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14 Days without leaving the house can do strange things to one?s mind. So today ,feeling considerably more alive than a few days ago, I started scratching around . There beneath a stack of other la-di-dah magazines I found a battered November 1989 Stereophile.
This made me wonder where was I on a Saturday afternoon in 1989? Immediately I remembered and cringed. I had just made a most undignified exit at Namibia?s Epupa falls from the cab of a Kwevoel transport truck. Not feeling like swaying for hours on the back of a Buffel, I pulled rank and bummed a ride in this 10 ton transporter with a driver with the delightful name of Oorlog van der Merwe. That was a mistake as Oorlog had just spent the past few hours trying to prove to me that he should be chosen over Michele Mouton to drive a group C Audi Quattro- not a good idea in a top heavy Magirus powered monster waiting for the slightest excuse to fall over.. So leaving the cab as green as the smart uniform of the Cuban officer awaiting me I pulled up . He smartly saluted me and I greeted him in the time honoured ZA way ? Howzit!? Staring at this man who was now grinning at me ,I felt distinctly scruffy .All I could think of that he clearly had a far better dentist than I. As my dentist was my uncle I felt that maybe ,just maybe ,the war should now end.
A few months later ,trying my best to steer an ailing Unimog ambulance along De Waal drive (don?t ask) while staring at Cape Town harbour with not a single ship in it , my feelings were somehow enforced.
Around this time a man with equally good teeth but lots more Brylcreem told a man with a Port wine lesion on his face to ? Tear Down This Wall? . They did and the rest is sort of history.
So what on earth does all of this have to do with the November 1989 Stereophile? Well there on page 75 is a heading -?WEST GERMANY: Marcus Sauer?It is a report of the HIGH END?89 show in Frankfurt.
Now in 89 I knew about Linn and Naim and Quad and Audio Research and Krell and Magnepan but German high end? Now ,Sauer laments that in ?88 the German high end market only had a turnover of $ 55 Million. Wow thats hardly more than my Cuban?s dentist bill But what were the hot brands?
Well Omtec had a pretty snazzy amplifier line up (who?). Einstein was a new outfit with amplifiers at ?the Very expensive? side of the market. Thorens had a new turntable (yippee). ATL had speakers with square flat, faced drivers. Audio Physic had an unimpressive looking little speaker that sounded very good. , TMR, Fischer Audio and TDL -hey the Brits were there. Clearaudio?s Peter Suchy looked quite tired as he showed the tubed Harmony that fits on top of the TQ 1 arm, so I suppose it must be a Phono stage?. He also showed the Boomerang turntable ? Huh -. BJ?, Achim??
Klimo had a tube monoblock called the Linet , WBT had new speaker binding post milled from the Berlin Wall-joking!. Piega was dong their speaker thing. Hey get this: Lectron showed a Jean Hiraga hybrid amp written up above on this Forum today here as radical! T+A got flack for their name(just like now) Backes + Muller had something ,while Burmester showed an FM tuner ( goodness gracious remember those?) as well as the 878 power amp with a radical suspension, much like the new Nagras from today!
Sauer finishes by saying that the show was more about evolution than revolution! Wow, maybe in hifi. By the next year Germany , South Africa and the world had changed far more than the Hi Fi industry!
This made me wonder where was I on a Saturday afternoon in 1989? Immediately I remembered and cringed. I had just made a most undignified exit at Namibia?s Epupa falls from the cab of a Kwevoel transport truck. Not feeling like swaying for hours on the back of a Buffel, I pulled rank and bummed a ride in this 10 ton transporter with a driver with the delightful name of Oorlog van der Merwe. That was a mistake as Oorlog had just spent the past few hours trying to prove to me that he should be chosen over Michele Mouton to drive a group C Audi Quattro- not a good idea in a top heavy Magirus powered monster waiting for the slightest excuse to fall over.. So leaving the cab as green as the smart uniform of the Cuban officer awaiting me I pulled up . He smartly saluted me and I greeted him in the time honoured ZA way ? Howzit!? Staring at this man who was now grinning at me ,I felt distinctly scruffy .All I could think of that he clearly had a far better dentist than I. As my dentist was my uncle I felt that maybe ,just maybe ,the war should now end.
A few months later ,trying my best to steer an ailing Unimog ambulance along De Waal drive (don?t ask) while staring at Cape Town harbour with not a single ship in it , my feelings were somehow enforced.
Around this time a man with equally good teeth but lots more Brylcreem told a man with a Port wine lesion on his face to ? Tear Down This Wall? . They did and the rest is sort of history.
So what on earth does all of this have to do with the November 1989 Stereophile? Well there on page 75 is a heading -?WEST GERMANY: Marcus Sauer?It is a report of the HIGH END?89 show in Frankfurt.
Now in 89 I knew about Linn and Naim and Quad and Audio Research and Krell and Magnepan but German high end? Now ,Sauer laments that in ?88 the German high end market only had a turnover of $ 55 Million. Wow thats hardly more than my Cuban?s dentist bill But what were the hot brands?
Well Omtec had a pretty snazzy amplifier line up (who?). Einstein was a new outfit with amplifiers at ?the Very expensive? side of the market. Thorens had a new turntable (yippee). ATL had speakers with square flat, faced drivers. Audio Physic had an unimpressive looking little speaker that sounded very good. , TMR, Fischer Audio and TDL -hey the Brits were there. Clearaudio?s Peter Suchy looked quite tired as he showed the tubed Harmony that fits on top of the TQ 1 arm, so I suppose it must be a Phono stage?. He also showed the Boomerang turntable ? Huh -. BJ?, Achim??
Klimo had a tube monoblock called the Linet , WBT had new speaker binding post milled from the Berlin Wall-joking!. Piega was dong their speaker thing. Hey get this: Lectron showed a Jean Hiraga hybrid amp written up above on this Forum today here as radical! T+A got flack for their name(just like now) Backes + Muller had something ,while Burmester showed an FM tuner ( goodness gracious remember those?) as well as the 878 power amp with a radical suspension, much like the new Nagras from today!
Sauer finishes by saying that the show was more about evolution than revolution! Wow, maybe in hifi. By the next year Germany , South Africa and the world had changed far more than the Hi Fi industry!
