Not An Audiophile – The Podcast featuring podcast episodes with Mike Creek from Creek Audio. Mike tells Andrew Hutchison the inside story about the inception and continued worldwide success of Creek Audio.
Podcast transcripts below – Episode 016
TRANSCRIPT
S1 EP016 Creek Audio: Mike Creek reveals the inside story
Andrew Hutchison interviews Mike Creek, the man who started Creek Audio
Mike Creek: You know, you could do worse, than follow our lead and don’t give anybody any credit. Don’t advertise, don’t market your product. Let the dealers do it for you. And they were fighting each other for it in the end. So it was a kind of inverse logic. You know, instead of trying to make yourself well known, I was saying to people when they phoned up, I’m sorry that your name’s not on my list.
Andrew Hutchison: And hello, welcome to not an Audiophile, the podcast. I’m Andrew Hutchison and this is episode 16, season one. And today we are interviewing Mike Creek, the man who started Creek Audio. He gives us some considerable insight into how it happened, how it continues to happen. It’s a great story of, electrical engineering, amplifier design, marketing, industrial design, all sorts of details. Let’s go. Hey, thank you, Mike, for, coming on the podcast. Not an audio file. It’s greatly appreciated. And, and I’ve got some probing questions for you that aren’t that probing, but I, would love to hear, the story of how Creek kind of came off a clean sheet of paper to some degree, from what I understand. And, and lots of other questions that I’ve got. just generally, I guess, about your thoughts on amplifiers, maybe the industry a little bit, what have you. And, But, how did it start? you know, the way it seems from an outsider’s point of view. You designed this fairly straightforward, good performing amplifier and you offered it to the market and people ordered thousands. Is that what happened?
Mike Creek: basically, yes. It didn’t come from a clean sheet of paper.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, okay.
Mike Creek: Took some, inspiration from a product I’d made for my father with the help of a very, special engineer. Special in special needs, I think, if you know what I mean.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, he’s an engineer, right?
Mike Creek: Huh? Yes. So, yes, I had inspiration, from that and other things which I’ve been working in a company, as a freelance, engineer, stroke developer and copywriter for about five years, I suppose, when one day they. During a long recession, as we often get here.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: they said, guess what? You were the first in. You’re the last or the last in, first off.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: And, you’re not, you’re not contracted here to work. So sorry, we’ve got to let you go. It didn’t help that they owed me sort of three months worth of money.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, okay.
Mike Creek: So I was, I was working on a shoestring and my mother, I know, was. Was having sleepless nights about how I Was going to feed the family and dreaming of us as a family standing on the side of the road with the suitcase or something.
Andrew Hutchison: Surely not hopefully quite that bad, but.
Mike Creek: More confidence in us. I have more confidence than she did in myself.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Mike Creek: Well, essentially what happened is I had been working for a company called Ambit International, which was a sort of electronics company that made products or parts available for radio amateurs. Radio. Mainly radio products and not, not commercial, radio, I mean you know, sort of mobile radio for, for people in cars and they call it PMR radio and that, that kind of thing with radio amateurs on short wave and very high frequency, things in VHF and uhf. So very different from mine. Yeah. And that sort of thing. Yes, indeed. So I was surrounded by hamsters, as they call them here, radio amateurs. And they were all, you know, a nice bunch of people. And that company grew very, very quickly.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Mike Creek: In the end it grew too fast for its own good and they had to sort of draw back in a little bit. And in that same year that I left them and started Creek Audio, Alan Sugar, entrepreneur in the uk, who I had some connections with through work, had also employed one of their,
00:05:00
Mike Creek: one of their directors, called Roland Perry to design their first PC computer, so computers in the same year that I started the Creek Audio brand.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh yeah. So, ah, yeah, because Alan Sugar was the AMSTRAD man. Is that, is that, that’s it.
Mike Creek: Well AMS is Alan. yeah, Sugar trading.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah. Okay. I haven’t thought about that for a while, but yes, that’s I mean he’s got such a history since then I guess. But that’s that’s Yeah, yeah. So that’s how he got his. Well that was, Was that his first big. Without going off view. But was that his first big success business wise? Was it the AMSTRAD computer?
Mike Creek: Oh no, no, he, he left. Well there was a history going back to I go back to my father’s days. My father worked for a, a businessman in North London called Peter Hent. Sorry, called Robert Henson. And Robert Henson had a son called Peter Henson. He had two sons, but Peter was the one I knew best.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Mike Creek: And Robert Henson and my father knew each other from sort of post war period when he gave my father a job as what they refer to loosely as a van boy. In other words, here’s a bunch of electronic components. Go out and sell them to retailers.
Andrew Hutchison: No, okay, yeah, yeah.
Mike Creek: Would buy you know, things from, from the back of the van, basically, you know, what stock he had available. And Alan Sugar worked for Peter, sorry, Peter Henson and Robert Henson, but Peter was really his boss.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Mike Creek: And then one day, Peter, I’m, I’m keeping this brief because I’m sure he wants to concentrate on other things, but Peter did what he put on van. And Peter sort of accused Alan Sugar of stealing some stock.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay. Yeah.
Mike Creek: Alan, went home and had a sort of hissy fit and decided, didn’t want to work for a company that didn’t trust him anymore.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
My father went out and bought his own products from suppliers that Henson had
Mike Creek: And went out and formed, AMS Trading.
Andrew Hutchison: All right.
Mike Creek: And he went out and bought his own products from all the suppliers that he already knew that Henson had. And the rest is history.
Andrew Hutchison: Certainly is.
Mike Creek: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay. Yeah. Well, that accusation was a boo boo then, wasn’t it? On the. Because I guess, he was somewhat, sharper at business than the people who had accused him of.
Mike Creek: Yes, indeed. Well, he had a, he had a certain extra, that they didn’t have. And the foresight, unlike, you know, Robert Henson, the father, employed my father as a van boy. And my father said, why don’t you get into doing this? Or why don’t you buy these and sell that? He said, well, I went, I won’t use the expletives, but basically said, if you think you can do it any better, go and do it yourself. And he did.
Andrew Hutchison: And he did.
Mike Creek: Yes.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh dear.
Mike Creek: So the history repeated itself.
Andrew Hutchison: Indeed.
So, um, okay, so that’s similar you um, to when you re amstrad
So, okay, so that’s so timing similar you to when you re amstrad versus Creek Audio and you released the cas, which is, you know, obviously I was probably referred to as the CAS or was it the CAS.
Mike Creek: 4040 CAS people called the CAS. I never even thought of it when I called it cas, but it was just Creek Audio Systems to me. And that’s what we printed on the front panel. And with, I had a sort of a no cost involved ah, logo developed for me by one of my colleagues in the art department of Ambit International, who in his lunch break said, well, let’s get three letters. Let’s make the S the biggest one and put the C and the A in the gap between the top and the bottom. And I didn’t really think about it too much when I thought, that’s great, that’s that job done. Now move on to the next, And then they kept that until about 1985 or 86 when I changed it for a more readable logo.
Andrew Hutchison: Hey, speaking of logos though, is the current logo not. It’s the same that you’ve had for a very long time I think, isn’t it?
Mike Creek: Yes, since about 85.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. So that is the 85 logo still. Yeah. Well that’s, that’s, that’s that’s borderline a record I think in, in hi fi industry as far as logos. I mean
Mike Creek: Steady on. I mean it’s been a bit tweaked.
Andrew Hutchison: Well yeah, yeah. Polished a little. But
Mike Creek: Yeah the gist of it seems originally done on a drawing board you see of course these days done with, with cad and so it’s sort of sharpened up a bit.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. But I think it’s a similar style. I think it’s the same.
Mike Creek: Oh it’s exactly the same.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah.
Mike Creek: If you
00:10:00
Mike Creek: look at it quickly, if you want to look at it in you know, blown up a hundred times, it was quite different.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
My father manufactured audio equipment from 48, 1948 to 69
so the, so the, you’re saying the 4040, the design was a bit of a spin off of something else. did it.
Mike Creek: Well it was the spin off of an amplifier. how should we say it’s what they would refer to as separates.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Mike Creek: My father manufactured audio equipment from 48, 1948. So he started as a reel to reel tape recorder manufacturer when there was any perhaps only Ferrograph or Brunel in the industry at that time.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Mike Creek: And imports. And he was made the first like truly lower cost domestic audio tape recorder and tape being new in those days from BASF and previously it had been wire recorders. So he bought a tape deck from a company solely making tape decks.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: And added his own amplifier, separate amplifier, separate oscillators and you know it was done. It wasn’t integrated into sort of a modular.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah. Okay.
