Nesdam clearly had a vision of raising the product quality from the Danish side, which he executed during the 1970s. In 1974 SEAS had around 450 employees. The success of A-25 continues Through the first half of the 1970s, SEAS and Scan-Speak competed on supplying A-25s to Dynaco. At the same time the Dynaco A-25 went through several evolutions, for example, at some point the speaker was equipped with an acoustic valve. The acoustic valve is an opening in the otherwise closed box, with damping material, to release the pressure inside the box in a resistive way, by air flow friction through the damping material. When properly tuned, it dampens the fundamental resonance frequency in the box. The friction means that the system damping is increased (i.e. the total attenuation factor Qt is lowered). This principle had its hey-days when woofers were made with relatively small magnet systems due to cost considerations and therefore had a high Qt (resulting in an under-damped design). The principle is rarely used anymore. In parallel with the Dynaco business, Peter Hasselriis sold Dynaco A-25 under his own brand name as Scandyna A-25 for the European market, manufactured by Skaaning (Scan-Speak). Scandyna also imported and sold various electronics. Scandyna went through several critical phases and various bankruptcies during the next decades, but managed to stay afloat and in the hands of the Hasselriis family until around 2011. Today the brand is probably most famous for its Podspeakers, originally an iconic design by Simon Ghahary of B&W (early 1990s), which was handed over to Scandyna and further developed into a product line followed by several evolutions over the years. The Podspeakers were using drivers from Peerless of India and they were assembled at Tistrup Møbelsnedkeri. Scan-Speak cabinets for Dynaco A-25 for the US market were made at Lem Sengefabrik (a woodshop that manufactured beds) in the 1970s. This factory later became Lydig, located in Ringkøbing, Denmark. In 1994 Lydig was merged into the American Harman group, named Harman Consumer Manufacturing A/S, and here they designed and manufactured Harman Kardon, JBL, and Infinity loudspeakers for many years, until Lydig closed down in 2003. Lydig also supplied cabinets to other manufacturers, e.g. Audiovector. Lydig’s production line, which made cabinets of very high quality, was sold to Meiloon (Hong Kong). The rise and fall of JAMO Another Danish business which we must
not forget, JAMO, is founded in 1968 by Preben Jacobsen and his brother in law, Julius Mortensen (JA-MO stems from the names Jacobsen and Mortensen). They built their first factory in 1970 and expanded year on year until 1994, when it had become the largest speaker manufacturer in Europe. JAMO made more than 10 million loudspeakers during their first 30 years. In 1994, JAMO’s market share in Denmark was around 40 %. Then times became tough and several poor management decisions were made. JAMO had tried to compete with the Asian market and although partially successful, not least through smart production setup and some automation, they eventually had to give up. They closed the factory around 2004, when the majority of the production was transferred to China. In 2005 JAMO was sold to the American loudspeaker company, Klipsch, and hereafter they ceased to have much activity in Denmark. Peerless in the 1960s & 1970s In the 1960s Peerless launched a line of kits for the DIY market, which sat the standard for quality kits. SEAS picked up the idea and also launched a line of kits. This business area made Peerless and SEAS visible in the consumer market and was part of a successful branding strategy. In 1966 Peerless faced a necessary and problematic change of generation when one of the founders, Einar Skjold Petersen retired. Peerless was a well-established and financially solid company. During this phase, Peerless’ other founder, T.M. Larsen stayed with the company for a couple of years as General Manager and a 20 % shareholder (the remaining 80 % shares was purchased by American EAD). A couple of years later EAD purchased the shares of T.M. Larsen and became sole owner of Peerless. Peerless was able to recover. In 1968 Per Staal became General Manager of Peerless and the company expanded heavily. Loudspeaker production was established in Boston (1973), USA (named PAL, Peerless Audio Leominster). Peerless also became a shareholder in KLH, Boston, USA. In August 1971 the Peerless factory in Gladsaxe (Copenhagen) was expanded with 3500 m2 of new buildings, with plans of expanding further over the next 5-6 years to 11,000 m2. The factory was organized with raw materials entering one end (Peerless casted their own magnets, pressed their own steel chassis, wound their own voice coils and formed their own paper cones and textile spiders) and at the other end of the factory 250 meter down the road, out came the finished loudspeakers.
In Germany, Peerless purchased Mikrophonenbau (this became Peerless-MB), which manufactured loudspeakers, microphones and headphones. In the 1970s Peerless purchased the cabinet maker Unison in Horsens (Denmark) and a factory in Bretton (France) was purchased to jump into the French market. At this point (1976) Peerless was one of the largest manufacturers of speakers in Europe, maybe one of the largest in the world when it came to Hi-Fi products, with a capacity to make 30,000 speakers per day. Danish (and Norwegian) transducers were - and in many people’s opinion still are – leaders in the global market. If you were looking for a high quality driver at a good price (some would even say the best driver at any given price) you would buy it from the businesses in Denmark and Norway. Peerless was among the first loudspeaker companies in the world to change the former (bobbin) of the voice coil from paper to aluminium. With its many advantages, aluminium remained a standard recipe for many speaker manufacturers all the way through the 1980s and well into the 1990s, when glassfiber and polyimide (Kapton) materials were explored as viable alternatives. Peerless continued to expand internationally. In 1977 they entered a joint venture with capital from Denmark and India, and Peerless of India was founded in Bombay (today Mumbai), production started in 1978. Peerless’ facilities in Søborg (Copenhagen) were expanded several times. Worldwide Peerless had more than 1000 employees. The American mother company, EAD added system manufacturers like Infinity to the business portfolio. The entire loudspeaker division was managed from Søborg without much interception from the Americans. Ferrite magnets Early in the 1970s, ferrite magnets became increasingly popular in various speaker designs. The first SEAS loudspeaker with a ferrite magnet was designed by Ragnar Lian for the B&O Beolit 1000 (Type 1401) travel radio, launched in 1968. The primary reason to change from AlNiCo (Aluminium-Nickel-Cobalt) to ferrite was the content of cobalt, which was very expensive and dependent on sources from Africa (most notably Congo). Using ferrite resulted in a quality magnet at a much lower cost, but it required significant changes to the magnet system design, because the balance between magnetic reluctance and coercivity is completely different. Due to the heavier ferrite magnet systems, sometimes a new (stronger) basket would be required as well.
The Danish loudspeaker 100 year anniversary — 23