Practical Hi-Fi Magazine September 1979

[Arkless Electronics]

Got that issue, will have to dig it out and see what they say about it.

They liked it. I wasn't so keen on it (Alchemist Axiom). I consider it my worst effort.... yet it's by far the biggest seller! I wanted to do a complete but quick redesign and basically replace the innards with totally different circuitry but the partners in Alchemist decided it was more than good enough to be their entry level integrated.

It was a rather "outré" design which i later thought was just too off the beaten track to work well as a budget product. By the time I'd decided that within the tight parts budget I had, a more conventional topology would be both cheaper and better they had decided to run with it as it was...

[Macca]

'Hi Fi World', 'Hi Fi Review' and the excreable 'The Flat Respose', were a total waste of paper and nothing more than an organ of the arch Flat Earther. propagandist.

Hi-Fi World was never Flat Earth - it was valves and DIY from the start. Linn was rarely reviewed and when it was it did not get good reviews, Naim likewise.

Hi-Fi review I have some old issues of (the last 4 I think) and it was nothing like as bad as people claim to remember it being.

[Marco]

Hi-Fi World was never Flat Earth - it was valves and DIY from the start. Linn was rarely reviewed and when it was it did not get good reviews, Naim likewise.

Yeah Bazza, you've got that one wrong. David Price (the editor for many years) always championed quality Jap gear and kit from small, specialist manufacturers - he certainly wasn't a Linn or Naim fanboy

Marco.

[walpurgis]

Yeah Bazza, you've got that one wrong. David Price (the editor for many years) always championed quality Jap gear and kit from small, specialist manufacturers - he certainly wasn't a Linn or Naim fanboy

Marco.

He is a member here is he not Marco?

[Barry]

Hi-Fi World was never Flat Earth - it was valves and DIY from the start. Linn was rarely reviewed and when it was it did not get good reviews, Naim likewise.

Hi-Fi review I have some old issues of (the last 4 I think) and it was nothing like as bad as people claim to remember it being.

Oops - what was I thinking of?

By only excuse is confusion with Hi Fi Review; thinking that 'World' had morphed into 'Review'.

And yes you are right, HFW is a good magazine, which I continue to buy on occasion. I like the reviews of unusual items of kit, but I don't agree with some of their opinions of 'classical' gear and I miss the days when it used to encourage DIY and the use of vintage items.

But I do stand by my opinion of the defunct 'The Flat Response' and it's successor 'Hi Fi Review'. Both miserable little rags, that seemed to be nothing more than propaganda for the Glasgow-Salisbury axis.

[Arkless Electronics]

Oops - what was I thinking of?

By only excuse is confusion with Hi Fi Review; thinking that 'World' had morphed into 'Review'.

And yes you are right, HFW is a good magazine, which I continue to buy on occasion. I like the reviews of unusual items of kit, but I don't agree with some of their opinions of 'classical' gear and I miss the days when it used to encourage DIY and the use of vintage items.

But I do stand by my opinion of the defunct 'The Flat Response' and it's successor 'Hi Fi Review'. Both miserable little rags, that seemed to be nothing more than propaganda for the Glasgow-Salisbury axis.

I well remember HFW giving a rave review to the Leak Troughline tuner and claiming it was the best tuner ever built by a country mile... values (temporarily) went from around £20 to £350 virtually overnight! It probably had something to do with the vast quantities of them most hi fi dealers had in the basement as door stops and paper weights... Some must have made a killing! Vastly over rated and completely trounced by Leak's later Stereofetic/Delta FM which still goes for like £35 or so...
And now I have over the years accumulated about a dozen Troughlines no one wants one... oh well they do hold a door open pretty well I can see me ending up scrapping some for the mains transformers and valve bases etc for building prototype pre amps etc.

[mikeyb]

An onerous task but it would be a good archive to have them scanned and saved.

[Spectral Morn]

I binned What HiFi, HiFi Sound, HiFi Choice, HiFi World, most Audiophiles, but kept all my Stereophiles , HiFi Answers, Absolute Sound, HiFi News and HiFi +. Got rid of all the AV magazines, a sizeable bundle.

I regret getting rid of the Audiophiles but I barely had the space. It gets worse as I continue buying but I don't these days by all. HiFi + isn't always worth the price of admission - I miss the Roy Gregory period as imperfect as that was but, + then was an exciting read. News is better than it was, but sadly it reflects the same companies portfolios each month, so is getting a bit stale.

I prefer physical mags to read rather than online.

[Marco]

What about Hi-Fi for Pleasure, with front covers regularly adorned with scantily-clad girlies - remember? That was always good for a giggle!

Marco.

[walpurgis]

What about Hi-Fi for Pleasure?

Marco.

They occasionally offered 'super quality' LP's. I have a couple, they're pretty good actually.