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Defunct Audio Firms :
Badische Anilin & Soda-Fabrik (BASF)
Founded by Friedrich Engelhorn in 1865 to manufacture aniline dyes and quickly became the one of the larger producer of coal based dyes and shortly thereafter one of the pioneers in the manufacture of synthesised dyes along with Bayer (see : Agfa), by the 1890's it had become the world’s leading manufacturer of synthesised dyes which transformed the world of cloth fabrication since prior to that most dyes were natural substances with a large part of them imported from exotic locations at costs which meant that they were really only for the richest portions of society. The production experience they gained in synthetic manufacture lead to the introduction of nitrogen fertilisers which in turn revolutionised farming in central and northern Europe and later the world, but prior to the introduction of synthetic fertilisers those parts of the world where constantly on the brink of famine due to overpopulation.
The economic chaos of the Weimar republic along with war reparations placed directly on German industry forced the larger German chemical companies to merge into an amalgamated company called I. G. Farben in 1925 (along with BASF it included Hoechst and aforementioned Bayer) however apart from management and finance they did operate completely autonomously and it was the high tech, Ludwigshafen based Division III of BASF that developed the recording tape in the early 1930's replacing the prototype paper based tapes with more robust synthetic materials, the paper tapes actually worked fine in a studio environment but did not have a lot of tensile strength which made them unusable in the field, Division III also improved the basic formulation of the magnetic layer and this lead to the introduction of the tape recorder in association with Telefunken in 1935.
The company was de-merged from I. G. Farben in 1952 and quickly started to reap the benefits of many of the research projects that it had undertaken in the 1930's, but the intervention of WWII meant that they were never commercialised, this was despite the fact that the French and American authorities had confiscated most of the company's intellectual property and rights but with the exception of the magnetic tape (magnetic tape IP was handed over to 3M) no serious attempt was made by either authority to make any commercial use of it.
This meant that innovations like Styrofoam quickly got the company back onto the forefront of the chemical industry and BASF had become the leading manufacturer of audio tapes merely a year after they restarted it's production, both in quantity and quality and in particular it was the improved ferric formulation that the company introduced in 1959 that not only lead to a new generation of open reel recorders with better sound quality but more importantly paved the way for consumer cassette tape, in fact both the Philips Compact Cassette and the Grundig Cassette were made possible by the new tape. BASF absorbed the media division of Agfa in 1990 but decided in 1993 to get out of the media business altogether and negotiated to sell the magnetic media division to Raks in 1994 but due to pressures from the German labour unions a new company called EMTEC Magnetics was formed to take over the operation. We also have a tiny bit of info on BASF Records. -- Official homepage.
Barnatt & Oswald
Small UK based manufacturer of bespoke hi-fi and AV furniture, also did manufacture a limited number of loudspeakers and at the least one model of a turntable. Operating in or around the year 2000, we have not been able to find any functional contact address since 2002.
BB Audio See --> British Built Audiophile Products
BBE See --> BBE Sound (No longer makes consumer products)
Beam Echo Ltd.
A small manufacturer of cinema projectors originally founded in 1953 by Henry Michael Rahmer but he bought the designs and tooling of a bankrupt projector manufacturer that had been known as Danson and set up shop in Witham in Essex. England with the financial and operational support of Philip Hounsfield. BE's original factory was in fact a small corner of Hounsfield's Parion Products concern that at the time made caravans and related accessories. The company branched into the manufacture of 2 models of low budget power amplifiers based on Mullard circuits plans in 1954, these where branded Beam Echo and supplied to OEM accounts rather than to end users, but they where enough of a success to encourage Mr. Rahmer into hiring Gordon R. Lawson of Lawson & Parsons to design a new line of mid/high end valve hi-fi amplifiers that where introduced into the market under the new Avantic brandname in 1956. While the Avantic amplifiers where still based around Mullard circuits they where more refined than most such sold at the time, but in the 50's the majority of audio amplifiers sold in the UK where based directly or indirectly on technical publications issued by Dutch manufacturer Philips that where intended as a sales aid for the thermionic valves they produced, Philips invariably sold them under local names in local markets and in the UK the valve manufacturing arm of Philips was named Mullard. While those plans were good they where rather generic and this meant that most British amplifiers sold at the time sounded the same and where bought on price alone.
The more refined Avantic amplifiers appeared at a time when interest in Hi-fi was booming and gained quite an interest from both the Hi-fi press and from enthusiast which lead to healthy sales which in turn spurred Beam Echo to quickly follow them up with loudspeakers, a tape recorder, tuners and other audio gear. The company did however have some problems with distribution since dealers already carrying the more established brands where somewhat reluctant to carry BM's products and this led the company to establish a presence in NA, and while it never gained any significant exposure over there the significantly larger market and higher disposable income of the average punter meant half or more of their sales where exported to North America which was unusual at the time with BSR being the only other UK company with any sizeable export sales until the latter half of the 60's. There was always a slight air of pretentiousness surrounding the Beam Echo company, early models of their products where marked as being made in Witham but later products are marked for cosmetical reasons as "made in London" and Mr. Rahmer who was something of a colourful character, insisted on being called André Rahmer, allegedly this was due to him thinking that Henry Michael was rather too common a name for a company director, but there are some indications that he had earlier used a couple of other names, which gives a slightly different slant to it. The company continued to do rather well during the early 60's although it did not grow a lot and Mr. Rahmer sold it to Thorn-EMI in 1962 or 63 and they closed the Witham factory down in 1965 and discontinued the use of most of the BM designs and trademarks soon thereafter. We have some minor information on Beam Echo Amplifiers.