Mike Creek: And about later on when tape recorders I didn’t fall out of fashion but the government taxed them overnight from 0 to 45% in a budget that killed the business. Overnight he switched to making record players. Okay. And that’s when I joined the business. I mean I’d been working you know in holidays and things like that for the business before. But in 69 when I joined him we started making record players and later into music centers as I referred to then. And there’s a music center kind of resurgence now. But towards ah, the end I was doing R and D and development work and off site manufacturing as well as managing the production line and doing all sorts of different jobs. But I just saw demand, for a separate integrated amplifier and a, Separate, tuner. AM FM tuner. That’s what I developed together with, another colleague called Jim. Jim Samiotis.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: who was the special, engineer I was talking about. He was a friend of mine as well as a colleague, but he worked freelance and I sort of saw the advantages of working freelance because you could do as much or as little as. As you wanted for a company and still make a living. So, at a certain point in time when the founder of Ambit International got in touch with me one day because he was also doing consultancy work for us on radio and said, come to a Christmas, or New Year’s party with him. And I turned up and not knowing what to expect, and we sort of talked on the bottom of the bottom step of his staircase, for the whole evening where everybody else was having a party.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: And the next day it was, it was. It was confirmed that I was going to go to America with him on a project that he’d been asked to. To carry out for a Greek guy from America.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: And you know, they had these requests, for making something that was very unusual and not easy to achieve in those days.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: And I went to the American Embassy, got a visa, handed my notice in and basically, became freelance from that moment onwards at the age of 23.
Andrew Hutchison: All right, so that’s a. That’s an early start. it’s probably, I was going to say a brave move, but I guess at that age it was. Was all very exciting and there was no thought that it could possibly go wrong.
Mike Creek: It was certainly. It was certainly exciting. And I wouldn’t say it’s dangerous, but it was certainly dangerous to my economic.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes, yes.
Mike Creek: I had to pay for the ticket. And in those days the ticket, considerably. I wouldn’t say it was any different in. In actual money to the price it would cost you now.
Andrew Hutchison: No.
Mike Creek: Except in those days that would be ten times more expensive.
Andrew Hutchison: Absolutely. Yeah. Isn’t it? It’s one of those things that you know, hi Fi and airfares have hardly changed in price. I mean, hi Fi has gone up a bit, but I mean, geez, airfares is, The airfares and the price of music. Recorded music never been cheaper. So, So. So then the, the connection there. So that was the relationship that. Well, the engineering relationship, effectively that helped that.
The 4040 was your first product for Those that are wondering why we’re talk
And I should mention that the 4040 was your first product for Those that are wondering why we’re talk particular amplifier. And
00:15:00
So the, how did the, how did that. You connect the dots to the development or. I mean you made the decision to build separate. A separate tuner. Separate. Separate tuner. A separate amplifier. Integrated amplifier.
Mike Creek: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: At what point did that sort of you go right, I’m going to do this, you know, I mean, you decided you wanted to do it. I mean did you look at things like the NAD? I feel like the NAD 3020 was almost happening at the same time. And of course a few other UK built amps, were probably a little more expensive than where yours ended up in the market.
Mike Creek: The arcan.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: A and R Cambridge as it was called then.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: A 60.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, that’s the one I had in mind. And I had it partly in mind because it’s kind of a luxurious but slimline version of what yours ended up being in a way.
Mike Creek: Yes. It had a real wood cover and it had a. It was physically larger and heavier. I don’t know, I, I hadn’t really much of a clue what I was going to do to begin with. But after looking around what was available for me to use, I came to the conclusion that the covers that I, that were produced in as a. What’s called a vinyl wrap for my father’s amplifier which had ceased production by that time. Yeah, about. There were about two or three hundred of them left.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, okay.
Mike Creek: And I also had a wooden, a prototype of a wooden cover made years beforehand but never used, which was lying around in my workshop. And I always looked at this and thought one day I’ll fit an amplifier in there. But it was too small to fit an amplifier in when I first got it.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, okay.
Mike Creek: But by the time I looked at it for the second time or late later, you know in eight. Late 81.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Mike Creek: Which is when I became unemployed. my attention was more focused on that but knowing that would be more expensive to produce, I just looked at these surplus to requirements wooden covers, vinyl wrap ones which were a box which were truly top and bottom.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Cover.
Mike Creek: And you just slid the electronics through the box and bolted it underneath.
Andrew Hutchison: Underneath. Yep.
Mike Creek: I, I suppose it looked as ugly as a hat full as in Australia. And what.
Andrew Hutchison: We wouldn’t say that, would we? Yeah, we prob. Have actually. So. Yeah, so. So it was a bit chunky looking.
Mike Creek: Yeah, it was too chunky. So I, my. At the time I was married and my father in law ran a shop fitting business. He, he did carpentry and joinery and. And French polishing is another thing, you know, different business, but another branch of his. His empire, so to speak.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: And then I popped Workshop and said, can I use your, your span saw? And I just. I saw the one in half and reduced the front to back depth.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: And, looked at it and thought, well, that would work. At the Windsor amplifier that it was modeled after had an in. Had a extruded front panel, which was not made or it wasn’t custom made for Windsor. It was just, how should we say, a stock, extrusion.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Mike Creek: And again, I thought, I’ll make it less expensive by using a, sheet metal. So I produced a sheet metal front panel, you know, bent to fill in the, routed or the rebated front edge, and, a smaller chassis and I put it into a box where the depth of the box appeared to be greater, you know, to be the actual depth of the amplifier, when in fact it was about through 2 to 3 centimeters, less, deep for the chassis. So the heat sink of the amplifier which I used, it was another off the shelf. Heatsink.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Mike Creek: stuck out the back and had some better cooling efficiency than it would be if it was trapped inside.
Andrew Hutchison: Inside, yes. Yeah, yeah.
Mike Creek: And it also allowed you to put the plugs in the back without them sticking out or being visible. So you could almost put the amplifier against a wall.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, it was very shallow, came away from underneath kind of thing, so.
Mike Creek: Exactly. Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: So, Because, yeah, it’s a while
00:20:00
Andrew Hutchison: since I’ve seen one of those 40 40s in the flesh and I. I’ve kind of forgotten. The. It wasn’t overly deep, as I remember. It was incredibly, slimline. It was very thin, I guess is the word. Is it? I mean, it was certainly short. and I’m thinking it was like, I don’t know, is it like an inch and a quarter high or something? Like, maybe it was an inch and a half, but it was. It wasn’t very high, was it?
Mike Creek: It was about 55 millimeters. Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay, so a couple of inches here.
The Windsor amplifier sold for £99 including tax, correct
All right, so. Well, you know, as we probably should say these days. 55 millimeters. Yep. So, what was the inside, the electronics, the. The sort of topology of the amplifier? I’m guessing quite simple and straightforward. I mean, people listening probably don’t realize that this amp, as I remember it sold in the UK once you launched it into the market, was it for £99, correct.
Mike Creek: Including tax? Including tax, I think probably, yes. Which was about 10%, I believe. Twelve and a half percent, something like that.
Andrew Hutchison: So, I mean, that sounds outrageously inexpensive, for what was, you know, a very serious amp as far as its performance. it was very musical, had adequate power. I mean, it was, I guess, set the scene for your later models, really, as far as the way it sounded, I think. Would you agree with that or would you. Or do you feel that it was. It was. It was. It was adequate for the time, or do you think. I mean, what I’m really saying is, do you think one of the reasons. Well, yeah, that’s. That that shouldn’t be taken, perhaps the way it sounded. But what I meant was, were you just happy with the sound or were you rather ecstatic with the sound that you achieved for, what was an incredibly inexpensive retail price?
Mike Creek: I have to say that it was. It was stooping a little bit low for me to make something like that when I knew I could make something better.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: But I always had a thing for this amplifier that we used for the Windsor amplifier. And although I’ve been making sort of large Mosfet power amps and preamps which were very, very complicated as kits for. For, hobbyists to make, which were cutting edge technology, this, this was the. The very opposite, you know, the antithesis of what I’ve been making before.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: But it had a certain something, you know, had a. It had a sound.
Andrew Hutchison: Ah.
