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Japanese hi-end audio civil war-70s and 80s.

So what was the Typical British Audiophile's view of this stuff at the time ? Presumably "not musical" , unlike their own Sondeks/Regas/whatever ?
 
I’m assuming most of this never reached our shores and certainly not our mags. In our usual insular complacency, it was just Jap crap. Actually I suppose that could be taken as a compliment, no one ever spoke of frog crap, kraut or yank crap. Still, we’re better than them at cricket. Just !
 
Funny how the better Japanese products are now approved of in the UK press. Naim have held their position, but I don't see demand for Mana racks these days
 
paulfromcamden said:
I think quite a lot of high-end Japanese gear was exclusive to the domestic market.
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I suspect a lot was in a totally different price-class too. I have no idea how many multiples of the price of say an LP12 one of the bigger Micro Seiki, Pioneer Exclusive etc would have been, but it looks to be EMT-class kit. I just don’t think that market existed in the UK. We also need to factor-in tax, which was pretty punitive on imported kit in the ‘70s and ‘80s. My guess is the real Japanese high-end would have been so expensive here it just didn’t have a market.

To my mind it wasn’t until Absolute Sounds and others tapped into the ‘80s yuppie market that US high-end such as Audio Research, Krell, Apogee etc turned up and started to change some perceptions here, and by then this type of Japanese kit was largely over.
 
MUTTY1 said:
They must have exported a lot as the labelling is English.
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I suspect the US wasn’t as insular as GB. Probably Germany was a big market too, lots of nice gear sold through the PX stores on the US bases there, there’s certainly plenty of nice Japanese kit on the market over there.
 
Japans local market did not have enough money for gear like this in the 70s. It was made for export to the USA and Europe except for hair shirt UK
 
I'm not so sure many of these "statement pieces" ever sold in significant numbers anywhere, as evidenced by their almost complete absence on the used market (not just in the UK).

The top Nak's and the more affordable Micro Seiki's you do see but not much of the rest of it!
 
Nearest I ever got to those Japanese super decks was a Micro DDX1000. SME IV and Lyra Argo on it. Lovely sounding thing.

Woodface said:
Maybe nobody bought them as they were too expensive & not that good?
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I'm sure most sounded excellent but the law of diminishing returns will have bitten hard. Sitting just below those DD super decks were higher end consumer grade decks from the likes of Technics and Pioneer offering great sound and build at more affordable prices.
 
eguth said:
My last purchase was a Nagatron Z ~Coupler Model Ag 9200. This is a MC transformer wired throughout with pure silver wire.
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And Nagatron never had a MC cartridge. Their low-output cartridge was the HV9100 "ribbon" cartridge:

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ZnlUcNt.jpg
 
I'd bet those Micro Seiki Air Bearing TT 's sound pretty good. I wonder if they were the inspiration for the Techdas?

Interesting to see so many Eurpoean arms out there. As well as a few SME's that CEC turntable has an Alphason HR100S.
 
I've got a three-head Nak from the early 90s, TOTL Pioneer 20-series amps (C-21/M-22) from the early 80s, and a pair of classic Yamaha NS-1000Ms from the late 70s. I'm sorted!
 
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davidsrsb said:
Japans local market did not have enough money for gear like this in the 70s. It was made for export to the USA and Europe except for hair shirt UK
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In the 1970's Swedish mag 'Radio & Television' constantly reported from Japanese fairs. There WAS a quite large domestic market for their own high end gear, lot's of stuff that wasn't seen outside Japan. There was also a large market of bit's and pieces for modders are and diy'ers from an assortment of small companies. The mag even imported some stuff and tested it.

Yes, the world adored Japanese gear in the 1970's and, I'm sorry to say, nobody in his right mind bought anything made in the UK. This has changed since then.
 
RJohan said:
Yes, the world adored Japanese gear in the 1970's and, I'm sorry to say, nobody in his right mind bought anything made in the UK. This has changed since then.
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Lots of UK hi-fi brands had a great export market in the ‘70s; Quad, Tannoy, SME, Spendor, Rogers etc. One thing that is interesting about this Japanese high-end picture thread is just how many SME arms you see!
 
RJohan said:
In the 1970's Swedish mag 'Radio & Television' constantly reported from Japanese fairs. There WAS a quite large domestic market for their own high end gear, lot's of stuff that wasn't seen outside Japan.
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This sounds right to me. Just because you don't see much of it for sale in the west doesn't mean it didn't sell in Japan.

Lots of big Japanese companies still separate the domestic and international markets even today (google 'seiko JDM').
 
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