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Yamamura Churchill
British company that manufactured the designs by Bé Yamamura these included amps, CD players, turntables and loudspeakers. We have minimal information on the Yamamura - Churchill Requiem Turntable archived but note also that the cables the company sold were actually made by A.R.T. and are still supplied by that company, more info : A. R. T. Millenium Cables.
Youxing
Chinese microphone manufacturer, proper name was Enping Youxing one of many manufacturers that sprang up in latter half of the 90's in or around the city of Enping, in the Chinese province of Guangdong (the local equiv. of Silicon Valley), also operated using the Yayin trademark, disappeared from view in early 2003 and all attempts to contact them have been unsuccessful.
Yuantian
Professional audio and lighting products company founded in 1992 in the Guang Zhou district of Guangdong province, China, and incorporated a year later. Sold products such as mixers, amplifiers, microphones and other electronics under the KOYA Sound brand and when exporting used variations of its trade name and location for a company name, “Guangzhou Koya Sound Co. Ltd.” being the most common but “Koya Guangzhou Sound Co, Ltd” and others were also seen. The Koya Sound brand was mostly used locally and exports were mainly in the form of OEM and ODM deals. The company merged with Liangyin and the trading company Jin Qian Li to form Guang Zhou HuiYing Electronics in 2002.
Zaklady Radiowe Kasprzaka
This Polish company has its origins in the Kasprzak radio manufacturer in the Wola district of Warshaw that was founded in 1951 on the basis of the old Philips Wola manufacturing plant and took over the produce of the AGA Radio from Diora Świdnica although there was parallel production for a short while. The company's name was formally “Zaklady Radiowe im. Marcina Kasprzaka w Warszawie” but that translates roughly as “The Warshaw Marcin Kasprzak Radio Manufacturing Plant”, and the company was named after Marcin Kasprzak, but he was a Polish revolutionary that was hanged in 1904 for killing 4 policemen a year earlier but later martyred by the Polish communist government.
The company started manufacturing radios of its own design in 1953 and introduced Poland's first commercially manufactured tape recorder in 1958 and the first car radio receiver a year later. Their tape recorder products became quite well known in the west during the 60's due to their keen price, some of them sold under their own ZRK (Primarily in Eastern Europe) or ZK names but more frequently as an OEM producer with products sold under a variety of names including Marconi and Ferguson, some of these tape recorder actually were designed by German company Grundig and in the 70's when open reel tape recorder sale began to slow Grundig actually moved their production to the ZRK factory.
The company became part of Unitra union at some point in the 1950's but their products usually kept on being branded ZK until the foundation of PHZ Unitra in 1972, in the west at the least, but after that most of their consumer products appear using the Unitra brand. The company was liquidated in the economic reforms of the early 90's as it was thought that it would never be able to compete in a market economy and the old factory has been refurbished and turned into an office block.
Zaklady Radiowe Radmor See --> Radmor
Zefiro Acoustics
A pioneering manufacturer of high end pro/semi-pro soundcards, run by engineer Greg Hanssen. Stopped selling cards in early 2001 when Mr Hanssen formed Energy CS, a company that develops technologies for electric cars.
Zeiss Ikon
This German company is probably better known for their lenses and as the original manufacturer of the legendary Contax cameras, but perhaps less well known is that they did manufacture quality sound systems for movie theatre usage. Since quite a number of these were 2 channel units (rather than stereo per se) quite a few systems got a second life as home amplifiers during the 60's and 70's when the a large number movie theatres were forced to close down due to the advent of TV etc., this is despite the fact that these valve based monsters were the size of a small PBX. -- Official homepage.
Zetka Industries Ltd
A company based in Gracefield, Wellington in New Zealand that manufactured mid & high end music amplifiers under the McLaren brand although its main business was acting as an OEM and contract manufacturer of electronic equipment for the communication and security industries, the stringent import regulations and high import duties in New Zealand at the time meant that products that would normally have been imported had to be manufactured locally either by default or to be competitive.
Zetka appears to have started producing hi-fi products in the latter half of the 70's, with the 02 series is believed to have been introduced in the early 80, but products from that series including the 402 preamplifier and the 902 monoblock are the ones most likely to find outside of NZ but for a time they were exported to Europe but later products were mostly sold in their homeland. The 03 line of amplifiers that was introduced in 1988 and included the 603 preamplifier, a 703 stereo power amplifier and a 903 monoblock power amplifier, however remains the company's best know products and are fairly common. Zetka went out of business in or around 1995.
Spares & service : Bruce Crothers who was the principal designer of the 03 series of amps has been offering service for the McLaren line of amps but I have been unable to dig up a contact address.
ZK Diora See --> Diora Świdnica
Z-Man
Small comany based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA. Made valve based "sound enhancers" that got a bit of attention in the US audio press, first time we hear of their products is around 1996 but contact lost in 2002 or so.
Zonal Ltd
A long running British manufacturer of blank tape, it's usually classified as a Scottish concern but the only address found was actually in Redhill in the south of England. Produced tape from the 50's into 1999 when they announced their intention to leave the media business. It is unclear if the company is still in operation.
Z-Systems See --> Z-Systems
3M See --> Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co.
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