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Arena Audio? Anyone Heard of this Company?

KingBubba

KingBubba

"Too Much Stuff"
An older British gent, that works in the theater I work in, and I were discussing old stereos. He said he owned a receiver made by a company called Arena. He bought the unit oversees for 500lbs British. That makes it very expensive for the times, which was the early 60s. He said it was Scandinavian made and was of the same quality range as B+O, though of different visual design. I have never heard of this company and was wondering if anyone out there in AK land has. I did a search but came up dry. It is time to stump AK.:D
 
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mjr4077au said:
In England, They have a company called "Rank Arena".
Click to expand...

As in "Rank Xerox", I assume-? Seems the Rank group distributed, joint ventured, or was the agent for a number of brands, as I see the name sometimes in joint use like that.
 
Thanks for the posts. I'll show him the photo of the amp and see if it is familiar. I think he said it was a receiver. I just knew someone here would know something. Thanks.
 
Arkay said:
As in "Rank Xerox", I assume-? Seems the Rank group distributed, joint ventured, or was the agent for a number of brands, as I see the name sometimes in joint use like that.
Click to expand...

No, Definetly "Rank Arena". I have a old "Rank" TV and "Rank" home movie camera from the 70's. They both say Rank Arena on them. I actually believe NEC was making them for Rank as the manual for the TV has NEC on the back.
 
Rank Arena

The company was funded in 1928 under the name Herofon by the 21 year old Ove Hede Nielsen and was located in a corner of his fathers bicycle factory in Horsens, Denmark. Prior to this Mr. Nielsen started the adventure by build radios and bicycle around in the area trying to sell them, this at age 15. In 1939 the factory sold 10.000 Herofon-radios, witch was a great success in a country of less than 5 million people.

Then in 1946 the factory burned down, Hede Nielsen build a new and bigger factory. A little later in the early 50’s he changed the brand name to ARENA, soon after this in 1955 they started to build TV’s, in the mid 60’s the production of color TV’s began. At this time there were 600 people employed and most of the production was exported. In late 60’s things went wrong and in 1970 the factory burned to the ground again. This time forcing Ove Nielsen to leave his dream and sell the company, it was taken over by the Rank Murphy Organisation.

The factory was rebuilt once again and the name changed to Rank Arena, in 1974 the times were not good and the English mother company closed down the factory in Horsens. A small group of employees refused to give up and founded the company 3F (Folke Fjernsyns Fabrikken, translates to; peoples television factory) and sold peoples shares at 500, - Danish kroner the share. This became a socialistic dream coming true and they seceded continuing the business until 1979 where they were forced to give up and close the factory ending a 50 years adventure building radios in Horsens
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The English mother company continued using the name Rank Arena on units build on there other factories; this went on until 1978 where the Rank organization sold the Rank Bush Murphy Group to Great Universal Stores. The brand name is still in use to day and you can buy plasma screens with the name Rank Arena but they have very little to do with the original Arena TV’s other than the name. If one would have told Ove Nilsen back in 1928 that the Arena name in 2007 would be on something called a plasma screen, he would properly have gotten big eyes and then a big prude smile on his face.

It is said that Ove Nilsen would rather build radios than make homework when he was young :)

Here a link to some more pics of Arena gear: http://www.radiomuseum.org/m/rankarena_dk_en_1.html

PS. The Rank Xerox Company is connected to the Rank Company.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rank_Organisation
 
Wow, I never expected a response with so much detail in it. The-real-Mandak, thank you for your research and contribution to this thread. You are appreciated.

Gary
 
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