By the fireside - Episode 2

Welcome to episode 2 of our fireside chat series with Aspara Acoustic's very own bearded founder, Brian. Here we pick up with him following the first instalment:


When I eventually went away to college I discovered one of our lecturers had a Hi-Fi system, which was even stereo!


I would sometimes babysit for the family and took my records to play on the system. Using this at silly levels was of course out of the question, as playing heavy metal loud and keeping the kids awake wasn't part of the deal.  Even so it was obvious that a system such as this was very worthwhile even at sensible levels.


I determined to have a system of my own, but the only one I could afford was very modest,  so self-effacing that it hardly had any dynamic range at all. This was perhaps just as well as I lived in a bedsit with paper thin walls.


I did discover a nearby local shop which sold mostly second hand radios but following deeper inspection I uncovered that it also stocked speaker bits.


I bought a 13" by 8" EMI driver with a concentric tweeter fed by a simple crossover to replace the one I had. I found out that it was important to have an enclosure to go with this to prevent the output from the rear of the driver interfering with that from the front.  A book from the library mentioned this but inferred the bigger box the better so I used all the wood I could find in my parents shed, mostly 12mm chipboard, and built a rudimentary box.


Unfortunately, the book didn't mention that it was a good idea to have some way of stopping the panels moving so these flapped uncontrollably on my enclosure and contributed a good bit of sound themselves.


My novice attempts could have stopped here had it not bee for a book I found on a trip to the library called "Loudspeakers" by Gilbert Briggs.   Here at last was a worthy text book that I was able to get my teeth into.

Brian Taylor, Aspara Acoustics

A Fireside Chat With Our Very Own Bearded Founders

Pull up a chair and join us for the first in a series of fireside chats with our bearded founders as they discuss the history and world of Hi Fidelity Audio.

Audiophiles of the world we ask you - is it all about the technology ?

We are often asked "exactly how old are Brian and Julius" . . . . 

Beneath the beards there is a hidden lifetime of turntables, loudspeakers, woodwork, vinyl, audio theory, horns, drivers, and music of every kind  . . . over the next few weeks we thought you might enjoy a few of the recollections of our senior members.  Maybe you have your own story? 

Brian's Corner #1

It's strange how you become interested in things. 

I picked up my enthusiasm for high quality audio from my father, who had worked for the UK electronics firm Plesseys before the war. 

During the war he worked on designing bomb sight computers at the RAF at Farnborough. In our garage was the remains of a field coil moving coil speaker he had made himself in the 1930's.  

He told me enthusiasts had stretched a silk stocking across a hole in a piece of wood to make speaker cones. Weights were then placed in the centre, causing the stocking to drop into a cone shape.  Lacquer was then painted on to make it go hard.  

During the war a bomb blew his house apart turning the cone of his speaker inside out !

In the 1950's Dad bought a 12" speaker from Goodmans and during the 1950's and 1960's I recall we had a large Radiogram with his 12" speaker built into it.  The Radiogram stood in our living room.  Dad also built an amplifier and tuner to go with it,  it was a valve amplifier of course!  Our turntable was a Garrard Transcription one, the next down in their range from the famous Garrard 301.

Once I started buying vinyl singles I quickly found Dads system and played my music LOUD with plenty of low frequency grunt from the 12" speaker.

My first record was "You Really Got Me" by the Kinks, which I am sure became as familiar to the neighbours as it was to me.  Whenever everyone was out, I really cranked up the volume.

It was noticeable that Dads system played records better than my friends Dansette players of the time. This made me wonder what a really good system would sound like, one that was even better than my Fathers.

This was the start of the long slippery slope to my becoming a Hi-Fi Fanatic . . . . 

Brian Taylor, Aspara Acoustics