NEEDLE TIME
Preparing company histories can be a fascinating endeavour: this writer enjoys the rabbit holes down which one can scurry, finding a book or an article lost in time or on the web that will add a small detail missing from official histories, or a revealing quote from back in the day that unlocks what a company was really trying to achieve. A fair part of this Audio-Technica history is based on Japanese-language sources, which was fun, and we should perhaps start by saying that any errors here are entirely our own, or those of Google Translate.
We anticipated a history of cartridges, headphones and pro audio gear. But it was soon clear that what has driven the development of that equipment is Audio-Technica’s ongoing innovation in technologies. Working out how to implant a diamond needle without crushing the tip of the pipe cantilever was key to its initial success in cartridges, while in the 1980s the company’s commercialisation of PCOCC (single crystal high-purity oxygen-free copper) allowed any number of products to take a step forward in quality.
There are also surprises. Who knew that Audio-Technica is big in automatic sushi-making machines? That it dabbled, temporarily it seems, in home glue-making machines? And that it has a successful TechniClean brand with everything from hand cleaners to industrial clean-room tech?
Much as we definitely now want a compact nori-rolling machine of our own, we feel constrained by the focus of our publication to use the space here for on Broadway back then in 1962, at the very beginning. It’s a very good place to start.
