OPINION
"I love the past, but I don’t feel it is better..."
noel keywood
I
t was the April 1993 edition of Hi-FI World that featured a Garrard history, along with the revival of my Garrard 401 turntable. It was serviced by Dr. Martin Bastin and fitted to one of his sturdy plinths, along with a new SME312 12in tonearm. That issue sold out. To this day I use the same turntable and arm; it sits in the lounge next to me. I have a Leak Troughline, tuner now in need of a service I have to admit, so not in everyday use. You might think then, as I know many do, that I am a real classic hi-fi enthusiast, but I am not! Quite the reverse, in truth. A lot of engineering from the past is best preserved, as a reminder of how things were, to give us some appreciation of how far we have progressed and how much better products are today. And that includes old hi-fi. I love our industrial past, as many engineers do, and you'll catch me staring in awe at, for example, the S.S. Great Britain (see www.ssgreatbritain.org) that we visited recently whilst exhibiting at the Bristol Sound and Vision Show. I thought this would be a rusty hulk, with a bit of black paint applied to the exterior and a few unconvincing wax dummies inside wearing traditional clothes. It turned out to be much more than that, giving a fascinating glimpse, for example, of how people survived travelling to Australia in steerage - that's the poor bit - as well as a walk around the hull beneath the waterline, with Brunel's massive propellers overhead. Hi-fi doesn't date back to 1843 like this ship, but amplification and the valve do; Oliver Lodge is one name that springs to mind, born 1845, and early radio equipment such
as his was pretty crude, as basic in the way it was put together as the Great Britain. The market for high quality audio began to develop in the 1960s and it's from this time that old classics I have used - and soldered - have come. Most notable was a Quad 22/II amplifier. This dear old thing does have a lovely sonic flavour: measure it as I did after restoration and you soon find out why. The small output transformers really aren't up to much by modern standards. Peter Walker openly admitted they limited low frequency output (i.e. would not produce much bass) to protect the Quad ESL57 loudspeaker. At least, that's what he said... I sometimes wondered whether he simply found justification for the stringent cost cutting often used by Quad, behind the expensive fascias. If this was the case, then it was only the spirit of the time, because the nasty tin plated input sockets and multi-pin power connectors used on this amplifier were found everywhere else too. I well know how lovely the 22/II sounds and I should really have a pair in the loft, but I don't. Mine departed to an eager owner long ago. Wind on to the 1970s and you still find most electronic equipment peppered with this stuff. Tinny input sockets and those horrid shaky loudspeaker screw terminals that some factory in Japan was making for the whole world it seemed, were the acceptable standard of the time. This was also the age of that thing from the dungeon of high fidelity, the DIN loudspeaker socket. This was a step too far backward even for the period, I recall. Why Germany, proud of its engineering standards today, should come up with this little horror (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
DIN_connector) I don't know, but it somehow captures the Zeitgeist. Dusting off an old JVC CD4 decoder not so long ago I was reminded of how bad it was generally in the seventies with product from Japan. The detail engineering wasn't there. All the action was at device (transistor) level, the connections could go hang. And here we encounter another limitation: even Quad eventually admitted that poor electrolytic capacitors seriously compromised their early amplifiers, such as the 405. Electronic components were often little better than the shaky connectors used. You are on the look out for an old cartridge? Why? Inside lie two prodigious coils of fine wire, 'fine' meaning thin, not good. It wasn't selected for its 3ns purity twenty years ago, but was wound on copiously to compensate for the weak magnets of the time. Now, with Neodymium magnets and better magnetic circuits today's cartridges don't need coils inside to rival those the Great Eastern once carried, when laying the foundations of modern communication. That's why today's MM cartridges don't suffer 'generator losses' and have a nice, clear midband. The stark contrast here is perfectly illustrated by this month's comparison of a Nagaoka MP11, a classic from the past, with two new cartridges from today. The past wasn't unequivocally better. It may have merit, but decent products of today are better in engineering terms. There are a few golden oldies around that do a great job even today, like the Garrard turntables, but otherwise I feel today's products are better engineered and less expensive than most oldies. I love the past, but I am no romantic and don't feel it is better.
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MAY 2007 HI-FI WORLD
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