Linn, Naim, Rega, QED – many British hi-fi brands turn 50 this year. Ketan Bharadia explains why the ’70s was such a special time for hi-fi
What do Linn, Naim and Rega all have in common? Well, they are all British hi-fi brands. And they have all manufactured a turntable and an amplifier, not to mention the many overlapping products the companies have produced over the years. But more than that, all three of these venerable manufacturers were founded in 1973. Fifty years ago this very year.
Allow a little latitude and expand that a few years on either side, and you can include Arcam (1976, when it was called A&R Cambridge), NAD (1972) and Monitor Audio (1972) in that group. QED is another with a 1973 birthdate. And those are just the British brands. I’m sure that list would grow exponentially were we to start looking beyond the UK’s shores.
This got me thinking, was there something special about that time which encouraged people to start hi-fi companies, or was it all just a happy coincidence? For What Hi-Fi?’s British Hi-Fi Week back in April, I asked some of the wiser and more mature members of the industry, and received a surprisingly wide range of answers that considered all aspects of life at that time…
Quite fittingly, it starts with music. Do a quick Google search of the best albums of the 1970s and you’ll probably be as shocked as I was at the number of them that are considered musical landmarks. The list includes Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions and Dark Side Of The Moon by Pink Floyd from 1973, and David Bowie’s The Rise And Fall of Ziggy Stardust just the year before. And that’s to name just three. The availability of such brilliant music must have been a strong driving force for the success of the audio industry, with music fans wanting to hear every last detail of their favourite recordings.
New stereo technology
Let’s not forget that stereo was only recently established then, and artists were still learning to make the most of this new format. Music production was becoming more sophisticated and many were experimenting with the new musical experiences two channels of sound could bring. The three-dimensional nature of a proper stereo system must have seemed light-years ahead of the mono radiograms people were used to when listening to such recordings. It’s no wonder the demand for hi-fi boomed in this period.
The move from old-fashioned radiograms to stereo systems also gave new manufacturers an easier route into the market. They could now specialise in just one part of the