Beam-Echo Limited
Small manufacturer of valve amplifiers based in Christchurch, Dorset, England. Founded by designer Stuart Perry sometime in the early 1990's and shipped it's first model in 1995 which was basically a modernised clone of the Beam Echo DL7-35, the name and the basic designs of the new Beam Echo company where taken from the Beam-Echo Ltd. company (above) but there was no actual connection between the 2, which makes the proclamation "established 1953" that was found in the company's adverts and on their webpage seem somewhat odd, Mr. Perry also never used the Avantic brandname since Thorn-EMI could lay claim to that. In fact this attempt to link together the history of the 2 companies gave the venture a hint of pretentiousness not helped by the "London - Tokyo - Paris - Rome" slogan, B-E Ltd. was after all being operated from an industrial estate in Dorset, which is not the most glamorous of locations. The company added a number of models to the lineup in the latter half of the 90's and in 2001 or thereabouts BM announced a commemorative of amplifier series called the "301 Vinyl Celebration series" although it was not clear what the company was commemorating, in a similar time frame Mr. Perry announced that he was selling his collection of vintage English valve audio equipment. The company homepage disappeared in late 2005 and attempts to contact the company by other means have proved fruitless, in addition PCB's from the company appeared for sale in sundry places in 2006 so it is safe to assume that it is no longer with us. We have been told that Stuart Perry is the same person as reported on Internet audio for HFN&RR in the latter half of the 90's but I have not been able to verify that. More info on the company's products can be had : Beam Echo Amplifiers.
Benytone See --> Marubeni
Benz Micro AG
Swiss maker of pickups and related products, originally founded by aeronautical engineer Ernst Benz to make diamonds for mechanical watch movements in the late 60's and stationed in Neuhausen Am Rheinfall. When the market for clockwork diamonds and ruby's started contracting in the 70's he steered the company towards the manufacture of diamonds for the phonographic industry and when that market in turn started to contract in the 1980's he bought the intellectual and cartridge manufacturing assets of the Empire Scientific company and started manufacturing improved versions of the classic Empire MI designs in Switzerland under the Empire brand, in addition to making a number of phonographic related accessories.
Hr. Benz also teamed up with Aalt Jouk van den Hul, the latter designing a moving coil pickup called the DDT that was made by BM but was sold under the Van Den Hul name, this model was housed in a metal case similar to the Empire casings, while later a variant of that design with a wooden housing was sold under the Benz Micro moniker. Both of these pickups generated a lot of interest in the Hi-fi press and in particular the Benz Micro variant and sold well, after that the Empire designs and name where gradually phased out in preference to MC designs developed from the original VdH design, the company also started manufacturing aeronautical chronometers which also generated interest, being at the time somewhat unique.
Sadly Hr. Benz was cought up in a traffic accident and while he was recovering the fortunes of his company waned without him at the helm and in the end BM went into bankruptcy proceedings in 1997 and was dissolved in October of that year. However Albert Lukaschek who was Hr. Benz right hand man purchased the rights to the company's IP and the tooling and restated production almost immediately under the name of Lukaschek HiFi-Elektronik (but trades as Benz Micro Switzerland), and has continued to manufacture and improve on the BM designs. For a time there where cheap clones sold in the USA of the clockworks that BM had made that where blatantly enough sold using the BMS logo, but Hr. Benz moved to the USA and managed to secure the trademark rights to the Benz name (on timepieces and avionic products anyway, I doubt they will allow him into the car market) and soon thereafter set up a company that manufactures mechanical watches under the Ernst Benz name, the new company did for a time produce and mechanical aviation clockworks like the old Benz Micro company did but drooped that from their catalogue in the latter half of the 00's due to lack of demand. And is by all accounts doing rather well, at the least well enough so that clones of his products are sold under the Ben brand.
Bercor Inc.
Run by Richard Berger and based in La Mirada, California, USA. Prior to their purchase of the assets of the Craig company in 1985 the company operated mostly as a local distributor, subsequent to that the company used the Craig name to brand a variety of cheap Asian CE imports and market them in the USA, much like the original company had done in the last years of its life. Changed its name to Berel Industries in 1989 and changed it's name again in 1997 to Craig Consumer Electronics but filed for bankruptcy on Aug. 1 the same year. Following an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission into financial irregularities Mr. Berger was forced to pay a $25,000 fine and was barred from serving as a corporate officer for five years afterwards, in 2000 Mr. Berger and 2 other former Bercor executives were charged on no less than 34 separate counts of fraud and related activities in relation to the bankruptcy. The Craig brandname was sold by the bankruptcy court to New Tech Industries.
Berkley Testa Electronics
Australian manufacturer based in Templestowe, Victoria that manufactured high end hi-fi products under the Symfonia brand. Founded by communication engineer Stanley Berkley and hi-fi salesman Vincent Testa in 1992 to manufacture the Opus 10 power amplifier designed by Berkley but soon thereafter introduced more amplifiers and other products such as power supplies and crossovers, branched into AV with the introduction of a 6 channel high power amp in the late 90's and announced a new high tech class D PWM amplifier at the same time based around technology developed at the University of Melbourne. Disappeared in late 2001 and we have not been able to find out any more since then, except that Vince Testa is now apparently a beekeeper in his native Templestowe and indeed functions as the president of the local Beekeepers club! For background information read this interview.
Berel Industries See --> Bercor
Berlant Associates
USA based hi-fi and audio company run by Bert Berlant and based in Los Angeles, California. Originally the trade name was Berlant, later Berlant-Concertone and finally just Concertone, primarily known for their open reel recorders and of those early designs were by Berlant himself and manufactured in the USA but later recorders from this company were rebadged TEAC products, company fizzled out in late 60's early 70's. Not to be confused with the French amplifier manufacturer named Concertone active in a similar/slightly later time frame.
Best Kits See --> AAMP of Florida (Pre 1997) or Recoton (1998 to 2003)
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