Mike Creek: That was a very, Soothing and smooth to listen to, considering. As you say, it was a relatively simple amplifier.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep.
Mike Creek: The power amp had, Let me think, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 transistors in total. But the power transistors were Darlington. So were they.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Mike Creek: They were two transistors. Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. So two Darlington’s a, channel and, And five sort of small signal sort of transistors.
Mike Creek: No, no, three.
Andrew Hutchison: Three small signals, three small signal transistors and two Darlington outputs. Oh. That’s a simple circuit. Okay. All right, so.
Mike Creek: Well, that. That’s why I said it. It was, five in total.
Andrew Hutchison: Wow.
Mike Creek: including the. The Darlingtons, which, were operated in class B. And that’s no bias, no idle current.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Mike Creek: initially I didn’t put any devices in there to try and, nudge them into class ab.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: But later we used two or even three diodes to. To try to sort of give them a little bit of current, a sniff, crossover distortion.
Andrew Hutchison: So. Okay.
Mike Creek: The unusual thing about it was that the. The class A driver, was two stage. Well, essentially two stages. It was two devices, which created an Enormous open loop gain. And this enormous open loop gain would have been unnecessary if it had not been for the fact that to simplify the amplifier, I used the open, you know, the high open loop gain closed around two feedback loops. One, okay, DC and the other ac. And the AC feedback loop, powered or overcame the insertion loss of the tone controls. So I didn’t even use a transistor or an OP amp for the tone controls. I use the feedback from the power amp to encapsulate it.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, wow. Now I’m even more impressed. I mean, this is actually it. That’s one of the simpler, simplest amplifier designs that includes tone controls probably ever made in production. I would have thought. Would it? I mean, because, I mean.
Mike Creek: Yes, but it hadn’t been. It. It came after the Windsor and, other products similar to that which were
00:25:00
Mike Creek: lost since they were used as record player amplifiers.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: And it was only when I used that circuit in the integrated amplifier, which was 1012 at the most watts into eight ohms, that you could see or hear. It, benefits, because otherwise you’re using a record player amplifier. You know, the source was a, an auto change turn signal and, ceramic magnetic cartridge.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, magnetic cartridge. Okay, no, ceramic cartridge.
Mike Creek: No, no. Sometimes magnetic.
Darlington amplifier had characteristic sound that you couldn’t design
More often than not, a ceramic cartridge.
Andrew Hutchison: So let’s just wind back a little bit to the class B because people’s ears pricked up briefly. because. So you got away with that. Why is that? Because of the characteristics of the Darlington or was it something you did? I mean, you, you mentioned that ultimately you changed the design a little to give them a little, bit of, idle current or, you know, what have you. Yes, but the initial version, how did it sound with, with that somewhat? well, you know, rudimentary, you know, design. And was. It was in fact this magic sound that you’re referring to, this very musical sound, smooth sound, I think you said was actually because of the simplicity of the circuit. Do you think?
Mike Creek: there was a bit of both there? But this particular circuit had, a character, a characteristic sound that you couldn’t design. It just. It was a bit of serendipity.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Mike Creek: And, the serendipity that I’d experienced when taking the Windsor amplifier to my, my bedroom, which doubled as my hi fi room, where I was playing sound through a pair of, floor standing, four, four driver loudspeakers with the base mid and treble being from KEF B139, B110 and T27.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep, yep.
Mike Creek: and Coles Super Tweeter and the base was, was transmission, line loaded.
Andrew Hutchison: Right.
Mike Creek: And I used to, used to play these fairly loud in my room with a, with a radford transistor, radford preamp and power amp. And I, I always thought there was something not, you know, not to my taste until I brought the Winds of Fire and then listened to that and I thought well okay, so it’s only 10 watts opposed to 50 watts. But apart from that, in a small room it was a lot more pleasant to listen to over a period of time.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Mike Creek: And that, that’s what spawned the idea of using that circuit. But, but supercharging it with a few more volts and bigger capacitors and humbucked it a little bit to get rid of. Because I should have mentioned that the reason it had so few transistors is it used resistive current sources. Not transistors, or diodes or anything reference. So that tends to lead to a bit of power supply ripple ending up in the signal path if you don’t filter it properly. So I would do that. it was still very simple but the sound quality of it. A colleague of mine, who or friend of mine should I say, who I often used to ask questions of, was a field sales engineer at Philips, semiconductors. He wasn’t the transistor salesman, he was the integrated circuit salesman, but he was classically trained and he proffered sort of a kind of a technical explanation to why it worked. And he said that you have so much open loop gain in the circuit that if it’s not going unstable, it’s used to in a certain way create what would otherwise be known as dither, in a digital. So there’s a sort of a noise or which you can’t hear but it’s going on there that is used to fill in the transition between the positive and negative half cycles of the signal.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Mike Creek: So if you were to look at it at high frequencies, yes, you could see crossover distortion but it appeared not to be there. You know, just in the same way that a digital, a 16 bit digital signal without dither, wouldn’t sound as good as it would together with dither. and so, and that, that was really
00:30:00
Mike Creek: the, I would say the technical explanation if anyone should have asked me. Yes, which I don’t think they did. But looking back on it now, it kind of worked because of like an error that was a positive, you know, instead of an error which was Only a negative.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, so it is a very, A happy arrangement, like one that’s meant to be in a way because as you say, it had a certain sound and it worked and maybe it kind of shouldn’t.
Mike Creek: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: But, And Oh, I’ve forgotten what I was going to say something about the,
Mike Creek: Well, I was gonna. I’d fill in while you’re thinking about that. Say, thinking about it now, if I’m going back to my radio days in the short wave radios. Works on different principles either by heterodynes or, you know, super heterodynes or before that, super regenerative. It was almost like a super regenerative amplifier.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah, okay.
Mike Creek: To the point of oscillation. And when you got to there, you got the peak gain and the peak sensitivity and so on.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Mike Creek: It kind of worked like that.
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Mike Creek’s first amplifier was class B, not great sounding
We’re back with, Mike Creek and we’ve made the discovery that his first amplifier was in fact not just great sounding, but, was class B, which, you know, he doesn’t mention too much in the brochure, I guess. Or did you? You didn’t.
Mike Creek: I didn’t deny it. I wouldn’t make it a selling feature either because that’s the kind of amplifier that musicians would expect to find in an amp. A guitar amp for PA Amp of today.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Mike Creek: and it was done purely to save on the heatsink. Heatsink was one of the costliest items inside an amplifier. except for those companies, I shall not mention by name, who didn’t use heat sinks. They just used the case.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes, by name. You’re not going to mention them by name.
Was the output stage symmetrical then was it is that is
Okay.
Mike Creek: All right, good.
Andrew Hutchison: the. Yeah, I was going to say idle current. Well, there isn’t any. So basically when you turn the volume down, the amp was stone cold, more or less.
Mike Creek: Indeed it was. It was completely. There’s no idle current and therefore no, apart from a small current draw from current sources in the power. Power amp circuit. And you know, we’re talking about five or six milliamps in total. And the same with the preamp. Yeah, there wasn’t much of a Preamp, the very first ones just had an emitter follower. And so it was unity M gain.
Andrew Hutchison: Buffering circuit kind of thing.
Mike Creek: And the gain required for the tone control or insertion loss. To overcome the insertion loss, just use the feedback from the power amp.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Mike Creek: And for the volume. Sorry. For the pre. The phono pre amplifier we used a Philips OP amp which was designed primarily to be used on a single rail power supply, which is the other thing I should mention. This was a AC coupled single rail power supply. So what it saved in some areas like having two power supply caps, one larger one, it had to pay for. If you wanted low frequencies, you have to use a really fairly substantial output coupling capacitor, something like 2200. And strictly speaking it should have been full rail in case anything went wrong. But we used to play it sort of let’s say not quite so safe and put something like 50 volts in instead of 63.
Andrew Hutchison: 63, yeah. Okay.
Mike Creek: Yeah. Keep your fingers.
Andrew Hutchison: This is for the coupling cap. We’re talking about the output coupling cap. Yeah. yeah. So if nothing goes that. But if something does, you’re going to exceed that. well, so you’re saying the
Mike Creek: Well if it. If the sensor, you know, voltage or the midpoint voltage drifted above what it should have been. Yes, half of the. Out of the highest voltage supply, then Then you could over voltage that cap. Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Mike Creek: It was very rare that it did that and it usually would do that as a result of one or both power transistors breaking. Well generally if both power transistors broke, it would. It would take the fuse out and so it would. It would save everything that would otherwise over voltage.
