Ryan and I were recently invited to Henley Audio in Oxford for a tour around the facility as well as some informative training on some of the brands we deal with in the store. Towards the end of the day, we also had the opportunity to rebuild an Essential III from Project from putting the platter and belt on to re-fitting the cartridge and aligning it. I will be going into more detail on this build later on in this post.
Cyrus Audio is a famous British hifi brand, renowned by enthusiasts for their quality hifi amplifiers, CD players, DACs and streamers. Cyrus design, engineer and manufacture essentially all of their hifi products here in the United Kingdom, an operation that allows them to ensure the best possible standards of build quality and sound integrity.
Loewe are a well established and highly regarded manufacturer of television sets and hifi products, having been designing and engineering many ground-breaking innovations for almost 100 years. While renowned worldwide for their impeccable build quality, stunning picture, immersive sound, luxurious design and overall futuristic feel; Loewe has a compelling history as an impacting force behind the development of consumer electronics industry as we know it today. This history is extensive, so I've tried to simplify it out to some of the more impacting milestones.
The Chord Company are a British manufacturer of high quality cables and interconnects, designed and engineered specifically for music enthusiasts by music enthusiasts. Chord build award-winning cables for hifi stereo systems, home theatre applications, high definition televisions/gaming, music streamers and for custom installation environments.
Cameron and myself were recently invited down to the Chord factory in Salisbury, allowing us to put some faces to the names and voices we’ve befriended over telephone and email conversations, and also to get a real feel for the level of effort and care that Chord put into the design and construction of their award-winning cables.
We were recently given the very special opportunity to travel to the Bowers & Wilkins headquarters in Worthing for some product training and a tour of the factory. Every room of the tour reflected a common atmosphere that made us feel warm and welcome, even in some of the more clinical (and highly impressive) laboratory testing rooms of the factory.
Phil Glazzard was the designer and manufacturer of the Audio project ap60 integrated amplifer, which received a very positive review in Hifi news magazine in 2001. We still have a working example at the shop if anyone would like to have a listen.
