shauns@vice.UUCP (06/28/84)
First, a disclaimer. I still own a B&o 1900 turntable of 5 years vintage
and have had no mechanical problems with it save dead bearings at 5,000
hours. It performs its job well.
In general, though, I and the trade mags have never been impressed by B&o's
stereo centers. They're awfully pricey for not a lot of performance. They
are designed for the well-to-do consumer who wants `a stereo' but knows that
Sears and Monkey Wards sell crud, and who wants an attractive piece of
sculpture. Their ergonometrics run from inspired and elegant and beautiful
to wierd and unfathomable and beautiful.
B&o DOES have a good engineering department, though...its turntables have
always been good performers, and its separate tape decks have been getting
good reviews. Trouble is, to get around a bad thing (e.g., improper
turntable arm and cartridge matching) their often elegant solutions ( e.g.
matching arm and cartridge-tiny,tiny cartridge) introduce another ( e.g.,
you're stuck with their cartridges. Not bad, but not ultra great, either).
I do admire their philosophy - now that we've got all the big performance
baddies at bay, let's spend some money on good product design instead of
getting that extra decimal point for the lunatic fringe.
In short, they know when to quit innovating.
Unfortunately, their mechanical engineering department doesn't know when
to start. The mechanical internals of their products are somewhat cheap.
ah, well...
If you want to grow with your system, get something other than B&o. If all
your system will do is play shopping music at a low level all day and glow
quietly in the armoire, and you don't mind spending a bit too much money,
buy B&o. But whatever you do, buy someone else's speakers. B&o's suck.
The wandering squash,
--
Shaun Simpkins
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