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Vintage Asylum Classic gear from yesteryear; vintage audio standing the test of time. |
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Vintage Asylum Classic gear from yesteryear; vintage audio standing the test of time. |
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In Reply to: RE: "following among audiophiles" - NO posted by Brian Levy on March 14, 2015 at 08:27:21:
Altec VOT's have more than a "miniscule" following these days, since they work so well with low powered, single ended tube amps. Lot's of people use them.
Fairfax was a manufacturer of mediocre speakers that were part of the semi-private label market. They were similar to others of tha ilk, such as Bolivar Speaker Works of the 70s, etc. Such companies didn't offer superior product choices for the consumer, nor were they up to the standard of name brands. They existed for one reason only: to provide the biggest possible profit margin for the dealer. NOT the best possible product for the consumer.
It really boggles my mind that people today stare at me with utterly blank incomprehension, or similarly respond in chats, when I try to explain private label goods. Back when I was in audio sales, it was damned hard to sell private label dreck. You may see how we've entered bizzaro world today, when guys are jumping like bonobos in heat for private label garbage.
Semi-private label companies differed from fully private label ones by being avialable from more than a single retailer. However, the businesss, model worked by restricting sales to a single retailer in a regional market. That would prevent consumers from cross shopping, and thereby getting discounts, which would drive the "street" price lower and lower and erode store profits.
In the 60s [and the 70s, for that matter], salesmen hated AR and KLH. They were national brands, available natioanally. Their prices had been driven down so low, that nobody could make money selling them. When I was in audio sales, we hated Pioneer for the same reason. No margin [profit]. We bad mouthed it all the time. We'd tell customers that Pioneers "failed the Telarc 1812 test", without bothering to mention that every other receiver probably did too. Then, we'd steer the PPT to a private label Project One [Playback's private label lower-than-dreck dreck].
Fairfax, as I recall, offered nothing in terms of sound quality. Muffled, boomy sound, they were, from what I remember, highly colored TV/Radio sound alikes. They even had fancy grill work, so they looked more like furniture. The sound, emerging from deep within a cave, buried somewhere behind that furniture fretwork baffle, was hardly of even mid-fi calibre.
But, even that might've been better than the private label of the Lafayette Radio store chain: Criterion. Those things weren't even up to Allied quality. Let me put it another way: in 1968, you could buy a air of KLH, Advent, JBL, Rectilinear, or even Fisher speakers - all name brands with good engineering behind them. Or, you could pop for someone's inferior private label slop, such.....oh...Criterion. Hmmm, what to do....
JBL
You're off on your evaluation of JBL and Altec. They were hardly limited to the public address market. JBL offered expensive, superior products from the very beginning. The systems tended to be large and expensive, and they formed what could be regarded as the high end prior to the actual high end that we know, which emerged in the 70s. They were part of the same expensive market segment as Bozak, Electrovoice, Hartley, and so on. The JBL Paragon was regarded as the best avialable speaker system by many.
More than that, JBL was absolutely number one in the way they designed and manufactured their raw drivers. Nobody could touch them. I was fortunate enough to read some of their non-consumer engineering forms. OMG - even today you'd have a hard time finding that kind of quality. Voice coils - 4 inch, edge wound [meaning expensive ribbon wire, not round wire]. Sand cast steel or aluminum frames, not cheap stamped [one of the thing JBL could critisize and even sneer at AR, KLH, et al, was that they used cheap stamped baskets]. Unlike most speaker companies, JBL made their own drivers. They were a real speaker company, not merely an assembler, or a re-badger. JBL did gain a foot hold in the recording industry, movie theaters, etc. because of their absolutely top quality products.
Whether you liked the sound or not is personal matter. From your comments, it seems that you've echoed the 1970s audiophile vendetta against JBL. In those days, it was a war of the West Coast sound vs East Coast sound. With regard to the 4311/L-100, I might point out that Mick Jagger preferred it even now.
Finally, I don't know about SAC NH-1. I just don't recall anyone saying, "well now, good buddy, Joe Schmoe over there's just a low-ball audio buff, where as I...I am a real rootin' tootin' audiophile!".
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Follow Ups
- Fairfax, Criterion, & JBL - Mike Porper 13:16:06 03/16/15 (0)
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