Andrew Hutchison: And so instantly was your. Was your design sort of goal
00:35:00
Andrew Hutchison: to make. So was the output stage symmetrical then was it is that is. So the devices were the same?
Mike Creek: Yeah, well, it was symmetrical insofar as there was a pos, a PNP and an mpn. but you still.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, you still just had the one rail voltage and you coupled the output which I guess is. Which was really kind of in the 70s was particularly with your. With your father’s business with the radiograms as we would have called them here. That, that was pretty typical in, in an output stage. I, I guess it’s For whatever reason I was just maybe how it was done at the time.
Mike Creek: You should mention that initially we used transistors. but not making the circuits ourselves, we. We bought a module from. Well they were called Mallard modules. I think it was an LP 1162 if memory serves me. Okay, stranger. If I can remember that.
Andrew Hutchison: Bizarre.
Mike Creek: Yes, I can remember that. I can remember the telephone number of Mallard as they were allowed to call themselves. Even though Philips bought Mallard.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Mike Creek: Decades beforehand, but they still carried on calling things, including the valves or tubes.
Andrew Hutchison: Indeed.
Mike Creek: And that, that, that was, how should we say, one of the earlier, record player amplifier circuits we’d use. They were mono. They came with a, essentially a bra. Aluminum bracket which was the heatsink and you bolted them onto a chassis and hardwired to terminals on there. Later, as we developed our own, we did experiment, with. My father was always like. He was rather interested in using the latest technology and we were an early adopter of power amp ics.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Mike Creek: First one from a company called sgs, which morphed into, st. Yep. And the other from Texas Instruments who haven’t changed their name. but both the ST or SGS and the Texas ones were very good at performing, pyrotechnics. Made good indoor fireworks. If even if you just breathed on them or did something to them, they were very unreliable.
Andrew Hutchison: We’re talking STK ics. The earlier ones, sg sgs. Oh, the SGS ones, yeah. Well, yeah, well. So the SGs were the forerunner. Yeah, yeah.
Well, ST as in, um, the, the brand ST now. Which, uh, I think, has, has taken over
Mike Creek: Well, ST as in, the, the brand ST now.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Mike Creek: Which, I think, you know, has, has taken over or did take over that. Or that it morphed into that back in the. Back in the day. I’m, I’m not sure of the history of that. so, you know, I’m not going to say too much about it, but I would say that they were all that. When the sales reps came around and you complained about unreliability, they would always say it was your fault, it was the way you used it. If you sent them back, some broken ones, they said we can’t take these back for, credit because you’ve soldered them so well, how would we know whether they worked or not?
Andrew Hutchison: Well, the semiconductors.
Mike Creek: One of my many jobs was to drop these ICs into a ZIF socket, zero insertion for socket, pull the lever down and test them. And out of 5,000 you might get 1,000 that worked or.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, wow.
Mike Creek: I remember taking them back, two Texas Instruments in a van, huge box of these things and giving them to them. They just looked as if they wanted to cry. And I said, we can’t use these anymore. If you don’t sort out this problem that’s.
Andrew Hutchison: That’s a horrible failure. Right. Gee whiz. So you. Yeah. You’d be one of filtering that before you started assembling the amplifiers and soldering them in. Right. So
Mike Creek: Yes. Well yet they were time consuming to remove and to replace. And you didn’t guarantee that the next one you put in would work either if you pre test it. But then you kind of thing that a company like Texas or even SGS at the time would have done their homework. But they were really running, you know they were pushing the envelope regarding technology. And obviously in later days these things have become rock solid. But what I’m talking about is the early 70s when it was kind of cutting edge technology.
Andrew Hutchison: Indeed, indeed.
Mike Creek: And we just went back to using transistors and the transistor circuit that I commissioned Jim, Semiotis to make was this class B circuit which was very economic. and it’s. And its use of transistors. Having
00:40:00
Mike Creek: said that, you know a small signal transistor cost three pence is more. It was more expensive. Not even accounting for Inflation then to buy a transistor than it is now. But I still think we could have gone a different route. But In. In its own way, you know it has helped spawn the first Creek amplifier.
Andrew Hutchison: Indeed. And do you think I just. The thought I think that I had in the previous segment that I had forgotten was that When you mentioned that it was a capacitively coupled output stage, that single rail that I always feel like there’s a certain charm to that.
Mike Creek: Indeed. But it’s not linear. It’s not linear in the sense that you know the, the capacitor doesn’t have a strong influence on the way it sounds.
Andrew Hutchison: No, no, no. I guess that’s the.
Mike Creek: Hence why I used ah, AC feedback which wasn’t used on the Windsor. I put feedback not only after the capacitor but also after the Fuse. So I incorporated the nastiness Of a bad connection. Bad connection or a fuse.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: Or the, the negative sound quality effects of a non linear resistor if you like inside. In the circuit by putting global, global feedback around.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay. So I mean it’s a, It’s a. It’s a bit of a classic exercise in In you know, I mean in thinking.
Mike Creek: It’s called value engineering.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah, that’s right. It’s, it’s. It’s the heart, it’s the. It’s much harder than trying to build something for $50,000. Isn’t it? Because it’s
Mike Creek: Well Exactly.
Andrew Hutchison: You make everything.
Mike Creek: People realize that. But it is as you quite rightly say, ah, quite, quite a lot harder to budget or build something to a budget than it is to have no budget and just make the best that you can produce using anything that you can buy in low quantities at very high prices. Because part of my job remit was to buy product parts and component parts at the best price to where the profit margin was, let’s say, ah, at ah, best, marginal and worst you’re making a loss if you didn’t buy well, you didn’t make any money at all out of it. So really that was my experience of making consumer electronics before I started cre.
There’s an elegance to making everything in a circuit work optimally
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah. Yes. And, and so I was going to say, I mean there’s an elegance to making everything in that circuit work optimally in a way so that it, it sort of aids every other part of the circuit. You don’t have to sort of add some circuit off over the side here to sort of fix this issue or whatever. You really have to make everything just sort of balance very sweetly. And it’s well it’s something I appreciate in here. I’m not sure that everyone that’s listening kind of gets the. Just how. I don’t know, elegant is the word really. I, I think. Would you agree that just to get everything to a very simple circuit to work well and make a musical sound is a nice thing?
Mike Creek: Well, I mean that is exactly what made it elegant is the fact that there wasn’t even a trim pot in it for adjusting midpoint or whatever. We would set or trim the amplifier with two fixed resistors and if it was out, if the offset was too high, I’d adjust it so that you’d either add a resistor across one or another resistor to trim it, you know, a higher value soldered on. So if you ever saw the back of one, there would be occasionally a resistor soldered across the back to fine tune it rather than paying for a trim pot which as you know don’t always work after 10 years.
Andrew Hutchison: Well no, they are unreliable little things and and of course they do cost an extra, a couple of pence as well. So what now the whole thing with the trimming then and tacking an extra resistor on is. So who was building these things when you. I mean we, maybe we should cover more of the story where you, you kind of entered the Market with this, this wonderful, wonderfully simple amplifier. And from what, from what I know, it was taken up by dealers, I presume, at least at the UK level, where you were no doubt driving around and showing it to people. it was taken up very readily and you quickly found yourself in a situation where you needed to make more.
Mike Creek: Is that what happened? well, actually the way it rolled, out initially was that I, I’d taken a risk and
00:45:00
Mike Creek: borrowed £4,000 from my local bank. After the bank manager actually came down, sat in my living room and had a cup of tea and a biscuit and we discussed what I was doing and he lent me £4,000 on, on the strength of my conversation, with him with no personal guarantee.
Andrew Hutchison: Wow. Okay.
Mike Creek: And that’s component to make the first hundred pieces.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Okay. Just the hundred.
Mike Creek: And if I hadn’t. Yeah, just a hundred. And needless to say, it’s more expensive when you do just a hundred and a thousand or ten thousand.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, I’m.
Mike Creek: Which I’ve been used to with my father’s company, so I feel it. That’s what I was kind of for.
Andrew Hutchison: Aiming at, being conservative in a way. But I mean it’s still quite a. I mean I’m saying just 100. Being slightly sarcastic because really with a new design and a brand new business, that’s a, that’s a reasonable commitment.
