Born in 1964, I grew up in Freiburg – the „capital“ of the black forrest. After having passed high school – already having been heavily infected by the HiFi virus and especially the helicobacter vinylii – I started studying chemistry at the university of Freiburg. During my studies it was obvious that my old love to physics still is vital and this is why my diploma thesis was in physical chemistry with professor Zimmermann.
During my doctoral thesis on the structure of liquids I did not only learn my additional lessons in physics but also in mathematics. Materials science was something of high interest and this should proof to be a good fundament for the future. In 1996 I founded a small company that initially was focussed on trying to find out why digital equipment at that time still sounded that bad in comparison to analogue gear. An analogue record played back by an excellent deck still is something extraordinary. I found my answers but this is another story… This was why I came back to my old love vinyl in 1999. Since 2002 I cooperated with a company that already was very famous acting as their international distributor. After the death of my friend in late 2004 I helped his widow continuing the work to keep the company running. 10 months later we parted ways and from then I mainly focussed on finalising the work on my own designs…. It has been a long way to the final destination but the way is never too long if you finally can do what you always wanted to do…..
Since mankind considered storing music or speech, electromechanical devices came into the focus of inventors and developpers. From Edison’s first gramophone on a roll there was a short way to discs as we still have them nowadays. The principle is always the same – acoustical energy stored in grooves that can be tracked by a stylus generating electricity recreating the information. From wax to shellac there was a long way until in the fifties vinyl became available and the mass production of records started. From then on there was a media capable of storing acoustical information with high accuracy – the High Fidelity was born and this was also the date of birth for stereophonic records.
The level of perfection already achieved in the mid fifties still is stunning today. Not knowing how to do it the first engineers recording stereophonic records did a brilliant job on the “Mecury Living Presence” or the “RCA LSC/LSP” records to name only the two most famous ones. At that time the home equipment still lacked in performance in comparison to the studio gear and it took a real long time to reach a standard of real High Fidelity in our homes. After two decades the breakthrough came in the 70’s and in the golden age of vinyl manufacturers like the german DUAL were able to sell thousands of turntables each month. Then the CD appeared – the rest of the story is well known…
Nowadays most of the famous brand names and products have disappeared from the market and even the largest manufacturers only sell a fraction of what was sold til 1982. The LP was demoted to a niche product and faced a revival nobody had expected. Millions of records dozing out there only waiting to be played again. But no need for them to worry as there is a growing number of gourmets that neither want to have the haptics of an LP be replaced by a digital record nor do they want to miss the emotionality and sensuality of an analogue record!
Growing from our love to the music – especially the reproduction of analogue recordings – we have decided to develop turntables that do not only coze you because of their flair and elegance but also reveal each and every detail to your ears.
Look, listen, see and get involved, sincerely yours,
Dr. Christian Feickert
