What do Linn, Naim and Rega all have in common? Well, they are all British hi-fi brands. And they have all manufactured a turntable and an amplifier, not to mention the many overlapping products the companies have produced over the years. But more than that, all three of these venerable manufacturers were founded in 1973. Fifty years ago this very year.
Allow a little latitude and expand that a few years on either side, and you can include Arcam (1976, when it was called A&R Cambridge), NAD (1972) and Monitor Audio (1972) in that group. QED is another with a 1973 birthdate. And those are just the British brands. I’m sure that list would grow exponentially were we to start looking beyond the UK’s shores.
This got me thinking, was there something’s British Hi-Fi Week back in April, I asked some of the wiser and more mature members of the industry, and received a surprisingly wide range of answers that considered all aspects of life at that time…
