Whatever happened to REAL "owners manuals" ???

Remember the "good old days" when products actually came with an owner's manual? You know what i'm talking about, an actual "booklet" that was filled with facts, figures, ideas and explanations as to why the product was built and designed the way that it was. Some of the info included in these manuals was actually very informative and educational to say the least. Most of the products that i see nowadays come with a few sheets ( if that ) that read like advertising copy and a registration form for warranty purposes. The products that do come with manuals ( Pre-Pro's, etc... ) are sometimes so poorly written that you have to read them 5+ times before you can figure out how to do something. Obviously, the "art" of writing a good manual has been lost from what i can tell.

With that in mind, what companies and products still offer high quality manuals with good info and background on the products? To make this interesting and possibly give some of the "old timers" a chance to reminisce about some of their favourites from yester-year, let's include older gear that had really outstanding manuals. I'll start off with a few that come to mind.

The first one isn't really a manual so much as it was the "flyers" that came with the unit when purchased AND the sales literature that you could get at the dealer. It is the old Audio General Incorporated ( AGI ) 511 preamp. If you read these "glossy flyers", you new exactly how & why every component was selected and why David went with the circuit design that he did. You also knew exactly what the spec's were and why the designer wanted to achieve that specific level of performance in each given area. To be quite honest, this piece of gear and the associated literature that AGI put out back in the 70's was HIGHLY influential to my way of thinking aka my "audio thought process". To this day, i still consider it a good and educational piece of reading material.

The second that comes to mind is the owners manual for the Acoustic Research model 9 floorstanding speaker. Not only does AR go into depth as to how the speaker works and why it was designed the specific way that it was, they even provide comparative graphs for various room placements. Not only are spec's provided using the common "audiophile" standards for the USA, they also provided spec's for DIN standards. These are quite different from what we here in the USA are used to seeing. Not only did they put a lot of effort into designing this 48 page manual, AR put forth a HUGE amount of effort into designing this speaker. If you read the July 04 Stereophile, they make mention of AR's "seminal study" of cabinet research and radiation characteristics in the article entitled "Cutting Corners" by Keith Howard. Much of the data that AR gathered while doing that research went into the design of these speakers and can be found in very condensed and simplified form in this manual. Even with 25 years on the clock, these speakers are still HIGHLY influential and this manual is still HIGHLY educational. As influential as this design was, it's too bad that many of the manufacturers try to copy certain aspects of the design without doing the associated research. If they did, they would see that the way that they impliment some of the aspects that they copied is not true to the original and is actually detrimental to performance.

My third contribution is going to be the owners manual for the Eminent Technologies ET II tonearm and the along with the additional booklet for their optional fluid damping system. Bruce included gobs of background and technical info interspersed with the basic installation and notes on how to use the product, making it both user friendly and educational. Between these two "manuals", you end up with about 75 pages of information about tonearm operation.

My fourth and last "nomination" is for early Perreaux products. While not the most "adventurous" in terms of information included, they gave background on what specific specs were, what those spec's meant and why Peter strived to achieve the design goals that he chose.

Any comments or additions from the peanut gallery??? : ) Sean
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