Douglas Brady says he borrowed £4,000 to start Amplif
You have no idea at this stage because you’ve not shown anyone anything at this point, have you, when you borrowed the £4,000 or did you have an inkling that it was going to work?
Mike Creek: Well, having made things before which were a lot more expensive, expensive for Ambit and made things which were a lot cheaper from my father’s company days and we used to, we would make, products in the hundreds per week and not, really sure, where they were going to because my job was manufacturing. Not so much selling them. Although I didn’t know all of the customers my father had, which were mail order company companies mainly, and including the Navy, Army, Air Force Institute, nafi, which was a big customer, bought products we made and sent them to Germany to the army bases out there for the, staff out there to buy through a catalog. So rarely did we actually sell to retailers. In fact, we sold through wholesale.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Mike Creek: Wholesalers took a chunk of your profit margin. So we were always pushed for profit margin and it was marginal most of the time.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: but the attraction for me was not to go that route but to go direct to retailers. And so I looked In a few magazines, hi fi magazines at the time. And I looked at the house, how should we say, the, the better respected brands. Yeah, which included the likes of Lynn Name, Riga Exposure, that, that type of thing. And I saw that essentially they all supplied a limited number of dealers throughout the uk. Now at this point in time I was green as could be. But I did have a few experiences, of taking products to shows and demonstrating them with ambitious International and also as a kid going with my father to consumer electronic shows where he would be demonstrating his products. So showing products and shows was second nature to me even though I didn’t have a budget much, much of a budget for doing it. So I took the first sample amp to a London show in Swiss Cottage which is no longer going. But it was M Managed by a chain of stores. Well there was two, two stores, actually, but that. They sponsored it, they ran it and it was something I had done once before with Ambit. And so I was familiar with the venue and familiar with what needed to be done. And I took the Amplif amplifier, the integrated amp and I also took a power amp.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Mike Creek: And the power amp was a Mosfet power amp which could produce 100 watts. And I’d simply made that as a backup in case the integrated amp sales were a bit less than I’d hoped for.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes, yes.
Mike Creek: In fact, I met a few contacts there which who were interested to both sample the amplifier after the show. And also I met my first salesman whose name is David Palmer and he’d been working as a freelance salesman, selling Rogers and one or two other brands. But he and I just hit it off straight away. He lived in Sheffield, or just north of Sheffield actually. and I was living in London, North London at the time. And so we weren’t exactly.
Andrew Hutchison: No.
Mike Creek: But he, he came to my house after the show. So he drove down from Sheffield to London and spent a day with me and we went through it and he went off with his sample.
00:50:00
Mike Creek: And a week later I was about to go out shopping with my wife and the post arrived on a Saturday, as you got post on the Saturday Seems odd, but.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Mike Creek: But there was a sort of a far. A relatively fat empty envelope from Sheffield in it. Yeah. When I opened it, sitting in the car, ready to drive off and thumb through about ten, purchase orders on, you know, his good old fashioned salesman’s sales purchase order pad. Yes, yeah, I, I had orders for about 50amplifiers in.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh wow, okay.
Mike Creek: One of the, one of them was from a company called Doug Brady. Not Doug Brady, it’s the wa. Brady and Brady started in Liverpool a long time before I was born and it was a husband and wife team. And then the son, Doug Douglas Brady, who later branched off when he found it impossible to work with the family business anymore. Carried the theme on himself elsewhere. But he, you know, he ordered 10 from the strength of one demonstration of the amplifier. Wow. Knowing it was a brand that had no history at all and no, no factory either.
Andrew Hutchison: So.
Well, this is the interesting thing. Knowing how to manufacture in quantity, I took the decision early on
Well, this is the interesting thing.
Mike Creek: Forced to have to make a decision.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, I mean that’s both the most, you know, obviously probably one of your happiest memories at the having this bundle of orders sitting there. But at the same time what am I to do? How do I, I mean it’s always the, it’s your, it’s your worst but best hope in the sense that you’d love to sell a lot of amplifiers but how the hell am I going to build them all? So what, what what did you do? And I guess you did it pretty quickly because what was the expectation do you think of these dealers as far as a timeline to deliver the amplifiers?
Mike Creek: Well, they were used to the the fact that if something was worth having they had to wait for it.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay. Lucky.
Mike Creek: In those days Riga would be on a three or four month waiting list. If you ordered a turntable, you’d. Look, you’d be lucky if you got a turntable from Riga in less than six months, maybe even a year.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh really?
Mike Creek: It was kind of the equivalent of Morgan cars where they only built €25 five a month get on the.
Andrew Hutchison: List they were building. Yeah, okay.
Mike Creek: But you know that, that, that was the, that was the scene then. Knowing fortunately how to manufacture in quantity, I took the decision early on, before I even started Creek Audio, that I never wanted to have anything to do with manufacturing again if it was the last job in the world. I didn’t want to employ m. Staff in a factory.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, right. Yeah.
Mike Creek: And be chasing members of staff to come into work or stay for the whole week or not go off sick with a sniffly nose or some other excuse and all the other, you know, human resources type problems which I’d experienced from five years with my father’s company. Company.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Okay.
Mike Creek: And didn’t want to repeat.
Andrew Hutchison: No.
Mike Creek: So I had before starting Creek Audio to make the, the the electronics myself, been freelancing for other companies and one company that ah, came up for me other than Ambit International, which was the a company that was a competitor of my father’s in the 50s, 60s and early 70s called Van der Molen. Van Der Molen was a company formed by Mike, Michael Van der Molen and his wife. And they were actually, she was about 2/3 of the way from where I lived to where I worked in Brentwood in Essex. And the things I popped in there and just said, give us a job, you know. And he said well yeah, we need somebody to develop this or that or the other. And I said well that’s okay, I can do that. He said how much do you want? And I said well I think I wanted 120 pounds a week, you know, for a 40 hour week. And he said I’m not paying you that. That’s twice what I pay myself. Sorry, that’s what I charge. It’s not a charity. So we didn’t work together. Oh. Similarly I did the same with Amstrad and he wouldn’t pay me what I wanted either. You know, I would have been one of his earliest apprentices or apprentices or whatever. You know. He would have been a nightmare work for. Whereas Michael Van Der Molen was a sweetheart, you know, he was just a really nice person and
00:55:00
Mike Creek: his wife also. And he would manufacture for us for about three years on a subcontract basis. And he took our production up from 100 in, you know, first order, up to, in 18 months. We were manufacturing about 1350amonth. Oh wow. And 500 tuners a month as well. Plus another model also called the 4140 which was the sort of more high end version.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Mike Creek: So we were cooking on gas at that time.
Andrew Hutchison: Wow. I mean that’s completely impressive, isn’t it? I mean that’s a that’s an. It’s stunning. So I, I don’t think this happens anymore. And I’m m not sure why or whether. I mean it’s just a different time I guess. Thing is, I don’t know how that even works. You just couldn’t imagine starting a new audio business. And even if it was an amazing product, would it get going that fast? It just feels like, I mean what did you have for marketing? Did you have a sort of a piece of paper with a sketch on it or something and a logo? I mean, I feel, I mean there’s so many things these days to piece a, I get a product going. I mean as you well know. I mean you still are in the business. I mean, there’s this. Manuals, packaging. There’s, Of course, now there’s lots of certifications and stuff. And it’s a much more complicated circuit. But it just. I mean, you know, it just. I don’t know, you made it, I guess, you know, youthful enthusiasm. And you kind of had it running, obviously, very quickly, because you.
What age were you when you, um, made this magic happen
What age were you, Mike, when you, made this magic happen? Do you remember? Roughly?
Mike Creek: 30.
Andrew Hutchison: Wow. Okay. Yeah.
Mike Creek: Yeah. 30 years old.
Andrew Hutchison: You knew it all.
Mike Creek: Well, I was 29 when I started it.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Okay.
Mike Creek: 30 in the first year. And, I think I had a few. A few positives on my side. First, I had the salesman, David Palmer.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes. Okay.
