My understanding is that before TVA he worked at Luxman.
Then, TVA looking like Quad, he worked on the Quad II series ii as well as later products for them.
The obituaries in Stereophile and Absolute Sounds lists lots of work, including tape machines flat from 10 Hz to 43 kHz!
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He was obviously a very clever man. I met him (very briefly) at an audio show over 30 years ago at - I think - Swiss Cottage.
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Yep. He definitely worked at Luxman. Iâm not sure he was fully involved in TVA, or at least not overtly. I remember that as Michaelson & Austin and, if the stories are true, they were put together on Anthony Michaelsonâs kitchen table. Tim could have been there in the background as the pro, checking on Anthonyâs work, LOL, but they werenât promoting him as the designer as they would later do at Musical Fidelity.
As I understand it, EAR Yoshino was his personal brand (with the T de P logo) which he ran half in Japan and half in Huntingdon.
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IIRC, TdeP designed the Michaelson amplifiers. I owned a Michaelson for a little while - it was quite striking in its odd âArt Decoâ styling. IIRC the pre used ECC85s and ECC83s and the power used 8 x EL34s.
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Hi Richard, Itâs very likely you are right. I was very young back then and my memory of it was only in Michael Lewinâs studio at Grahams. I did hear it, but I think it went over my head. I wish weâd listened to Mike Lewin a bit more because he had some gems up there that got overlooked while the Linn/Naim cult was in full swing. Like the Snell Type-Es which AudioNote have now made a whole industry out of. Itâs a cracking speaker, especially for its time. And, thinking about it, itâs the kind of speaker that Roy would like. Thereâs a little glitch in the treble somewhere (on a very, very cheap tweeter!) but, that aside, everything lines up very nicely indeed.
Also in your favour here, there seem to be a number of other products where Tim seems to have done the work, like the V-90 DAC (one of the first to twig to the PCM1795), but not been mentioned in the PR puff. The giveaway in that product is his use of MC33078/79 op amps. Heâs not the only champion of them but I think in serious hi fi he was. And what a great choice they are too for those of us who find the 5534/2 as dull as ditchwater!
Did you enjoy your Michaelson amplifier? I had an A370 for a fair while which I found incredibly difficult to fault. OTOH I had an A1 amp early on which I never thought was especially stellar. I suspect Tim de P valve amps are all going to be quite special and probably very sought after in the future. Thereâs no doubting his design ability in electronics, and that generation of designer had a breadth of knowledge and understanding that we canât hope to match these days.
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The Michaelson valve amp was fine and worked well with the Magneplanar MG2.5Rs and Proac Studio 100s I was using at the time, but I had less luck with MF amps. I had an A220 and an A1000 which both sadly proved to have reliability issues. That wouldnât be so bad if it wasnât for the fact that when they went back to be repaired they would eventually return fixed but sounding rather different, and not in a good way. I briefly had an A270 paired with a Michell Argo and Iso. That was rather good, especially the Michell Argo and Iso, although it all went wrong when I âupgradedâ to the HR versions and the result was complete dullsville! In the move to more âresolutionâ what made these units sound good to me was lost. A hifi lesson.
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Funny you mention the Type Es. I loved these and while I was living in NYC I was on the verge of buying a pair with a basic Conrad Johnson pre/power from the local hifi dealer just around the corner from where I lived (Sound by Singer). However, I was then told I had to return to the UK by year end so it didnât make sense to go ahead.
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Yup. Not many speakers get above my threshold of interest but the Type-E is actually a very accomplished speaker. I havenât been to a show for a while, but the last few times I did, Audio Note were again and again making easily the nicest sound. Lovely and organic, while not missing the additional music content we now expect. Theyâre actually quite like the SL-2s, with a slightly less polished treble. But the Type-Es donât have that Naim footprint in the crossover region. AN do quite a range of them at hugely different prices and Iâm not sure how high up the range the ones I knew well were. So maybe the treble gets a bit more sophisticated and loses the little glitch. I donât think the treble is bad at all, and certainly not lacking in detail. In fact itâs a marvel what theyâve got out of that tweeter by comparison to KEF and Linn (with the truly execrable Index). I wonder if the Type-Es are a secondhand sleeper? They could well be.
I think Sound by Singer is where Steve Guttenberg (The Audiophiliac YouTube channel) used to work.
I didnât know you once lived in NYC, Richard! Union Square is a great (and somewhat underrated) neighborhood in which to live. Weâre regulars at the greenmarket there!
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I started out on East 17th st. and then found a lovely place on Bleecker just by 7th ave. I just took a look at it on Google street view. It looks pretty much the same except the restaurant downstairs is gone and in its place is a Brompton bicycle shop!
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The next time youâre in town, please hit me up! Thereâs a great bar at 6th and West 8th called Analogue; they have an excellent martini and a TD-124 and Mac amps in the back.
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