MARANTZ PM-12SE & SA-12SE
Marantz has a very long and very rich history of producing unique audio components with fabulous sound, which all stems from the fact that its founder, Saul Marantz, along with his wife Jean, were enthusiastic and talented amateur musicians, both of whom played guitar, were members of the New York Society of Classical Guitar, and good friends of famous guitar maestro, Andres Segovia. Indeed Marantz took many photos for Vladimir Bobritzski’s book ‘The Segovia Technique’ and many of the photos that are used in the sleeve notes for the 4CD set ‘Andres Segovia – A Centenary Celebration’ (MCAD4: 11124).
That very long and rich history started in 1952 when Saul Marantz designed a preamplifier (the Audio Consolette) that was the first in the world to offer most of the different equalisation settings required to accurately play back LPs from most of the world’s record companies, which all used different standards. His friends put in so many orders for their own Consolettes that he and Jean saw there might be a future in manufacturing hi-fi components and started building 100 of them in the basement of their home in Queens, New York.
The couple’s first employee was Sidney Smith, a talented electronics engineer who’d approached Marantz with some design ideas to improve the Consolette. He convinced Marantz that production engineering was required to deal with the demand and the three moved production to a factory in Woodside, NY, in 1953 and established Marantz as a company.
Shortly afterwards, the Record Industry Association of America (the RIAA) decided that it would be better if all record manufacturers used the one equalisation curve, which became the RIAA equalisation curve. The result was that in 1954, the Consolette was redesigned and became the Marantz Model 1, the first preamplifier to offer RIAA equalisation. Marantz also designed and manufactured the world’s first true stereo preamplifier, the Marantz Model 7, in 1958.
Although it was stereo, the circuitry in it was completely different from all the mono preamplifiers at that time, by virtue of using a unique three-stage phono preamp/equaliser. It was so unique that it became known as the ‘Marantz’ circuit by electronics designers.
Marantz has been in business for such a long time and is such a desirable company
