Designer Hall of Fame

The original Lavardin designer who died in a car accident - the original IT that I had (which went kapput) sounded better than the upgraded version. His papers on memory distortion are fascinating. It's a tragedy that he died before he designed anything else

Arthur Janszen (electrostat speakers)

Bruce Moore and Scott Frankland MFA
Roy Gandy
Jim Winey

I have limited personal experience with most of the great names in audio because I rarely change components. I've loved my MFA Luminescence preamp for well over 20 years. The Lumi has been upgraded twice by Scott. I also have a pair of MFA M120B mono amps- upgraded once by Scott. All pieces are keepers.

Roy Gandy-Rega P5- A heck of a lot of turntable for not a lot of money, although I wish I had not sold my Linn and VPI. :)

Jim Winey- My first high-end speakers were MG1's and I recently restored a pair of MMG's and am, at long last, happily back in the Magnepan fold.

Surprised, that only 2 mentions, of Stewart Hegeman appeared. He truly pioneered many things, such as wide bandwidth in amplifiers, minimal negative feedback in amplifiers, and, many speaker designs, just to name a few. He was brilliant, with both tube, and solid state, designs. Many, many years ago, I met him at an audio fair, in New Jersey. He was very soft spoken, and, seemed to shy away from all of the marketing hype that was going on.

I agree with the recommendation of Nelson Pass and Kevin Hayes, though objectively my other 3 Hall of Famers would be Arnie Nudell, Richard Vandersteen & Dan D'Agostino, though so many others deserve to be recognized such as Franco Serblin, Andy Payor (whose Sirius turntable is still considered amongst the best ever made), Alon Wolf, Hans Ole Vitus, Flemming E. Rasmussen & Holger Fromme.