Vintage Asylum

Posted by DavidLD (A) on September 09, 2014 at 05:54:11

In Reply to: RE: "No hi fi magazine ever gave any Utah loudspeaker the time of day." Maybe they though tof Utah as more of a... posted by J. S. Bach on September 08, 2014 at 16:30:32

Utah speakers were everywhere! But maybe the majority of them were branded Knight or Allied, and were ordered in various states of completion from Allied Radio cataloges through about 1970. They were frequently paired with a kit-built Knight (KG prefix) amplifier or factory built (KN prefix) amplifier or receiver. MOST if not all of the 2-and 3-way drivers Allied sold were probably of Utah manufacurer as well.

The odd thing I always thought is that magazines such as Stereo Review and High Fidelity never acknowledged that this aspect of the hobby even existed let alone run comparison tests with speakers from the "hoity-toity" east-coast companies such as Acoustic Research. They seemed to act as if they were above all the Knight kit builders running Utah-made speakers. Of course, Allied would happily sell you any AR speaker as well, and even sold some in unfinished pine.

My 1970 Allied catalog has all sorts of Utah-branded speakers and tons of Allied branded speakers that are Utahs in only slight disguise.

The Hi fi magazines such as High Fidelity ignored all of this.

The basic Utah design in later years that had the big 12 inch woofer and huge 8-inch mid-range was really underappreciated by the larger hi fi community. That combination was very musical.

David