KarlK
Well-Known Member
In the 70's where I lived "big box" did not mean BB-style stores but large manufacturers, be they American or foreign.
Every new manufacturer "desires" that situation where your brand has such a good rep that it can sell crap that cost little to manufacture for top dollar solely based on brand recognition The consumer is not that easy to pull, he or she wants quality and it was the same 40 years ago. When you purchased a Pioneer (for example) you could be relatively sure it was good quality inside out, not horse manure hiding in a pretty case.
Lots of once called high-end manufacturers sold sh1tty equipment in the 80's (Luxman and Marantz for example) but instead of making a quick buck and then vanish in thin air along with execs equipped with golden parachutes, the fallout was so outrageous that some companies did not survive the ordeal while others barely made it and returned to the real high-end market where they had come from to begin with (again, Marantz and Luxman are such examples)
In any case you can't just conjure up a good rep, you need to build one first and you don't do that making/selling bozo gear or you won't last long. Suppose you hear about a new-to-the-market brand from, let's say, a Chinese (the new Japan) audio outfit that called itself YouDontKnowMeAtAll Audio would you run to the store inquiring about their wares? Probably not. In order to gain market space YDKMAA Audio would have to be able to offer to prospective customers products that are very obviously of superior quality than that offered by the established competition, yet making you pay comparatively little for it. What we call good value.
Establishment of a reputation is extremely draining so you're stretching yourself beyond failure threshold while juggling with finicky distributors on the one side, harassing bankers to the other. In actuality this would never work without financial backing by "big boxes" from your homeland because remember, you're the the one who is the unknown stranger trying to establish yourself on foreign soil. Failure at this phase means bankruptcy and to the Japanese ventures big and small bankruptcy was not part of their vocabulary. This would be the phase where backers would extend the most, it wasn't quantity over quality, that's a luxury you just can't afford at this crucial phase.
Now that Chinese companies are making and selling anything from ridiculously expensive luxury items to fake iPhones, equating China with cheap stuff is turning a blind eye to reality because one can equate China with everything and anything, just like we could do with Japan once only it's on a larger scale with China since it can profit from an economy the size of which Japan could never have achieved. Chinese electronics are all over the place some very high-end some El Cheapo and some utter crap. Even some of China's largest conglomerates were totally unknown to us when they first landed here, despite being already well known in Asia. A good example of what I'm getting at is Huawei who had to wait years selling high-end devices at mass-market prices, something you have to do to build a rep:sell quality at quantity prices. Pioneer had to do it (twice), Sansui had had to do it, even giants already known here (Pioneer again) had to go through it again just so they could compete with more recent Japanese arrivals. Contrary to what you seem to be thinking Japanese audio from the 70's often had outstanding SQ which they complemented with unsurpassed build quality using expensive materials, and low maintenance cost almost anywhere from Alaska to Canada to Iowa. Yet they sold at a fraction of the cost of Western audio of similar quality.
Of course, they had to be for reasons I mentioned above.
Remove Yamaha from the list and I'll agree with you. I may be living in a large city now but back then I was raised in small towns and you could find Yammies almost in each one of those. Yamaha was "lucky" in how it managed to sell at higher prices than the competition (about 10% more) while making equipment that was of excellent nature, but no more so no less so than the others. Personally I didn't like the "dry" sound of 70's Yamahas but lots of people were attracted to it, and to the distinctive looks... until Pioneer came up with the '50 series aka Silverface which sported looks and design no one had ever seen before. It was a gamble for Pioneer but at the end they held the winning cards. Right now I'm staring at a '50 series unit with that warm orange glow bathing its (silver) face and I cannot help but think "man is this ever classy and expensive-looking, so beautiful it's almost poetic.
Depends on how you define "major". Our own equipment was not so horrible or expensive so as to force us of driving us all to buy Japanese, plus the bias against Japan was still a reality and it did have an impact on sales.
Really? Ya know Asia is/was not just people dressed in rags and jumping trains. Plus Japan had a large population with a trait we did not share: we may have bought lots of Japanese audio but the Japanese did not return the favor and continued to buy Japanese-made equipment throughout the 70's. Japan is very "insular" and did not trust Western audio except for the very high-end stuff, at least that was my impression the few times I went there. Macs were far more common than say, US-made Marantz or British (but now Canadian) NAD.
I used to have the same opinion but after I heard Japanese-market Pioneer speakers that were never sold here I was forced to rethink the matter so realistic in physical impact you'd think you were right there at the concert. A friend of mine has a pair that he paid dearly for transport from Japan. It's very costly to ship 5-foot tall towers that were nothing near slim and must have weighed hundreds of pounds each. These things were massive, and I mean really massive, but exquisitely finished in rare real wood veneer, which is folly in Japan where hardwood is almost as precious as gold. really good quality sound from massive magnets driving two 18-inch woofers in separate chambers, one sealed and the lower one ported firing off the front of the box otherwise you'd need a gymnasium to place them in or be buried in torrential bass. The crossovers oddly feature Western parts like Solen. That design is called a 3.5-way speaker. It's expensive. And it shows. Polyprop woofers, Kevlar mid-bass and mid-high, ribbon tweeter. Large room and powerful amps required
What makes you think that? I am of the opinion that high-end Japanese market speakers were generally quite large and heavy. You just don't spend considerable amounts on shipping knowing that you'll never recoup the cash because you could never sell them for less than thousands and at those price levels you'd be right in the gunsight of North American and European high-end speaker manufacturers where brand loyalty plays a major role.
