard UK not wanting to help with that . He estimated it worth $50 000 000 in publicity . Garrard thought it a waste of money. 1972 if I am correct ? 50 M is a bit exaggerated ( now terms I think he meant ) . I can understand Garrard wondering . He was a very driven person to be this successful .
NoGripRacing :: GTR2 Downloads - Porsche 911 RSR Daytona 24h #59 for GTL-GTR2
Nigel, while I am aware that both BSR and Garrard sold both as original brands and did OEM (as did Dual, Perpetuum Ebner, etc), I seriously doubt figures like 70% of world production by ANYONE, at any time. Even in Japan, the masters of mass production, competiton was so stiff that nobody could hit such figures.
No, I didn't know Garrard made tape decks of any kind, I believed them to be a turntable company only. But then, I was never seriously interested in Garrard. As far as I am aware, only Ferrograph (open reel) and Neal (cassette decks) made tape machines in the UK, but it's always possible I missed someone or other. I mean actually made, constructed them from scratch, not OEMed them from someone.
No, I didn't know Garrard made tape decks of any kind, I believed them to be a turntable company only. But then, I was never seriously interested in Garrard. As far as I am aware, only Ferrograph (open reel) and Neal (cassette decks) made tape machines in the UK, but it's always possible I missed someone or other. I mean actually made, constructed them from scratch, not OEMed them from someone.
UK tape machine makers
In London Brenell Engineering made a lot of open reel tape machines, mainly 1/4inch, in the 1950s and 1960s, built from scratch, pressed the metal plates and wound the coils, I worked in their factory on Liverpool Road Islington in the late 1970s, we (Allen+Heath) took them over to get the "portable" 1 inch 8 track machine to go with our sound mixers, pioneers of the home recording studio.
Home
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenell_Engineering_Ltd.
In London Brenell Engineering made a lot of open reel tape machines, mainly 1/4inch, in the 1950s and 1960s, built from scratch, pressed the metal plates and wound the coils, I worked in their factory on Liverpool Road Islington in the late 1970s, we (Allen+Heath) took them over to get the "portable" 1 inch 8 track machine to go with our sound mixers, pioneers of the home recording studio.
Home
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenell_Engineering_Ltd.
So, they were bought out by the Americans, which is why I found them registered as a US company. Point is, I had no idea they were Brits originally, in the datasheet I saw they were treated as Americans.
- Status
- Not open for further replies.