Designer Hall of Fame

There are many, but my for me it’s a 3 way tie between:

Victor Khomenko of BAT
Luke Manley of VTL
William Z. Johnson of Audio Research

Though all three of these men take different approaches, their gear is always well built and provides a rich sonic experience. Whether or not you like the sound of their designs, they all have contributed greatly to the resurgence of tube based technologies as being the real deal. If you suffered through the chintzy, edgy sound, of Solid-State offerings of the 70’s and 80’s you will appreciate the current popularity of tube gear.

J. B. Lansing

Peter Jensen (reportedly, the inventor of the loudspeaker)

Scott Nixon -first US tube DAC

Peter Daniels - Audio Sector

Steve Nugent - Empirical Audio

Nelson Pass from Pass Labs is clearly most notorious but it seems that none have mentioned
Flemming E. Rasmussen - Gryphon
Jacques Mahul - JM Lab
Ken Ishiwata – Marantz Signature

Arthur Loesch

In the 1980's, he was principally responsible for resurrecting the low-powered, single-ended triode (SET) amp and high-efficiency speaker from obscurity. When many designers were simply reworking classic circuits from the 1930's-50's, he was one of the few people to actually come up with an an original concept for phono reproduction using the WE417A (or Nuvistor) front end.

Art's still active, but is not as well known today as he was when Joe Roberts was publishing Sound Practices, where his designs were regularly discussed.

Maybe I'm not reading close enough, but I don't see Mr. Marantz on the list and he certainly should be. There isn't a tube circuit designer out there that doesn't owe some portion of their success to him and his work in amplifier design. You might be able to say the same for someone like Avery Fisher or Hermon Scott as well. It's these gentlemen's circuit designs and innovations that have driven most of the electronics in the modern audio world. You could certainly make a case for some of the early circuit designers that came before these, but their work appears to me to be the focal point between what some consider "electronic hobby", and the high end we understand today...