Delia Derbyshire Electronic Music Pioneer at the BBC

Delia Derbyshire started experimenting with tape loops and experimental sounds in the late 50's at the BBC with the Radiophonic Workshop. This was pre synth so every sound was meticulously made by hand. Her main focus was theory and perception of sound. She composed the original Dr.Who theme and worked on various electronica projects. Unfortunately she gave up on electronic music when the synthesizers started to be more widespread. She thought of here work as obsolete since now anyone can just hit a key to get an electronic sound that she had to work so hard to perfect.

This blog post does not do her justice so read about her here.

http://www.delia-derbyshire.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delia_Derbyshire

Early Reel-to-Reel Beat Matching Virtuosa Delia at work.


1963 Delia - Dr.Who Theme


1969 Delia Love Without Sound

Soniphase Fully Horn Loaded Speakers

You have to admire a speaker company that offers a home theater system built around bass horns.


These are described as Reflex-Ported Folded Horn Loudspeakers.

SLS15

SLS15 Utility

SL3

J2 TWIN 15


All these horns look great. I would love to hear them. I can't help what they would sound like with a passive woofer instead of a port? I hope we see more from Soniphase in the future.
http://www.soniphase.com/

HiFi Girl Friday

Yes there is a record player in the background.

Ok I'm not exactly sure what kind of fetish this is but I might like it.... Can anyone tell me what exactly is going on here.

Vintage Videos Telefunken Tubes and Western Electric Talkies

I don't usually post videos but this one is very cool. It has been posted at audio asylum and the Klipsch forums.

Telefunken




This has long been one of my favorites. Finding his masters voice by the genius Max Fleischer for Western Electric. This animation was to explain to people how the talkies worked for the first sound movies. Brilliant!

Western Electric



1942 RCA Electrons On Parade Part 1 & 2 Great for tube newbies.

Electro Voice Patrician II 1983

I was doing more EV Patrician research and found mention of a Patrician II build in 1983. It took a little while but thanks to the vintage knob I found some information. It is a very interesting beastie. It was marketed towards the Japanese Jazz Clubs and Hi-Fi guys. The 1983 Patrician II was to mark the Electro Voice 30th anniversary. It was made in Switzerland. Here is the brochure.




The test data.


Some detailed pics.





It looks very interesting in an ugly duckling sort of way. The cabinet is massive. Would love to hear this one.

Artisan 12 inch tonearms

I've been working on my getting my Garrard Turntable together over the last year. This led to allot of research because most of the turntables I previously owned were toys. Putting together a turntable from scratch was intimidating. Sorry this will be another post later but I did allot of research into tonearms. As a result I'd like to share some of the interesting 12 inch hand crafted tonearms I found along the way. I'd love to compare all these some day.

This site is in German but his work is just incredible!!
http://www.miwis-bastelbu.de/




Thomas Schick makes another interesting tonearm. It looks minimal but still very impressive.
http://www.thomas-schick.com/arm01.htm





If you are on a budge but would still like to try a 12 inch arm tonearmaudio has a cherry 12" tonearm for $230.

http://tonearmaudio.com/_wsn/page3.html






This tonearm was designed by architect Randolph Hedgebeth and called Golden Gate. There is minimal information and pics but it looks amazing.

Retro HiFi Girl Firday

Paragon Garrard 301 and RTR Awesome Vintage Hi-Fi

I came across this killer ad pic while I was researching Garrard tonearms. This dude has one hip swinging bachelor pad.

Vitavox Klipschorn Reporducer

Vitavox started in 1931 and was the UK equivalent of the theater speaker builders in the USA like RCA, Western Electric, and Lansing. It is likely they licensed designs from them but that is another story. Vitavox licensed the Klipschorn design in the late 40's from Klipsch. I think Vitavox made the best Klipschorn outside of Hope, AR. It is stylish and beautiful. The lines are classic. I would love to own one of these.




Here is the brochure courtesy of the Unofficial Vitavox site. http://website.lineone.net/%7Eempson/index.html

JBL IS YOUR SPEAKER Advert 1958

Here are some vintage JBL ads. This is very cool. They even encouraged you to build with their components. I wish more companies still did this as it can be difficult to get certain new production parts. This is one of my favorite JBL time periods with the Hartsfield, Paragon and many classic drivers. The prices held up very well just look some of these up on ebay.

Japanese audio gods be praised Western Electric replicas

This is so very cool. G.I.P Laboratory is making Western Electric replicas and drivers in the same manner Western Electric would. You can use the translate button at the bottom right of the page. It helps a little. They are building amazing speakers that truly deserved to be in more homes. There are entire Western Electric speaker systems available or even components. This could be very helpful if you are trying to source a part nearly impossible to find.


http://www.amtrans.co.jp/audio/gip/lineup.shtml

BBC Hot Rod Garrard 301 from console

The BBC used lots of Garrard 301 turntables over the years. They probably knew more about the 301 than anyone. Here is an example with documentation of a 301 from a custom BBC console. This is the only documentation I have been able to find of the actual console. Their goal was to optimize performance and not looks. If anyone has additional documentation please let me know.












EDIT a couple more pictures found.

1931 Article Indoor applications of air-coliumn horns by C.J. Brown

This is a very early article on the proper horn for use in theater applications.

Retro HiFi Girl Firday

Beautiful girl with a portable LP player. I'd like to believe she is listening to some Thelonious Monk. I would love to have one of these portable players. If anyone knows the brand name or model please post in comments.


A serious system here. I wish I could have that in my music room.

Klipsch Model H and 3 Channel

I was digging through the archives and stumbled upon these great documents from 16 June 1958.






If I was remember correctly there were only edit 18 of these little speakers made. They eventually evolved to the Heresy we know today. This is the ultra rare H-8.