Retro Hi End Trivia Question

How about the Dunlap-Clarke amp? And the Koss electostatic speakers (NOT headphones - these things were huge), Dayton-Wright electrostatics, Watson Labs speakers from Canada, AEA amp & preamp from Winter Park, Florida.

I believe the Koss Electrostats were designed in part by Dr. West of Sound Lab fame. As I remember they were pretty good speakers - didn't they have a "wall wart" sort of powersupply? Dunlap Clarkes liked to combust, also. They either worked well and sounded good or flamed out...

Nope -- the Switching Class-D amp (or "SWAMP" as it was called in-house)predated the HCA by a couple years. It did fail spontaneously and the reason why was never learned despite considerable research. I think that model had just gone out of production when I came onboard at Infinity, and I helped the electronics department package the HCA for production.

Mike Elliott

Gain cells, Koss, Beveridge, Cotter bases, Fulton Gold cables, 16 inch Fidelity Research tonearms...
Whimsical, often absurd, from musical to criminal, all Dr.Suess audio from that era is eclipsed by the Hill Plasmatronics. Speakers of refrigerator girth, the top 1/3 of the cabinet housed electronics, in the middle was a odor producing purple plasma tweeter, the bottom was home to a paper 15" and 8". But the feature that granted owners unchallenged bragging rights? 5 foot tall, 50 lb. capacity helium tanks hooked to each one! Yikes!
The sequence to turn on the two devices was a ritual of awe and fear. They made horrid clacking noises followed by the rush of escaping gas being detonated by several thousand volt lightning bolt like arcs! These things were better suited to a castle lab than listening room.
To this day, no other designer has had balls to put a backlit switch etched with the word "IGNITE" on a speaker.