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Vintage US audio mags etc

Tony L

Administrator
An interesting site here, Vintage Vacuum Audio, that hosts many scans of 50s and 60s US audio mags. I'm currently reading the Sept and Oct '62 issues of Audio that feature a two part article by Ed Villchur explaining how he invented the Linn LP12^h^h AR Turntable. The Altec ad on page 28 of the October issue illustrates just how far we've allowed prissy lifestyle criteria to derail things. A7s in the home? Hell yes! An interesting reflection of a time of radical innovation and a refreshing lack of compromise set against a backdrop of prime-period jazz etc. Very good quality magazines IMO, far superior to anything I read these days.
 
Letter to the editor, from that same issue:

Sir:
After several years of subscribing to Audio and successfully resisting the mild urge to pour forth my trivial dissentions with an occasional author's article, Mr. Edward Tatnall Canby has finally spurred me to action!

Despite my frequent skepticism and inability to duplicate many of Mr. Canby's subjective findings relative to two of his pet projects, earphone listening and FM multiplex reception, I must admit that I generally enjoy his approach immensely. Only his apparent disdain for the fundamental engineering approach and his nonchalant, indeed gleeful, comments on his personal abuse of equipment, become occasionally irksome. For example, some of his remarks as I best recall them: "...I never make measurements... amplifier manufacturers would faint at running their equipment into zero and infinite loads but I do it often... it says not to change speeds while the machine is running but I did it several times...either the truckman or I, probably I, dropped the tuner... ," and so on.

Mr. Canby's safaris into the realm of psychoacoustics (a most complex subject demanding exhaustive research and competency on the part of the experimenter in order to draw valid conclusions and generalizations) are quite amusing, I have never read of a subject such as two-channel earphone reproduction more beaten, flayed, buried, reincarnated, digested, regurgitated, and rebeaten as this one. I actually feel sympathy for the earphones, after reading one of his series, similar to what I would feel for a patient who had just undergone an operation for a non-existent ailment, diagnosed and performed by a high-school biology student! Yes, Mr. Canby, most earphone listening results in an artificial aural atmosphere. No, Mr. Canby, most of us do not emerge from a bout with the earphones dripping sweat and ready for a psychiatric treatment brought about by "one-eared distortion." No, Mr. Canby, most of us do not suffer dizzy spells from highly separated source material, nor do we feel a mystic ancestral urge to almost completely blend the channels to alleviate that unbearable "one-eared distortion."

Amazing how little audiophiles have changed in 50 years.
 
What a great link, thanks!

I sure wish their list of Audio Magazine extended into the 1970s though.
 
An interesting site here, Vintage Vacuum Audio, that hosts many scans of 50s and 60s US audio mags. I'm currently reading the Sept and Oct '62 issues of Audio that feature a two part article by Ed Villchur explaining how he invented the Linn LP12^h^h AR Turntable. The Altec ad on page 28 of the October issue illustrates just how far we've allowed prissy lifestyle criteria to derail things. A7s in the home? Hell yes! An interesting reflection of a time of radical innovation and a refreshing lack of compromise set against a backdrop of prime-period jazz etc. Very good quality magazines IMO, far superior to anything I read these days.

Thanks; fascinating stuff. I've started to work through from the first ones. What you see is the fascinating difference in culture. The USA was prosperous and confident. Anything was possible..it showed in their audio just as much as in their cars.
However, a war damaged Europe still had plenty to offer. I'd put the best of the UK stuff up against WE and Altec etc any day. It was a lot more modest, and designed for smaller houses, but it was arguably able to make a virtue from frugality. The Quad 57 is more radical than anything by Western Electric. And the Voigt Corner Horn and Lowther TP series still sound better, to my ears, than stuff from the USA of the period. More subtle, less brash (not that I'm stereotyping or anything.) The American stuff has been put on a pedestal, mainly because of obsessive Japanese influence following the occupation by American forces. And it deserves to be appreciated, but so does the inventiveness of Europe.
By the way, sorry to mention this, but the AR1 turntable is the exception, simple, effective, and just a far cleverer design that the clunky broadcast decks of Europe.
That's me banned then.....
 
What a great site!

Thanks for the link Tony. :)

Edit: I gave up reading the current crop of hi-fi mags years ago.
 
No need for banning, paskinn, an interesting assessment. Just goes to show though how much good gear from any side of any pond there was, and still is, and it can all co-exist and still be enjoyed. Tim
 
The AR turntable was a genius bit of design IMO, especially for it's time, though it did introduce some issues that have blighted many suspended subchassis decks ever since, e.g. the centre of gravity being above the spring plane meaning the deck tries to flop-off it's springs and actually amplifies footfall etc. I find it rather odd that the following generations of decks (TD-150/160, Ariston, Linn etc) did not attempt to address this inherent instability and if anything made it worse by increasing the platter mass and making the (often 3rd party) arm mass an unknown factor. Ed Villchur was unquestionably one of the great thinkers and pioneers of audio as we know it today, his work with speakers being just as radical.
 


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