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Defunct Audio Firms :
SoleControl See --> Infrared Research Laboratories (up to 1994) or Recoton (1994 to 2003)
Soliloquy Loudspeaker Company Inc
USA Loudspeaker manufacturer started in 1996 by Dennis Had of Cary Audio Design as a division of Cary and based in their Apex, North Carolina facilities. Mr. Had felt that there were not enough high efficiency loudspeaker designs on the market to mate with products such as Cary’s SET amplifiers and in response had 2 transmission line designs made up that were shown to dealers in various audio shows in early 1997. The response from Cary dealers to the speakers was a bit muted so Mr. Has decided against financing the tooling and staffing of a new company and instead sold the designs and trademark to a to the father and son team of Bernarr (Bernie) M. Byers and Douglas Brock Byers who are also the owners of Diagnostic Healthcare Systems
The company was incorporated in August 1997 in nearby Raleigh and started manufacturing speakers shortly thereafter. The speakers received rather mixed reception but they had a pronounced midrange which suited some valve amplifiers well but less so with transistorised amps that represent the bulk of the market. This lead the Byers to approach China based loudspeaker designer Phil Jones in 1998 to design a new line of speakers that featured drivers from his new Chinese company American Acoustic Development.
Initial sales of the new line-up were promising which led the company to move in 1999 to new premises in Raleigh that were more than 500 square meters in size and a new sales team was hired that included David Berman formerly of California Audio Labs, by 2000 Mr. Berman had become general manager of the company and by late 2002 he had had bought the company off the Byers and become the president of the company.
Mr. Berman instigated a number of changes within the company, he moved cabinet construction in-house and in addition to the manufacturing side steered the company towards distribution with them handling the USA distribution of products such as loudspeakers by aforementioned AAD and separates from Marsh Sound Design. By 2004 thing start to go wrong for the company but we have not managed to find out exactly why, one story is that the owner was involved in an accident in early 2004 and things started to go downhill after that, another one is that when AAD opened up their own USA distribution network they stopped supplying Soliloquy with drivers.
Not sure if either of these is correct but the latter chimes in with the fact that the company withdraws from the market in 2004 and by late that year is only selling B-Stock speakers via their website, they announced that their product line would be revamped with new drivers in early 2005, the proposed new line-up would add an I to the end of each model and they would also be available in “special” versions with better finish and drivers that would have an IS at the end of each model name.
By 2005 the company had been thrown out of their rented premises and the jigs and other tooling was thrown away, the president of the company was still offering support and driver replacements in late 2005 though, and assured punters that the company would be back in 2006 with a new line-up, but nothing has been heard from Soliloquy since and the company was dissolved in 2010.
Solo Electronics
A Hayward, California, USA based company founded by the Lau brothers in or around 1990 to manufacture valve amplifiers under the Golden Tube Audio brand and did so with some success, but ran into problems in the latter half of the decade, started manufacturing home theatre amplifiers under the Golden Theatre name around 1999 and disappeared in early 2002. There is a fairly low volume mailing list on Yahoo that deals with the Golden Tube amps.
Sonotone
American company that began manufacturing hearing aids in the early 1930's but diversified into manufacturing pickups, tape recorder heads, microphones and other transducers, and even the odd valve along with rechargeable batteries and a short lived range of hi-fi separates. Stopped making any audio related products apart from pickups and mic's in the early 60's and the audio division was sold a little later to Astatic, but the company is still around under another name and still manufacture hearing aids. More info from the Sonotone history page.
Soundmaster See --> Brenell (Tape recorder kits UK – Early 1950´s)
Sound Quest, Inc.
USA based maker/reseller of car audio installation and accessory products, taken over by Recoton in 1994. No relation to the software company of the same name.
Soundtrack (Audio Electronics - USA 1970's) See --> Target
Sound West
Company based in Los Angeles, California, USA and formed in 1972 by Barney Rigney, a former vice president of JBL. It manufactured an unusual weather resistant, small and light (1kg) full range speaker that could be bought in three shapes, round, square and octagonal with a choice of grill colours that included rust, blue, gold, black and white. The ABS plastic enclosures were only delivered in white though but could be tilted, originally released without a name they were later referred to in company brochures as "Extraspeakers" and were advertised as an auxiliary speaker unit.
