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Bit of a Confusing Story

Posted by Brian Levy (A) on November 25, 2014 at 17:04:27

In Reply to: RE: Here's a Picture. posted by DavidLD on November 25, 2014 at 06:23:11:

Saul created and started Marantz, as we all know. To make a bad story short, he never was a great business person and one of his cost savings was never to hire a good cost accountant. The result was for a number of his products he put a fortune into R&D chewing up the capital realized from his way products and then as production and sales were insufficient to recover engineering costs plus in at least 1 instance even production costs he was quickly going broke. Enter the Tushinsky brothers owned a company named Superscope, more on that later, who came in as white knights lending Saul money secured by his shares in Marantz. Their interest at the time was reported to be for him to produce a theater amp that would break the WE/Altec duopoly in the movie theater industry. By '64 Saul had defaulted on the loan, never having figured out what a cost accountant was for and the Brothers took the company stock. Saul remained President but in Saul was shown the front door and his magical engineering team, at the time recognized as individuals and more importantly as a team the best from any company at the time and for years after walked the same day. Marantz starting in '64 was a subsidiary of Superscope.

Superscope was formed by the brothers who developed the Superscope lens. This was at a time when the movie industry was experimenting with and developing widescreen projection in the mid '50s. There were competitors such as Cimimascope, Vistavistion, Panavision and others. This was at a time when studios still controls movie theater chains but the era was ending. One advantage Superscope had was the format ratio was variable and hence could be used to show many of the other systems. You can read more at widescreenmuseum.com.

The brothers were flush with cash as a result of the invention. On a trip to Japan, they by chance happened to audition a tape recorder, the only product manufactured by a company called Sony. Recognizing the quality and price advantage over US systems such as Ampex, Wollensak, etc. They bought the exclusive USE distribution rights. This agreement became the basis for confusion and law suits in the future. The brothers imported the units in under mostly the Sony label but rebadged as Superscope at least some commercial units.

After Marantz, and while in Japan,.they also came across a floundering electronics manufacturer, Standard Radio of Japan and initially bought part interest and eventually as ownership controls were changed gained controlling interest. This set the stage for the future.

After getting good control, Sony first outsourced the model 19 to Standard Radio. They packaged the kits in the US, sent it overseas for assembly and then the completed unit was shipped back to the US. Nothing was compromised and because of added QC systems, these units were actually potentially better in consistent quality.

Sony during all this had expanded their product line to include products that directly competed with Marantz. Sony set up a separate distribution network in the US based on the agreement with the brothers ony covering the product then in their lineup, i.e. reel to reel recorders. The brothers alleged it covered all products regardless of type so, covered receivers, amps, tuners, speakers, etc. While the suits were going on and negotiations occurring, Sony kept out of the US market and one reason why product time lines are rather odd when it comes to Sony. Suddenly and surprisingly, Sony recorders became scarce as production was pushed to other markets. Sony had hoped to break the entire agreement and control all Sony distribution in the US. The final settlement favored Sony's original contention. Superscope could continue to import Sony tape equipment but not the other products. Sony was not happy, knowing Superscope could choke the tape recorder sales in the US. It is not known if it actually happened but Superscope did reduce the marketing budget and dealerships allowing TEAC to take the lead and opened a window for Akai and others to become a market factor.

Sony decided to try to compete with Marantz as its target competition. When it started bringing in product, it was constructed as well as McIntosh, much better than the Japanese Marantz products and at least as good and better than their US produced products, a shrinking line. These early Sonys today are recognized as very high quality and excellent sounding. Sony kept the pressure up for the 1st 4 generations before going more mainstream mid-fi. By that time Marantz had lost its reputation garnered under Saul's period.

The brothers needed to achieve a couple of goals. First was to keep Standard Radio profitable. It had acted as an outsource producer but this avenue was being choked off as companies were unwilling to add to their competitors profits and the Brothers needed to follow the market trends where there was a split of brand names to keep the mid-first and high end exclusive. Panasonic did it by creating Technics, TEAC created Tascam and even McIntosh tried it with the Stereotech line.

The brothers brought out the mass market Superscope line made by Standard Radio. The line was a mixture of some interest. Some were simply Standard Radio designed and produced pieces. Others were designed by Marantz while some even were under the hood very similar to Marantz products. When we saw.early prototypes, the high end tuner even had the Marantz thumbwheel. The Superscope tape products were contracted to Sony and were for the portable line, little more than rebadged Sonys. As part of the arrangement, we dealers were told there would not be any Superscope tape decks. So for the very few Superscope commercial decks originally sold by the company early on there were no Superscope reel to reel recorders.

As a product, Superscope does not get a lot of attention but back in their day they sold well if you could get past the odd lighting colors. It was an easier sale to the distance then the macho crowd. The voicing was decidedly based on Marantz. The Standard Radio designs were based off the 2x Marantz series that was not designed by Marantz. Marantz needed product rushed to market and Standard had the designs done so needed more to rebrand their product with faceplate, thumbwheel, etc.

Not many years after building their empire, their cash cow, Superscope fell out of favor with the movie companies, they had all but destroyed the reputation of Marantz that began to bleed red ink and Standard Radio could not make up for the losses.

Don Brian Levy, J.D.
Toronto ON Canada

Edits: 11/25/14

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