Leak Is Back. What’s Next Radford?
Leak Stereo 30 Plus
Leak TL50 Plus
Introduction
The UK was the birth place of many of the original audiophile companies like Leak, Quad, Wharfdale, Radford, Celestion, Decca, EMI, English Electric etc. to name but a few. Many of these very successful and technically innovative companies despite producing excellent and revolutionary designs, succumbed to market pressures and went out of business due to the low cost mass produced products from Japan and China. A few managed to survive to today but as time passed large conglomerates have purchased the assets and names of many of the surviving and defunct companies. Today they are now reviving more of them, all in the name of quality, and trying too use the allure of the good old days and these companies decades old reputations to sell more product (often made in Japan and China). Are these products really new and outstanding or are these companies just trying to ‘jump on the band wagon’ for the purpose of increasing their bottom line by riding on the shirt tails and reputation of a manufacture that was truly spearheading technological development and outstanding manufacturing quality (of the day).
The Leak brand re-appears with the Stereo 130 amplifier and CDT CD player
Leak, a highly respected hi-fi brand that was founded by Harold Joseph Leak in 1934 and had its heyday between the late 50’s and early 70’s, has been resurrected by the International Audio Group – IAG (owner of six other famous UK audiophile brands) with two new products, the Stereo 130 integrated amplifier and CDT CD player, both destined for a July 2020 launch.
Image Credit: Leak
Image Credit: Leak
In the past IAG purchased several British HiFi manufacturers: Wharfedale, Quad Electroacoustics, Mission, Tag McLaren, Audiolab and Castle Acoustics plus several Italian manufacturers of lighting equipment including f.a.l. and Coef. It has manufacturing plants in Shenzhen, China, employing approximately 1500 people. Design of the products is done by a mix of Chinese, American and European designers.
– IAG also manufactures luxury yachts near Shenzhen which is the biggest yacht yard in South East Asia!
Read more about the new Leak here.
See some of my golden oldie products here.
I still run and eighties English built Audiolab 8000A amp and am quite happy with its performance and use it’s inbuilt MC input for my
Entré 1. I also have a QED amp that needs attention.
Many of those ‘older’ all analog stereo designs still sound excellent, even by modern day standards. My Radford ZD22, Quad 405 and Leak TL50 produced not only plenty of power but sounded great, like our Entre cartridges and Lentek headamps. Just because a design is old doesn’t mean that it is in someway sub standard and sounds inferior to modern day hardware. New technologies maybe more efficient (class D amps, switch mode PSU’s), lower noise and lower distortion but that doesn’t mean that they sound better.