Vote

1- Le J-10! (also Le Skull) 2- Outlaw amps (I wander if they sell any since it's becoming a common joke in high end circles).

GAS (Great American Sound) was a wonderful well of creative, descriptive product names. First they had the Ampzilla, a perfect description for this brute-force behemoth. I remember turning the amp off and listening to it play for the next 5 minutes just from the reserve power left over in its gargantuan capacitors! When GAS came out with a smaller amplifier, what did they name it? Why, "Son of Ampzilla", of course—truly a worthy name for this sequel. But it got better. What could they do with preamps? When compared to an amplifier, a preamp is far more feminine—supple, lithe, and unquestionably superb at multitasking. It does the strangest things at times, and at others makes you feel as if you're in heaven. And no matter what the occasion, even though the outward appearance of control may be you—the audiophile turning the volume knob—in reality the preamp is completely, utterly in control. So GAS named all of their preamps after women—Greek goddesses, to be exact. How apropos . . . and just when we all thought GAS had run out of creative names, they surprised us all with one of their last products, a digital radio tuner. They called it "Charlie." (Charlie the Tuner. Get it?)

The Liquid Rappungy Grand Viagra Nostradumus Signature Preamplifier matched with the Audio Pure Kollimated Elektron Power Supply—both from Noguma-Vichy Audio Nirvana Electronics in Saint Petersburg. Oh, the Signature version sports the Kollimator Nurtura 88KCGC-99 Elektron Tube gain topology. Cool stuff. Better than Mpingo Discs any day.

Evett & Shaw

audio phisics virgo

I remember a company that made a pair of car audio speakers called "Mind Blowers."

Pink Triangle—sounds like a gay magazine.

I owned a son of ampzilla; never thought it was very odd. What strikes me are the audio solutions(?) I read about some of which work. I read about things when I know the biggest problem I have is the room. We live there and seating and other activities prevent me from what I think would be the greatest improvement in my system, next to sitting very still.

Naim

Remember Ampzilla? I have the Grandson of Ampzilla driving the rear channels of my home theater.

I've auditioned this unit at home and it's a phenomenal CD-Player for the money, but the name is well.. you know, different in a Linn sort of way. The Linn "Genki" gets my vote as strangest product name.

moth

That's easy: Dac-in-the-Box.

The End! A power-amp kit delivered by LC-Audio in Denmark.

The Fukuin Electronics Company, Tokyo Japan

One of the early diy amplifier kits I built was the Tiger-01's. This was just about the time 4-channel SQ was appearing and four of the tigers made up by quad setup. When I upgraded back to stereo with a pair of DQ-10's I built a set of Tigersuarus's which sounded so good that I sold them and built up an Ampzilla. Far as I know the person I sold the DQ-10's and Ampzilla (and Phase Linear 4000 preamp) is still listening to this setup. Currently I think the wire manufacturers have the strangest names. I am currently using Monster 2.4's, guess that is in keeping with Tigers and Ampzilla's....

Confidence Five

I have an old pair of speakers from Burhoe Acoustics called the Burhoe Blue, named after a color. They also had other speakers called Silver, Crimson, Green, White, etc. Is Winslow Burhoe still around? The story I heard was that he invented the inverted-dome tweeter.

RCA Victor products. Basically the turntable with the big horn speaker and the manually driven plate inside a wooden box. I don't remenber the year of this TT but was really old. Admirall was another low-fi company that use to do some gear way back.

Queon (turntable brand)

harmon/kardon

Advantage, the most boring hi-fi name I can think of.

Black Diamond Racing

Lirpa Labs Steam Table—the greatest turntable ever made. Barely made it out of prototype stage, and who knows how many were sold, but it was listed for many years in Audio Magazine's Annual Directory under "Turntables."

A few notables... puppy, hotrod, WAMM...

Image HIFI (a German hi-fi magazine). Here in Germany, the word "image" is very negative, because it means that the things seem better than they are. I can't understand why they gave the good magazine such a bad name. See also http://image-hifi.com/.

I always liked EARS. Actually, it stands for Evidence Audio Recording System, a unit I designed in the early '80s to record conversations in jail holding cells.

Yes, such strange names as Mark Levinson, MartinLogan, Jeff Rowland. How did they come to think of it?

Lirpa Labs.

cliffhanger When I heard this one I thought of movie title. It made me laugh. It's establisher might be humourous man.