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Re’an Products Limited
A company based in Edgware, Middlesex, England that was founded in early 1998 as Alpew Trading Ltd. but changed its name to Re’an later that year. Took over the manufacture and sales of connectors, patchbays and knobs from another British company that we believe had a similar name but had gone insolvent a little earlier, Re’an itself went out of business in 2002 and the connectors and patch bay business was taken over by Neutrik while Werfo took over the manufacture of knobs and other plastic parts.
Rectilinear Research Corp
Loudspeaker manufacturer run by Morris Weiner and based in Brooklyn, NY, USA. The company was started in the early 1960’s and delivers its first product in 1966 in the form of the Model III loudspeaker, complete with an endorsement from Duke Ellington. Rectilinear appears to have been primarily a loudspeaker manufacturer rather than a developer, they did not manufacture their own drivers and all of their designs appear to have been made either by outside developers or by contractors. Their best know design these days is probably the Mini-III 3 way system designed by John Dalquist that featured Philips supplied 8" woofer and 5" midrange, much hoopla was generated by the company about the phase coherency shown by the Mini-III, much like the speakers that the Dahlquist company itself later produced, and Rectilinear claimed that it would “pass a square wave undistorted”, this was simply archived by having no mid-band crossover whatsoever, hence no mid-band crossover phase related irregularities, an updated version called the Mini-IIIb appeared around 1970. The most common Rectilinear loudspeaker on the second hand market appears to be the model III, it is a 6 way system that included 4 tweeters and was made in three variants, the original model from 1966 that featured Jensen drivers and tone controls at the back, these are colloquially know as "highboys", the IIIB introduced in 1972 that featured the same drivers but in a smaller cabinet and no tone controls, these are commonly known as "lowboys". The Model IIIa that appears around 1970 is basically the same design as the original III but features much better drivers sourced from an unknown Danish firm. One of the reason that Model III show up on the market more often than later and more common models like the bookshelf type XII is simply their sheer size and weight which makes them impractical in smaller households.
Rembrant See --> All Channel Products (Pre-1989) or Recoton (1989 - 2003)
Revere Camera Company
Founded in 1920 in Chicago, Illinois, USA as the Excel Radiator Company by Ukrainian immigrant Samuel Briskin to manufacture car radiators, but started manufacturing some coarse household products later in the decade. Started making budget 8mm movie cameras in 1939 through a subsidiary run by Briskin's sons but that company was later merged into Excel Radiator Co. which then changed its name to Revere Camera Co. (The Revere name BTW is taken from the Revere Copper Co. which provided financial backing for Excel during the depression). In the 50's the company was the second largest manufacturer of small movie cameras in the USA and in order to grow that business further the company took over their primary lens and shutter supplier in the form of the New Jersey based Wollensak Optical Co., both in order to secure their supply of parts but also to gain a more upmarket brandname, although Wollensak was primarily know as an OEM supplier of parts they has a small range of upmarket still cameras. The Revere brandname had become synonymous with budget cameras and soon after the take-over Wollensak models appeared that were mechanically mostly identical to the standard Revere models but had much better lenses, more stylish casing and sold for a premium price. The company started manufacturing tape recorders in the early 1950's and while moderately successful and at the time were considered to be amongst the better quality consumer recorders available in the USA, that side of the business never became an important part of the company's output. Samuel Briskin was diagnosed with inoperable cancer in 1960 and rather than leave the company to his family he decided to divest of the company and later that year sold out to 3M for 17 million USD.
Revolver See --> Sundown Electronic Engineering (Turntables - UK 1979 to 1993)” or Revolver Loudspeakers – UK 1994 to 1999 – info below
Revolver UK Ltd
A trading company informally founded in 1994 by Peter Ratchford and Ray Nugent but incorporated in 1996. The partners had bought the Revolver trade name from Sundown Electronic Engineering and started selling selling loudspeakers under the Revolver brand that were manufactured for them by JPW. The company name was changed to “Aura Systems Europe Limited” in 1997 but was closed down the year after. The Revolver brand-name eventually ended up with the Acoustic Partnership in 2002.
RFT
East German state run manufacturing and sales organisation, normally the products of Neumann East Germany (now Microtech Gefell), Ziphona and others were sold with the RFT label rather than using the individual companies trademarks although in the 80's it became more common to see the individual trademarks on the product as well as the RFT brand. Also this method of centralised distribution was only used for consumer products, professional products were distributed and branded by the individual companies.
