Not An Audiophile – The Podcast featuring podcast episodes with Brad Serhan from Orpheus Loudspeakers and Serhan Swift. Brad Serhan talks to Andrew Hutchison from Not An Audiophile, and Dellichord loudspeakers about the history of Orpheus and Serhan Swift loudspeakers. Brad Serhan is a renowned and talented loudspeaker designer and a backbone of HiFi in Australia. With his great friends such as Ralph Waters – Richter Audio; Len Wallis – Len Wallis Audio; Matthew Bond – TARA Labs; Kiat Low – Duntech and many, many others, Brad Serhan helped forge Australian HiFi as we know it today.
Podcast transcripts below – Episode 001 & Episode 004
TRANSCRIPT
SEASON 1 – EPISODE 001 – Brad Serhan & Orpheus Loudspeakers 1984 and beyond
Welcome to Not An Audiophile – The Podcast This is episode one, season one
>> Brad Serhan: Surprise, surprise, Sergeant. Gomer Pyle
>> Andrew Hutchison: Hello. Welcome to Not An Audiophile – The Podcast- The Podcast. This is Episode One, season one. Today to kick things off.
Brad Serhan started Orpheus loudspeakers in 1980
As we are based in Australia, we thought we’d interview perhaps one of Australia’s best known and perhaps most loved, almost certainly most loved, are loudspeaker designers. Mr Brad Serhan. So you started Orpheus in 1980. I’m gonna say 84. Yeah, 84, yeah.
>> Andrew Hutchison: On a whim.
>> Brad Serhan: it was I suppose on a whim in that I started. Okay. Goes back to 1980 when I, I did my, I think I’ve constructed or designed my call it designed sort of design 1980. And I remember doing a whole design work on it with my limited knowledge. And it was a three way. And it was a three way.
>> Andrew Hutchison: So you thought you’d. It was a three way start at the top.
>> Brad Serhan: Yeah. And it was using a Peelus ah. Midrange paper cone. Mid range which was used in the Gale 401s.
>> Andrew Hutchison: That seems like a good place to start.
>> Brad Serhan: and a Magnavox 8MV which was a 830. Sorry, 830 paper code.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Local product.
>> Brad Serhan: Yep. And I at that stage I might have been using. Can’t remember. It was a Seas H211 Or it was a Phillips tweeter, an old Phillips Twitter. Anyway, the upshot of that was, the reason I’m mentioning it is that I can remember assembling it to listen to it.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
>> Brad Serhan: You know, to do the final listing, you know, putting the crossover inside rather than being on the outside. And It was December the 7th, I think it was, it was, that was the, the day that John Lennon was killed.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Oh, wow. Crikey. All right. Yeah, well, I know where I was. Yeah.
>> Brad Serhan: Was it December, December 7, something like that. 1980. And That I just, I remember doing the work and it came on, came over the radio. So That was a bit of a shock. And then that was, that was sort of I suppose the start of me attempting to sign loudspeakers and then Building up, building from there.
Nick: I had a pair of KEF 104ABs at the time
>> Andrew Hutchison: What, what were your thoughts when you, so you had the, the three way running or sounding quite good with the crossover on the outside. So when you. So really you’re mentioning of putting it on the inside, you’d already heard the loudspeaker is more the case that it lined up with the unfortunate news. But yes, a bit worse than unfortunate, but you know. So how did it sound? I mean a three way is a pretty tricky place to start.
>> Brad Serhan: Hey mate, that’s 40. That’s almost 44 years ago. So,
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, but did it say it didn’t? I mean, were you impressed? Forget how.
>> Brad Serhan: Okay, forget the time. That, that’s bullshit. Because in a sense, at the time I’d been. I had a pair of KEF 104ABs.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yep.
>> Brad Serhan: I was enamoured with a pair of self mini pros and, and Stuart Tyler’s. You know, Stuart Tyler’s designs. I really liked the sound of those, but couldn’t afford them. Yes, I could afford the KEFs because I knew the distributor of the Sloss brothers, I think they were that distributed the KEF 104s and the KEF brand, at the time. So I had the 104ABs at the time with a, with a Rega. Not a Rega, a Linn Sondek combination with a. Ah. Oh shit. I think it was a Harman Kardon 505 Tollar design amp with low negative feedback, apparently. so I had that combination and so I had a reference in, in the 104AB. So I was attempting to, replicate.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Oh, improve. Okay, you’re going to improve upon the 104s.
>> Brad Serhan: Whether I. Whether I did, that’s debatable. and it’s so subjective, as we know. and one has to be careful. Stuff that’s produced from your own loins. You can’t tend to be a little biased, maybe.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, you know, you could. It’s actually a skill, I think, is to, listen, with an open ear or open head or an open mind, and be, although I always find it, so, how should I put it? You put your reference back. You’re a little bit in love with your own product for a second. And then you put your, in this case the 104s back on the. And you go, a little bit more work to do.
