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Bang & Olufsen WTF?


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Typical Bang & Olufsen I suspect, all price and no performance!

 

It would certainly make for a good conversation piece for the pinky in the air crowd as they sit around and discuss the next yachting trip.

 

 

I haven't looked at B&O equipment for decades, so I have no idea what they are making these days, but my first 'good' turntable was a Beogram 1000. It was a belt-drive turntable arm, and cartridge. The arm is still one of the two prettiest arms I've ever seen (the other being the Walnut Grado arm from the early 1960's) and the cartridge that plugged into the arm was a B&O SP12. It performed great for it's time, and B&O's cartridges, which were moving iron types (variable reluctance), were so good that a company in New York called Soundsmith still makes them under license and will provide new stylus assemblies for the older ones and will re-tip the older ones with non-user interchangeable styli. Also, my first stereo microphone was a B&O ribbon model. It had really low output, but with a transformer to boost it and adequate amplification, it sounded very good and was gorgeously made. It came in a beautiful Brazilian rosewood presentation case with gold lettering stenciled on it. I always thought it was very elegant. A friend had a pair of B&O speakers that were excellent for their time. He was a radio "disc jockey" at a classic station, and he took his own cartridges to work to play his own records on his show. He would replace the station's Shure cartridge/plug-in shells on their SME arms with his own shells fitted with B&O cartridges at the beginning of his shift.

 

So, at one time some Bang & Olufsen gear was highly thought of by the audiophile community. Of course as newer stuff came out, we all moved on, and we didn't think about B&O any more. I guess they did become known more for their high fashion than they did for their "fi". OTOH, weren't those fancy linear-tracking turntables of the 1980's highly regarded?

George

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