Columns Retired Columns & Blogs |
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).
Remember the Ampzilla? Are there stranger audio product names out there? What are they?
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 coursetruly 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 femininesupple, 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 youthe audiophile turning the volume knobin reality the preamp is completely, utterly in control. So GAS named all of their preamps after womenGreek 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 Supplyboth 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.
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.
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....
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.
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/.