>> Brad Serhan: Yes. And that possibly might have been the.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Case because I, I’m not saying it was the case in your case, but it certainly is.
>> Brad Serhan: No, I can remember the room I was in and listening and comparing it, the two, and trying to. I mean, part of what we do, as I suppose we call ourselves designers, they’re speaker designers, is hopefully having some sort of oral memory. although that, that might be debatable. Having some memory of what something sounds like and then being able to. Hearing live musical and then being able to, in your mind’s ear go, I think this is how I perceive it should sound. so what I’m attempting to say is, I think from memory that I, I think it had some hallmarks of, promise. That might be a better way of putting it.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, I mean, those ingredients were pretty. Pretty damn good. I mean, when, you know, the Gales. People still get excited about the. Some of the aspects of the performance of that loudspeaker.
>> Brad Serhan: Remember? Yeah. The 401 with the. There was the silver cap version.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Brad Serhan: And then there was the timber one. And a dear mate of mine, Richard Cohen, who was one of my HiFi mentors in a sense, he. He had a. He purchased the Linn Sondek. he went to Nick Borovski’s, Riverina HiFi. And they were all Linn.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yep. Linn Naim shop.
>> Brad Serhan: The Linn Naim stuff. And they were prosthetizing in the nicest possible way the Linn name philosophy. And, we all got inculcated to some extent about timing and all that sort of thing. So, Nick was a bit of a maverick in one sense, the HiFi maverick. He loved Nick Borovski, who was a great character. Wonderful deep radio voice. A bit like yours, Andrew
>> Andrew Hutchison: Actually.
>> Brad Serhan: when you went in there with Nick Borovski, he had this wonderful rich tone. I think we had an english background, good old fashioned poem. And he would sort of mesmerise you, the mesmers, with these sort of dulcet tones. Mellifluous is another word I’d use. And he’d start to succumb to the Linn Naim philosophy. well, Dick bought the turntable and FR7 No, Dynavector tone arm. This whacking great old thing with an FR7 fidelity research FR7 cartridge with. He purchased. He purchased an ME . I think 75 australian design amplified by Peter Stein.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Over the western australian design HSA amplifier. So I had a good working reference for speaker design
>> Brad Serhan: Over the western australian design HSA amplifier. Which he thought. What he thought. Good Lord. Shock horror. He preferred to the then Naim stuff.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Wow.
>> Brad Serhan: So, And then he’s. Then he went for the Gale 401. So I. I. Why am I telling you this? Well, we’re just having a discussion. But that’s what I was listening to through the auspices of, My good dear friend Dick Cohen. I used to go around with him listening to these different pieces of equipment as he was hunting for this stuff.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
>> Brad Serhan: I went to uni. I went to university with him. And. And he was sort. Had a bit of money because he had worked in a part time job. So he’s determined to give himself a decent system. So I got to hear a lot of stuff. AMW, another favorite. AMW, another australian design lad speaker.
>> Andrew Hutchison: One I think was AMW Brisbane.
>> Brad Serhan: You know what? You’ve got me there. I don’t think it was.
>> Andrew Hutchison: I think I knew one of the people who was either the a or the m. M or the w. Yeah. In later life. Yeah. Because I mean that is a great characters apparently. Oh, well if it’s who I’m thinking, he is quite a coward.
>> Brad Serhan: Maybe not.
>> Andrew Hutchison: No, no, he’s a, he’s a great, great guy. Interesting chats many years ago when he, I think ultimately ended up you know in wholesale or repping or something. And so we would talk crap about speaker design.
>> Brad Serhan: But Colin Waite, wasn’t it? Colin Waite there was w. Was the Colin Waites
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, that’s. And I, I don’t know and I’ve just. At the second I’ve forgotten the person in questions, Name. But he had something. And he may not have been one of the a or the M’s or the w’s but he. Closely aligned or something or had. Had a hand in hand in it.
>> Brad Serhan: An ear in it.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, but. So yeah, you had all. So, so you had a good working reference for what?
>> Brad Serhan: Well I had, what I’m attempting to convey is that I had a whole lot of shops. There were a whole lot of shops that I used to go around and listen to systems. And Dick, because he was in that mode of wanting to purchase something we were viable for dealers to talk to, 23 year olds or 22 year olds. they, funnily enough they took Dick seriously because he ended up purchasing stuff. so that sort of formed what I was starting to get a sense of what I liked and didn’t like to those young years. And I liked some of the celef speakers by Stuart Tyler who went on to do ProAc. I definitely liked, I did like the gales. There was something really communicative about them, musical. And the AMW’s struck a chord because a dear mate of mine, Johnny Robb, who, who grew up in the same town as me in Musswellbrook, he’s known me since birth, well not consciously from birth but he had access.
>> Andrew Hutchison:
Quite a coincidence that your mother’s lined up sort of in a queue or something and
>> Brad Serhan: Like, well, brothers from another mother but, but yeah, in the old the old Muswellbrook hospital up there. It’s.