Mike Creek: Who was covering two thirds of the country. I. I did the Southeast, which he was somewhat, Ah, disappointed he didn’t get that as well. And made the numbers difficult for him.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Mike Creek: Because he did all the traveling and I did all of the easy bit.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: I could. I could get to a dealer in 30 minutes, in some cases in London even quicker. And he couldn’t even reach one dealer in. In that time.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Mike Creek: However, he built it up. He stopped selling anything else. He just concentrated on that.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Mike Creek: And his advice was, you know, don’t do anything. You don’t do anything different.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: Plus the fact I had advice from Roy Gandy.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Mike Creek: And Terry Davis, who’s Roy Gandhi’s, manager. so. In Finance director.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: at Riga Research. And they said, you know, you could do worse, than follow our lead and don’t give anybody any credit. Don’t advertise, don’t market your product. Let the dealers do it for you. And they were fighting each other for it in the end. So it was a kind of inverse logic. Know, Instead of trying to make yourself well known, I was saying to people when they phoned up, I’m sorry that your name’s not on my list. And I said, nobody’s ever told us that before. Well, and when it does come on my list, I’ll get back in touch with you. But, you know, I was very fortunate that I allocated a maximum number to the dealers I felt would do the best for me.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Mike Creek: And I didn’t m. I had a big map on the wall of the country and.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: Where the drawing pinned or marker pin where I wanted or needed a dealer to get geographical coverage. And I tried to avoid having more than one dealer in one city or town.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: with a couple of exceptions. I mean, London was the big exception because it was, necessary to have them here and there. But in the end we did as much business as we could when giving no credit to any of them. And we didn’t ask pro forma payment. We didn’t ask the money up front.
Andrew Hutchison: No, no, no.
Mike Creek: But in those days you took a check with a delivery.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes. Yep.
Mike Creek: So. And COD didn’t even give them. Ah, I didn’t even give them, you know, extra discount for early payment either. So cash settlement discounts? None. I just said, you want them, you have to pay for them. This is the price.
Andrew Hutchison: I guess that’s all changed now. But just so. So at some point you bought a world map and stuck that on the wall and started putting pins in it. Is that,
Mike Creek: Not very long after that first, you know, exhibition?
01:00:00
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: And yes, I had a, let’s say a smaller map of the world because didn’t want to, Expand beyond the UK earlier than I should have done. And in a certain way, looking back on it now, it was both positive and a negative thing to have an overseas market.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: And it didn’t stop the phone ringing, from countries all around the world asking for this product which was being reviewed, well, in magazines. And they just saw these magazines and thought, oh, they don’t have a distributor in this country. Let’s see their distributor. And my first distributor in Australia came to. Well, two. Two of them came to visit.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: And I made the choice to go with Derek and Jackie Pugh, who were running company called Concept Concept Audio Audio out of, Sydney.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Let’s say if I was recommending loudspeakers for anyone, then
Mike Creek: And later on, they sort of, became one of my, you know, better customers. But they. I knew them as well from my experience of, You know, Mordaunt. Short was a company I used for. Let’s say if I was recommending loudspeakers for anyone, then let’s say Mordaunt Short, Ms. 20 was the speaker that I would have recommended to go with it. amongst others.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: and they were the importers for more than Short.
Andrew Hutchison: Indeed they were. And the store that I was involved with, sold both products, which is how I, you know, know something about the 4040 because it was on. The MS.20s were there and the 4040 was on the shelf. And And I didn’t know, at that point, Derek, or Jackie because I was. Or a. They probably wouldn’t have visited the far, corners of the country. Maybe they did get around. I don’t know, Jackie. Perhaps. I don’t know. Did Derek go on the Road, we, we don’t know.
Mike Creek: But the point is Derek, according to his biography, autobiography. He did. Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh he did. Okay. But yes, because he’s got tales to.
Mike Creek: Tell of the road. Yeah. I think later on he, he he, he, he sort of backed off from doing that. And, and I think Jackie did go out on the road a fair bit. Usually to naughty dealers who didn’t pay on time.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep, yep.
Mike Creek: With a sharp, a sharp stick.
Andrew Hutchison: Sharp stick. And give them a poke. Yes.
Are we talking the days of the fax at this point? Almost. Not quite
so, so really the sweet time then. almost linear or maybe exponential growth from 82 I believe through till. I mean was there three or four years of. I mean it must have been crazy times, but at the same time crazy. But you had yourself organized because you had all of them, all of the manufacturing, subcontracted, contracted out. I mean I still imagine you were just, the phone was just going bank because I mean that’s how business was done to some degree. Although you were getting letters, I guess, getting mail. But early faxes. Are we talking the days of the fax at this point? Almost. Not quite.
Mike Creek: But telex.
Andrew Hutchison: Telex, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What Was facts like 80s?
Mike Creek: We didn’t have a telex. No, we didn’t have a telex machine. Although I was used to one.
Andrew Hutchison: yep.
Mike Creek: Working for Ambit. They had everything, you know. Yes, they were very, very modern and cutting edge. But faxes started at about 80, 687. Yeah, but I didn’t get one until I sold the business in 88. which was kind of necessary then. Even, even if it wasn’t sort of long lasting as my own, it was a thermal fact. So if you, it didn’t read it fast enough.
Andrew Hutchison: Don’t leave it in the sun. Yes, I have an order here for 500 units. Well, but it’s faded and disappeared.
Mike Creek: Yes, exactly.
To have 600% growth per annum would be dangerous for any business
So the, I mean to answer your question, you said about the exponential growth. It certainly exponential growth is great if you got a fundamental, you know, well funded capital base. And I didn’t, I was borrowing.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Mike Creek: Money to make money and borrowing money at a higher rate of interest at times.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh well that was the high interest era as well.
Mike Creek: Interest rate went up from sort of an average to, to Something that was phenomenal. I think it was about 18 in the UK at one point. Yes, in, in that period of time and you know, whilst trying to pay the, pay my mortgage and you know, run the business and employ staff and chase overseas debts where the distributors didn’t Pay in advance. Not always. Anyway, I began to give credit, and that’s where it started to go a little bit crazy.
01:05:00
Mike Creek: And I had to say that it was, to use a sort of an economics term, over trading in the extreme.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: To have 600% growth per annum would be dangerous for any business.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: And one day that came very close to wiping us out because our factory, which was not far from where we were, but it was, you know, sort of like half an hour drive. The Michael van der Molen came to me rather sheepishly one morning and said, here’s your delivery very. I’ve got some good news and some bad news. And I said, what’s the good news? He said, the factory is okay. So what’s the bad news? I’ve calculated that, Well, we didn’t have enough fire insurance to cover the materials that we’ve ordered on your behalf. Now, when I say they’re subcontractors, we paid for all the materials. We just paid for them to produce the product.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah.
Mike Creek: And then produced it. Up to a certain point, they never completed. Completed it. We, we by that time had, taken on space for a factory to do the final assembly.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Mike Creek: Testing, packing and dispatch. And I was doing that in my house, quite happily until I got to 100 a week. And when you’ve got a hundred amplifier boxes in your house, you know, stacked on the staircase like LEGO bricks. And I had two garages at the bottom of the garden with one of a, retired man down there drilling holes in heat sinks and tapping them and that kind of thing. And you think this is. This has got to move to a more professional basis.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: And that’s when expenses went up, of course. And, then coupled with that and, the fact that the factory nearly burned down because the factory next door court light. And they only just stopped the flames from licking over and joining up with the next one where our place was. But we literally had, three months production in finished stock, sub assemblies and, partially assembled products and, raw materials for the next month following that. Yes, I mean, Vandermohlen operated in a big factory that was once their own, but they just operated for me in a small corner of it as a subcontractor. And the rest of the factory was sublet to other companies. And it was those other. The factory of fire.
Andrew Hutchison: okay. Yep.
Mike Creek: Factory next to them. But it was just. They were just fortunate. And it was that at that point also he went to his accountant, who coincidentally happened to Be my accountant.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah. Yes.
Mike Creek: And my father’s accountant for me.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Mike Creek: And the. The accountant advised me to put my prices up, which I did.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: And then the next week, Michael Van De Mollen went and told him to put his prices up. which wasn’t very helpful if you’ve done it the other way around. I could have avoided having to put my price is up twice up again.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Mike Creek: I took a sort of wrong move there and decided that he was, you know, having a laugh. And I just said to him, I’ll find somebody else to make it. And, he took it reasonably well.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: But he didn’t like the fact that he was almost 100% manufacturing for me, and if I’d taken the work away from him, he’d have no business at all. So I was being a bit hard. No. Taking it away from him. But I just felt that if I didn’t find a cheaper way to produce things or put my prices up for twice in one month, which would seem.
