Obscure British audio companies

My HFN Fris Daline kit came from them.
Many interesting conversations with two nice chaps about DIY making.

Got my LP12 from there too, nice memories
Martin

Ah yes - Hammerite paint finish and the pig record clamp !

Going back to some of those amps, I owned the following in the 80s:






All eventually bested by this obscure combo

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Not that obscure, Dunlop Systemdek, another Scottish turntable manufacturer. Produced the Systemdek IIX “LP12 on a budget”. A fine turntable, I still have mine, but not installed. It gave me great service from the mid 1980’s through to 2014 whenit was displaced by a Michell Orbe SE

Was it Barry, Phil and Paul ?

I remember, I was quite worried that they weren’t up to the job. However, it was all I could afford at the time and started me on the slippery slope.

Roberts Radio. Wasn’t so obscure in the 60s-70s.

We are talking 1974/75, Barry rings a bell, but the detail is dim.

Yes, that would be the era. Did you ever go to the shop. I say shop loosely, as it a few rooms on the first floor, on Wood Street. They use to advertise the speaker kits in magazines. They stocked Linn Sondek’s, arms and cartridges, Thorens TD160, Logik turntable, Hadcock arms, Crimson Elektrik (built and kit amps). Spent many a happy Saturday afternoon there. :blush::blush::blush:

Used to have one of these back in the 70’s:


Strathclyde STD305D. Another company no longer around

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No - he attached old magnet plates to the sides with lossy gunk to reduce cabinet resonances.

Much as Naim used a neoprene or sorbothane layer between their cabinets or drive units and the aluminium or brass damping weights.

That - and it was a cheap way of getting old scrap out of the building.

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If the display is indicating the speed, maybe no surprise they’re not around any more :slight_smile:

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I always wanted the Rogers A75 amp…
Never managed even to hear one, but I saw a review in the Gramophone that impressed.

My first proper amp was its predecessor, the Rogers Ravensbourne.

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Mine had sort of the opposite problem, the sensitive touch buttons were not that sensitive and it became a sharp stabbing motion to coax it into turning at all. Finally got rid of it when the bearing started to make a loud rumbling noise… Still always thought it looked cool.

Think Strathearn was an Irish company as you say but Strathclyde Transcription Development was Scottish

@Adam.Meredith Strathearn was a completely separate entity.

The Strathclyde Turntable Developments (STD) 305D was belt driven and the subject of an infamous review in HiFi Answers by your former editor at HiFi Review, who seemed to spend the rest of his career atoning for the sin of suggesting that it was better than a certain other turntable from that particular part of Scotland. I remember him ending the review with the line, “Now I expect the stones to start flying.”

IIRC, the Strathearn STM4 and SMA2 were direct drive models that were very popular at Comet because they were cheap but had low measured rumble and wow and flutter.

STM4:

SMA2:

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The Strathearn was different (in so many ways) to the rather good Strathclyde. I got one in once with a bunch of other kit. If you got really lucky with a Strathearn it would run backwards. Perfect for those Black Sabbath sessions. Problem was, it wouldn’t go backwards consistently, and sometimes it just wouldn’t go at all.

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Strathearn remains one of the few audio companies I’ve ever seen featured on the evening news, likely because of the government initiative you mentioned. It was the early 1970s, during the euphemistically-named Troubles.

I remember they brought in some audio expert to review the turntable. You could tell he was trying to be nice, but he had a hard time saying anything good about it. “It’s important for the headshell to be rigid,” he said, demonstrating how effortlessly it twisted between his fingers.

Those three circles on the mat were a nice distinguishing feature - see, now I’m trying to be nice - though I’ve no idea if they did anything, good or bad, for SQ.

I personally really liked Ruark speakers, the shop I worked in on Saturdays sold a lot of them. I had a pair of Solus stand mounts on my Cyrus aPA7.5 monos - a Steve Sells design that I absolutely regret selling. We had a few Sonneteer amps, a load of Myryad that hung around for ages until Veda products bought them. The best things I ever heard in the shop was an Acoustic Precision EIKOS CD player which was a modified Pioneer. I remember the manager doing a demo for a customer who bought this thing in to compare to the current Cyrus (cd7 maybe?). Manager comes running out of the demo room a few minutes later telling me I must listen. It was astounding lot good, turns out the guy who’d bought it in worked on it with Tom Evans, and had made his own interconnects out of the cable that connects a radar dish to its receiver. Shielded up to microwave frequencies he said. I’d never seen a cable so thick at that point in my life. We ended up taking some Tom Evans product - my mum still has a micro groove phono stage at home. Think he worked on the Michell Argo and Iso with his Lithos power supplies.

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