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The company moved to Van Nuys in California in late 1972 and in 1974 introduced a free-standing tower speaker called "Tower I" that they referred to as a "pedestal", since it was designed to be strong enough to have ornate object placed on it, a "wife friendly speaker" in other words, it is in design and function uncannily similar to modern floor standing speakers, but those did not start showing up until the 1980's so this is a pioneering design in some ways. The Tower I is a 2 way system with 2x 8" high compliance woofers and a 2" tweeter, featured a power handling capacity of 50W RMS and is 37 inches tall and 10x10 w x d. The enclosure is ported and is made out of MDF with an oiled walnut veneer and featured a black knit grille. RRP when introduced was 119.95 USD.
Later the same year the company also released an after-market automotive speaker called simply "the car speaker", it was a wedge shaped black ABS plastic enclosure with a foam grills similar to the one on the Extraspeakers but those could only be had in black or chrome plated!
Sound West has not been heard from since 1975 and nothing is known about its operations..
South Western Technical Products Corp. (SWTPc)
Originally founded in 1963 in San Antonio, Texas, USA by Daniel E. Meyer as DEMCO (aka Daniel E. Meyer Company) but was incorporated in 1967 as South Western Technical Products Corporation which was in daily usage shortened to SWTPc or SWTP. Initially the company supplied electronic kits to go with construction articles that Mr. Meyer had written for electronic magazines, most of these where cheap audio related things like simple pre-amps and so on but there were also more novel products such as a Térmen Airovox (Theremin) and suchlike.
In the latter half of the 60's SWTP had some quite good audio product kits in their catalogue and by the early 70's they were also offering fully built products such as Hartley Products loudspeakers etc. The company took over Lambert Labs in 1971 and with that takeover got a number of audio related products but seems to have discontinued most of those shortly thereafter. During the 70's the emphasis drifted away from audio products towards digital electronics and SWTP became quite well know in the computer world with their line of SWTPC computers based around Motorola? processors that were introduced in the mid 70's and for a time the company was one of the better know microcomputer manufacturers in the USA. SWTP had exited the computer and audio business by the early 90's and had become a POS service unit and changed its name to Point Systems and went out of business by the mid 90's.
Speakerlabs
Small loudspeaker manufacturer based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada that made custom loudspeakers for the professional audio industry in addition to a few serially produced models that where intended for mobile DJ's and musicans. Is often confused with Speakerlab and there appears to be a new USA based company starting up that shares the Speakerlabs name but is no relation.
Speakers Delight
A company run by Stephan Dasbach and based in Dinslaken, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. Primarily a dealer in high end audio products and also acted as a local distributor for East Sound and Phase Style Ltd. but had a line of mid/high end speakers sold under their own name. Initially their products were called the "Delight Line" featuring a standmount/bookshelf model called the "Delight 1", a floorstander called "Delight 2" and a floorstander with a D'Appolito configuration called "Delight 3", these all featured ribbon tweeters and aluminium cone woofers. A cheaper floor standing model called MPX was introduced in 2003 that had a conventional tweeter and a price point below the "Delight line".
Speakers Delight introduced the "Referenz line" in 2004 but these were 2 higher end models based on the Delight 3, namely the "Kleine Referenz" that was very similar to the D3 and the more expensive "Referenz" that was a further development of the concept with a 5 way D'Appolito configuration (The D3 and Kleine-R had a more conventional 3 way one), doing a search on the second hand market is is either of those 2 you are likely too find, I have not been able to find any examples of the Delight or MPX. By 2006 the company dropped all models in their lineup except the larger "Refernz" and concentrated on selling models by other manufacturers.
Belived to have started out in the late 90's and we have not heard from SD since 2008 and Hr. Dasbach offered what appeared to be the remains of his stock for sale on German Hi-Fi sites in early 2010..
Spectral See --> GTRC Services (USA - Multimeda products and cables - 00's)
Spinney
Brandname used by UK retail chain Littlewoods for budget brown goods in the 60's and 70's.
Sprint See --> Recoton (Assecories and land line phones only 1998 to 2003)
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