Andrew Hutchison: Like a chaos, that’s a problem.
Mike Creek: I would be stuck. the problem was that the person I took it to, who claimed to be capable of producing the numbers, wasn’t capable of producing even 10% of what we required. So, okay, the, delay in production and sales and the, cash flow crisis that that caused really, put me in a bind. And, at the same time, I had, you know, problems at home, which I’ll just, say were caused by health problems my wife had. And that made me concentrate my mind on what I was doing and looking after her and looking after my son. And looking after the business was taking a toll on me as well.
Andrew Hutchison: Not well, no doubt.
Mike Creek: Coincidentally. Yeah, Coincidentally, we had a visit from our Dutch distributor one morning who used to turn up
01:10:00
Mike Creek: at the drop of a hat and, say, good morning. I’ve brought the coffee. I didn’t know you were coming. And he said, yes, I want to go and visit Mordaunt Short. I’d like to buy their loudspeaker. I’m just saying. All right, I’ll ring Christopher Short. So I did and introduced him to this guy who had an entourage with him. They went down there and met him. And, Chris Short rang me later and thanked me for the introduction. I don’t think he wanted to work with them, but, he said in passing, and when are you going to join our happy band companies down here? And I just said, pardon? Oh, you know, we bought EPOs, loudspeakers, and, companies doing really well. And you know, my company, Mordaunt Short was sold to TGI plc, the.
Creek Audio acquired from me because it had a very high stock market valuation
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Mike Creek: Company that contained Tannoy Goodman’s, and some other companies as well. Tannoy Goodman’s, Morden Short, EPOS, Marten Audio, which was a pro audio company.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: They, they had a stock market valuation which was very high and I think their shares were worth 123pence at the time, which was quite high. And they acquired Creek from me because I, I felt it was an opportunity I couldn’t miss.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, under the circumstances it was, it would have been a relief, wouldn’t it?
Mike Creek: well, yes. I mean with my wife with a life threatening illness and my son having to be taken to school each day and all sorts of other problems as well.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Mike Creek: I thought, take it, take it, take it.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: Give me a job.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Mike Creek: So they gave me a three year service contract, and a percentage of the net profits. My mistake was not to request a percentage of the gross profit.
Andrew Hutchison: You still never be any net profit.
Mike Creek: No, the net profit could be whatever their accountants decided to make it. And I was therefore in a position where I made the Creek Audio made more money pro rata, in its first year than any of the companies in the group did.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Mike Creek: And it because they had a successful business and it was rated at a, let’s say a PE or profit earnings ratio of 10.
Andrew Hutchison: Uh-huh.
Mike Creek: That $1 earned by profit earned by Creek meant $10 to their share price, $10 to their net earnings. I mean.
Andrew Hutchison: Uh-huh.
Mike Creek: So that Creek did well for them. The second year not so well. And the third year made no profit at all. Surprise, surprise. Even though they’d increased the turnover.
Andrew Hutchison: And is that, well, the net profit? No, because they managed to account themselves out of that to your detriment.
Mike Creek: Accounted for. All of the high earning directors of the company suddenly became M consultants to Creek Audio.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Yes.
In Australia and New Zealand at the time there were import tariffs
Well, I think that’s another chapter closed. I’m going to have another quick break and we’ll come back and we’ll, I guess for this episode we’ll wrap up the the 4040 story. We’ve not, we’ve not made it a long way through but, but it’s certainly an exciting, exciting part of the Creek story. So back shortly, folks. Thank you everybody for listening to the podcast. It’s really appreciated and even more appreciated is comments, likes, five star reviews, that kind of thing. It’s also very much appreciated. So if you’re enjoying the podcast, please subscribe, follow like and comment. And thank you to the listener in Canada for commenting on the sound quality. We are working on it.
Mike Creek: Well, I, I didn’t not advertise, but what I did is I didn’t make a you know, sort of expensive full page color advert like Mission used to do or back cover or front cover.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes, yeah.
Mike Creek: Inside front cover. The, the advertising was simply a list of dealers where they could be listened to. Because in those days people used to go and listen to things before they bought them.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah. And obviously the amp demonstrated well and and people. And it was not like it was, I mean, an enormous buying decision. Well, it might have been Australia by the time Derek got his hot little hands on it, because I have it and I don’t know if you remember the retail price in Australia, but it was not the it wasn’t 200, I think it was probably. I can’t remember, but I’m going to say as much as 600. I think it was. there was some handling fees to get it here, which which is to some degree is understandable. But it was also the way it was at the time. There was not a lot of global price parity like there is now. And some listeners would say, well, there’s still a problem
01:15:00
Andrew Hutchison: with that. Some brands still play that game. But because of the Internet, there’s, it’s very transparent. I mean your current models. Because if we skip ahead. No, should we skip ahead. People, people may not realize you still, you sold the company, but magically you own it today. So obviously there’s a part of the story in the middle that we’ve conveniently left out. But your current 4040, the new 4040, does it sell largely for the same price all around the world? Is it, if you take into account exchange rates and what have you. Taxes. I would say it does.
Mike Creek: Well, to answer that, I should just go back and mention the fact that in Australia and especially New Zealand at the time there were import tariffs.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes, there was.
Mike Creek: And in New Zealand, we. We wouldn’t sell complete products to them during that period of time. We would only sell semi knockdown. So. Yep, they would, they would buy a printed circuit board, tested and control knobs, maybe a front panel which was printed or not. I can’t remember exactly.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Mike Creek: And they locally sourced metal work and a transformer.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Mike Creek: Connectors. And they assembled it and built it and so you know, sold it as a, as like a New Zealand brand or a New Zealand version of that brand.
Andrew Hutchison: Ah, okay, that’s. I mean we did a bit of that I think in Australia probably in the 70s more, but I think. I can’t remember what the impression duty was, but it was when you were doing all of this.
Mike Creek: It was the time when it was coming down.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep.
Mike Creek: I’ll ask Jackie the next time I see her or speak to her rather because, she’ll remember those things. She’s, she’s good like that.
Andrew Hutchison: I can’t. It’s sort of. I mean everyone was at it. I mean, I you know, I bought hi Fi out of the UK as a teenager because it was half the price and if, you know, if you were. Well, I wasn’t there but I had a neighbor who was, who was traveling backwards and forwards and it was just so much cheaper. It was kind of ridiculous and I felt a bit guilty doing it. I still bought stuff locally as well, but there was a couple of pieces that were just so much cheaper. I guess you were putting it in a suitcase and avoiding some duty as you say. There was also 30% sales tax as well. So as sales tax goes, it was a big number, but it was on the wholesale price because it was a wholesale sales tax. But it’s still a lot of, a lot of money equivalent basically to your 20% VAT, I guess, that you’ve got now.
You worked for Chris Short at TGI on a three year contract
I do have other questions, but I’ll just. I think what we’ll do is we’re going to wrap up episode one because I think we’ve, we’ve covered so much. But the way I would like to wrap it up is that you tell us briefly how your time went at TGI and then obviously at some point you weren’t working there anymore. I think there’s a story to that. Perhaps m. You went to work one day and maybe it was time to go from there as well. I think you mentioned it to me once, but I can’t remember quite what happened.
Mike Creek: Yes, I was employed by them on a three year contract. as I mentioned before and it was Initially working for my immediate boss was Christopher Short. And unlike Robin Marshall of Apostle, who had a seat on the board of directors as part of his deal when selling EPOS, I, I didn’t have such a deal. I’m not sure that it would have wanted it. But you know, I did have to write monthly reports. Okay. As a contribution to the monthly board meetings. And it wasn’t the easiest of rides working there because of the the politics that used to go on there. But moreover, I think it was the politics which were associated with Chris Short and the way he liked to run his company and the micromanaged the accounts side of things. Where I had been of the opinion that budget to develop new products would be relaxed when I sold the product to him, the company to Mordaunt Short but in fact it wasn’t any better than in fact it was in some respects more tightly controlled than when I was running it myself. If I wanted a new meter or I wanted a new distortion test set or whatever was necessary in those days, checking the quality of what we were making. Yeah, he would, he would say it’s not in this year’s budget, I’ll put it in next year.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, okay.
Mike Creek: And you’d say well it’s,
01:20:00
Mike Creek: it’s hardly significant but you know it doesn’t mean that we can make something or check something or test something in a way that would guarantee that what we say it is capable of it is in fact capable of it. You don’t want to journalist with a test set like that to tell you otherwise.