RG Dynamics, Inc.
Company based in Skokie, Illinois, USA and run by Robert Grodinsky. Timeline appears to be from the early 80’s and into the early 90’s and the high end preamplifiers and dynamic processors that the company made appear to be developments of products formerly manufactured by Roger Grodinsky Research but unlike the earlier company that is best remembered for their amplifiers RG Dynamics is best known for the dynamic expanders that were developments of the expanders Mr. Grodinsky had designed for Pioneer, and although these were apparently designed for the home market they saw quite a bit of use in commercial installations.
RGR See --> Roger Grodinsky Research
Richard Sequerra Associates
USA based company founded by industry legend Richard Sequerra in 1987, manufactured a number of loudspeaker designs in addition to doing consulting and electronic design for third parties. The company was closed down in 1998 when Mr. Sequerra decided to retire from manufacturing, but he bounced back with Sequerra Audio Labs shortly thereafter and that company manufactures basically the same loudspeaker products to this day, although on a more limited basis.
RIE See --> Radon Industrial Electronics (UK)
RMAC See --> Liangyin
Robert Grodinsky Research
Company based in Lincolnwood, Illinois, USA that made high end amplifier products and audio processors in addition to offering modifications for Audio Research turntables. Run by designer Robert M. Grodinsky who had prior to opening the RGR company designed electronics for Acoustic Research (Teledyne), Koss and Pioneer amongst other things, timeline appears to be late 70’s into the early 80’s.
The company made high end preamplifiers that were in some aspects much unlike what was emerging as the norm for high end audio products at the time, including having 2 phono inputs, each with variable loading, and the phono section sounded quite good for the time as well. The amplifiers also have a bright and clear sound quite uncharacteristic of USA made equipment from that timeframe but American audiophiles tended to favour dark sounding, slightly filtered equipment, perhaps due to noise problems with many LP´s and tapes put out at the time, this means that the sound of the RGR amps is more reminiscent of Japanese or German high end products of the 70´s than the new world equivalents. However early units got a reputation for shabby build quality although that appears improved as the years passed but perhaps more irritatingly from a modern perspective is the quality of some mechanical and passive components, with many of the older generation of designer there was limited no appreciation of the quality of passive components (a problem with Quad from a similar timeframe) the preamplifiers suffer from this problem more than the power amps but this also hampered the expanders that the company sold which were otherwise an ingenious design that often worked better than corresponding dbx corp. units even though Mr. Grodinsky lacked the financial clout that allowd dbx to design custom silicon.
The company disappears around 1980 but shortly afterwards a company called RG Dynamics shows up in neighbouring town of Skokie and more lately Mr. Grodinsky appears to be the primus motor behind State Technology Research.
Spares & service : No company specialises in servicing RGR products and although Mr. Grodinsky is still in the hi-fi business it appears that he is no longer able to provide any support. However there are no exotic parts inside these amps and even the knobs used are standard items still manufactured (or equivalents), most of the problems seen in the preamps are due to manufacturing faults, re-capping, re-soldering and replacing some of the passive parts and the RCA connectors would leave you with an amplifier that was functionally better than new. The power amplifiers have fared much better but there appear to be fewer of them around but most of them still operational.
Road Gear See --> Recoton
Roadstar See --> Sunrise House
Roiene (Japan, loudpeaker drivers) See --> Isao Yamamura
Roland See --> Rotel
Rolling Stone See --> Recoton (Accessories only, 1998 to 2003)
Roman Audio Systems
A manufacturer of mid to high end loudspeakers based in Groves, Texas, USA, and was run by Dale Fontenot who was previously well known in the high end automobile audio market. The company claimed to have revolutionary crossovers in the form of a technology called DiAural that was developed by Kimber Kable’s Eric Alexander and licenced to Roman Audio. The company’s products all featured Roman names, the “Vesuvius” and “Gladiator” subwoofers, the “Pro Consule” centre channel speaker, the “Senator” loudspeaker that is a small two way unit meant to be used as a standmounter rather than a bookshelf unit, and the 2 way “Centurion” floorstander, all featuring Cabasse drivers.
Their speakers got a fairly good reputation amongst the online community particularly for their value for money while the subwoofers and the centre channel speakers were considered overpriced, but I have not been able to track down any reviews of their products amongst the established media. The company appears to have been established around 2001 and we lost contact around 2006 but the real time line is unknown.
Ross See --> Tambalan Ltd. (1970's to 1997) or Recoton (1997 to 2003)
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