VR - Damark Industries
Trading company based in Chatsworth, California, USA, and founded in 1967, later in Camarillo, California. Originally I believe the company was mostly occupied with distributing hi-fi and radio products (via mail order ?) but in the latter half of the 70's it started marketing products under their own
Vector Research brand, these were noticeably better than most such branding exercises especially in the first few years, in particular the
Kyocera sourced CD players and cassette recorders, video recorders sourced from
NEC (by far the best
OEMsupplier of such at the time) and the receivers which were sourced from the Japanese and Taiwanese factories that at the same time were supplying
Rotel and
NAD with their USA models, these receiver models usually not sold in Europe, and these are the exact same units as provided by the aforementioned companies except for the front facia.
Noticeably VR was selling the receivers at lower prices than the competition and thus gained something of a reputation as a supplier of quality budget hi-fi, but the company was by no means tied to the low end, the most expensive receiver model from the company at the time retailed for around 1000 USD, the loudspeakers and record players from the company were disappointing however. The company was almost exclusively distributed in the southern part of the USA although for a time their products were sold as far away as Australia but notably the company did only own the trademark rights to VR in the US, the quality of their products also took a downturn in the latter half of the 80's in tune with the market and the last products I have been able to find stamped with the VR brand were an inexpensive sub/satellite combination from the early 90's. Getting accurate information on the company itself has not been without problems but it does appear to have gone out of business in 1992/3, however the Vector Research trademark was transferred to a company of the same name and a very similar address to the last one that Damark had at that time but no products manufactured under the VR name have been found that have been attributed to the latter company and last traces of it disappear from official documentation in 2004.