Andrew Hutchison: Indeed.
Mike Creek: And that was a risk when you had products reviewed by the likes of Paul Miller in those days who would be one of the early adopters of high precision test equipment and would sometimes, how should we say, ah, pull, pull companies products to pieces. regardless of any sort of backlash they would, they would show in terms of removing advertising or other other financial rewards for getting a good review. I mean that’s a that’s, that was a kind of a whole held back development of new products.
Andrew Hutchison: It would have. And just on that subject, I mean I do remember and you’re going to straighten me out on this but I feel like yeah that there was quite a, was quite a few magazines, UK hi fi magazines that were pretty honest in their reviews. I mean they, they would, they, they did write not so much bad reviews but they would point out the limitations of a product. They weren’t skating around the, the issues. They’d, they’d mention it. Is that, is that your memory? I mean that’s what you just said in this particular case is that, I mean it was, that’s the way I remember it. It was, it was not, not all magazine.
Mike Creek: There were objective reviews and there were technical reviews. Indeed if you wanted a technical review you either made sure that the sample they got was working correctly or you got a bad review.
Andrew Hutchison: Indeed.
Mike Creek: And in reality I maybe naivety I always just supplied something from the production line. I never.
Andrew Hutchison: You didn’t make a special one anyway.
Mike Creek: Which I’m not saying other companies did. But it’s possible.
Andrew Hutchison: It is possible. Not just possible. I’m pretty sure that might have happened. But It’s Okay. Yeah, m an interesting time but there was a certain honesty about it and I wonder whether that was part of their business model is that they. People would want to read their reviews because they were, you know, they’d knock the occasional product down a peg so to speak. And But I mean Even bloody what HiFi used to do 3 and 4 star reviews which I think they’ve they’ve banned now. I don’t think they do three star reviews of products anymore. They just simply send the product back and say we’re not, not reviewing this or something. But I mean back in the day I’m sure there were genuinely, you.
Mike Creek: Know, they were definitely capable of doing that. And it was a lottery. Yeah, you may be right. It’s not a lottery now but it was definitely a lottery then. And you could almost say well the reviewer got out the wrong side of the bed that morning or something because m. Some. Some of it wasn’t really justified.
Andrew Hutchison: No, no, they just I guess if you were on the, if you. You could be unfortunately on the receiving end of a bit of spice just for the sake of Like I say, it’s a part ah of their business model was to to appear to be more open and honest than maybe other magazines or something. But
Christopher Short and I had some difficulties after the second year
But back to the So the difficulties. So you’ve gone from working for yourself to this corporatized world and frankly you’re not really enjoying it, but your three years is up. and was it time to go at that point?
Mike Creek: it happened earlier than that. after the second year Christopher Short was having some difficulties with the board of directors for his own position and he and I had how should we say, a turbulent time together. Yes, I’m used to running my own business and so was he and I think he just found my approach to doing things was not as he would have liked it to have been. So you know, it would be like saying if you had a great idea you try to exploit it. But in his view if it doesn’t fit into the budget you didn’t exploit it till the next year.
Andrew Hutchison: Which was.
Mike Creek: It was too prescriptive my approach to doing things. And we did sort of rough each other up or rub each other up the wrong way a little bit and It certainly happened at hi fi shows if I was ever at one with him. And in those days of go to CES in Chicago, the summer. CES in Chicago.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Mike Creek: He would almost insist that all of his staff and those distributors he was keeping a friendly eye on be in bed by 9:00.
Andrew Hutchison: And that’s
01:25:00
Andrew Hutchison: not why you go to hi fi shows.
Mike Creek: Yeah, he obviously didn’t, he didn’t get the script. He didn’t get the script that we did anyway.
Andrew Hutchison: okay. Yeah. So not, not going to get on with him. Yeah. Okay.
Mordaunt Short terminated your contract early because you weren’t happy
So so you made it to two, the two year mark and it was time for a change.
Mike Creek: Obviously they, they felt that I had a contract for three years but they terminated it early.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Mike Creek: And they did so first by getting rid of more by getting rid of Christopher Short. So he disappeared and he was sub replaced by his second in command who was the accounts director, Jackie Stevens, who and I got on very well with. Everything was running very smoothly, more, more smoothly than I could have ever imagined until the board of directors appointed a new person to run both Tannoy and Mordaunt Short and its subsidiaries being Creek and EPOS
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Mike Creek: And that person’s remit was to come in and make savings or do things that he’d been told to do. Now I guess I’m with him. Well, but I didn’t understand his approach to coming in on the first day at Mordaunt Short and asking to see me at 9 o’clock and me being out the door at quarter past, without even a chance to clear my desk. So you know, it was, it was that ah, prompt.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Okay, well that’s, that probably isn’t a very happy day in your memory because that I’ve never been asked to do that. But I certainly know a few people that have and it’s slightly traumatizing really when you go to work. Not expecting that. so how did you did you take it positively or like you seek out the positive in it, the fact that you got a fresh start or you had the shits.
Mike Creek: I was somewhat shocked because I hadn’t worked for anyone for many years and that person only being my father. And he might have done that but then he might have changed his mind afterwards. I had no opportunity to talk to this person again. or not for a while after, after a while I did. But I have to say that at that particular point in time I just thought you’re in breach of contract and I’m going to make sure you know about it. So I contacted my account, my lawyer who was a particularly good one and he was about to sort of unleash the the hands of hell or dog, whatever expression you could use to ensure that my contract was honored. And they did actually say oh sorry, we might have overstepped the mark. How about this? We employ you for six months as a freelance person and you are required to write a story or the history of Creek Audio in six equal parts for us and our marketing team who was at a different branch of the company.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mike Creek: Another, another office in the country which which I did. And I reported to the marketing office, never to the factory.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Mike Creek: I had no idea what they were doing and they never asked me for any advice after that. And it, it suited me not because I was prepared to accept being paid six months money for what is essentially five days work. But the fact is, I mean that does happen a lot. But the, the fact was I wasn’t really happy working there. And I didn’t really find out until just before that my relationship with my wife had broken down to the point where I wanted to divorce. And that divorce caused me to be homeless.
Andrew Hutchison: This is not going well. I don’t know why I’m chuckling my job.
Mike Creek: I’ve lost my home, my son. And I was living with my parents in a spare room and traveling by. By car, which was my company car which they let me keep for about a week and then I had to deliver it back to them. Right. And then, then I was really somewhat stuck. however, very stuck.
Andrew Hutchison: Wow.
Mike Creek: I was say that I had an idea that I wanted to exploit which was to continue in the field that I was in by some means or other. And I was working with one or two other people in the industry who’d also separated from the company they’d
01:30:00
Mike Creek: worked for and had ideas as well of a similar nature. So I did start another brand but I was also you know, forced by the nature of the bi directional contract that I had to not compete with Creek Audio. Of course for the first six months after I left them.
Andrew Hutchison: so.
Mike Creek: But that just, just gave me the time, Gave you the time to get it going. So I did that. It was a company called EMF Audio or Electromotive Force Indeed. And initially I wasn’t going to make an amplifier. I did subsequently because of problems in achieving the result that I wanted. But the, the product I wanted to make was a mains regenerative power supply. Something that something a company like PS Audio makes nowadays.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah.
Mike Creek: I wanted to produce like a mains powered but completely isolated or off the grid source of clean power for running audio equipment from.
Andrew Hutchison: Wow. So you were a bit of a pioneer then really. I mean that’s. I don’t think anyone had really. Anyone was really thinking of doing that in the. Because this is this stage we’re talking late 80s or something. Are we, or what.
Mike Creek: What year it was? You know, 88. 80, something like that.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep. Wow. Okay. And on that, on that on that note, I’ll stop recording. It will say goodbye to all the listeners and I will, I will convince you while you’re still here to to give me part two of this sometime in the near future. Because I have a. Still have a pile of questions here that I want to ask and If that’s okay with you. So.
Mike Creek: Perfectly.
Andrew Hutchison: I really want to thank Mike, Creek, ah. For coming on the show today and telling us probably more than we all bargained for. but it’s all been very interesting and we will be back with more with Mike soon and we’ll see you on the next episode. Thanks everybody.
Mike Creek: Thank you. Thank you very much.
Andrew Hutchison: It’s a pleasure Mike.
01:32:03