Andrew Robb: Johnny Robb and I survived HiFi back in the 1960s
Why do we survive birth, let alone, well, let alone.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Bloody hell, how did anyone survive back then really? Things were so. No, I know, rough and I don’t.
>> Brad Serhan: Want to give away any secrets here, Andrew, I might pause it so you can cut it out, but Doctor Hank Rutherford who was the The chief Circumciser up there. He was renowned for nice and neat like a cleat, was the old saying. But I tell you Johnny Robb and I survived that. Whatever sensitivity had downstairs gone. But it elevated to a new height and stays to where he is, let me tell you, old style. So Johnny Robb, he also was a. A music lover. But his dad had A share in retrovision which was a store. Ah. That had refrigerators.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
>> Brad Serhan: Appliance. Yes. Appliance to HiFi. And they actually got in some reasonable gear. They could get access. And Johnny had a pretty reasonable system even back in the sort of, you know, mid high school years. So he and I were passionate about that. John’s still my dear mate in Sydney and we still fiddle around with HiFi together. But the point being that. That history of audio went way back. Well and also. And also now I’m m going deeper in the darker past.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes. Yes.
>> Brad Serhan: God, I’ve got to have wonderful amount of verbal diary here. My dear great uncle, Bill Moore. Bill was he. He was the head technician for a company in angel place called british imports and imports or something. I think in the fifties and sixties.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Brad Serhan: And they used to import Goodman’s and Quad And quad valve and quad electrostatics.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Absolutely.
>> Brad Serhan: So when we used to pop down to Sydney and visit My Relatives. My grand uncle Bill had Quad. I think quad 22. The valve amps and the electrostatic setup. And I used to hear that And was enamoured with. You know, just so you.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, so you know, you cheated to some degree. You had. You were surrounded by Multiple listening opportunities to what we now realize in hindsight was all fantastic equipment and highly regarded still today.
>> Brad Serhan: I was always very lucky.
>> Andrew Hutchison: I mean it’s a cavalcade of salubrious HiFi from the sixties, seventies.
>> Brad Serhan: A cornucopia of Using the c word cornucopia here of flavors being sort of marinated in. Well look, you know, I’m taking piss out of myself really. But the thing is that. But it was the fact that The dad used to play a lot of music. And Harry Belafonte and all sorts of stuff. And that’s. You know, you start to enjoy music that your parents are playing. And then the aspect of what made it sound good came in teenage years. And then I. And started dabble. And thanks to sort of effectively Richard Cohen was a sort of a Fellow that sort of. Because he was on that quest to get a decent system. I got to listen to it a lot. And that formed it in a sense, my own particular bent, Or flavor, if you like. Which came out in three way.
I think this country favored, uh. Well, the easy to get along with
And that’s why I went on with that off of that tangent that I was using the, Peelus mid range with the chamber, sealed chamber behind it. The same as the gales. So to capture some of that.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Which I mean, was probably the key ingredient of the gales to some degree. Other than the The Well, the easy to get along with top end and the
>> Brad Serhan: Twin paper.
. Yeah. Yes. Well, yeah, I was going to say eights and Sealed box alignment as I remember it. Without actually checking the Internet. So. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. Look, I could. Yeah. If we were talking about my, listing history, it probably completely different products. Except for the Linn Naim bit, perhaps. But. But certainly, I guess. I guess it’s those early experiences with quality equipment do shape your taste a little bit. You weren’t exposed to say, you know, the likes of You know, say maybe an american style sort of Klipsch JBL type thing with a hafler amp or something. Which Or Dyne Audio amp or whatever. And so. But I guess. I guess in Australia, Which is where we are, folks, if you’re wondering. Probably can’t tell because of our international accents. But.
>> Brad Serhan: Oh, yes, mid Pacific accent.
>> Andrew Hutchison: That’s actually a different accent, but, Yes. So, you know, Now I lost my place a little bit. Now I was thinking about the mid Pacific thing. But
>> Brad Serhan: I mean, we were suggesting that I wasn’t. I wasn’t immersed in the american.
>> Andrew Hutchison: No, I think. I think this country was. Well, I think this country certainly favored, A UK sound, I think generally. And the local products, of which there were many back then, really of varying sizes, probably, Swung that way a little bit, I guess. And I mean, if there’s such a thing as a UK sound. But I mean, you did mention sort of pace, rhythm and timing earlier. And I guess there was a bit of that. But there was as much religion perhaps, as there was pace, rhythm and timing. But you know, there was something in it. I mean, it was early. I mean, it was sort of some kind of marketing really. I suppose that just penetrated it, you know, it. And I mean, yeah, and. And there was. To use the cavalcade word again, there was a cavalcade of english magazines, I guess. Singing the praises of LP twelve s and Naim 250s or whatever. But yeah, if they were out, then whatever the earlier ones were. And,
>> Brad Serhan: But the magazines, the english press certainly did, certainly, spoke about Pratt and as it was rhythm and timing and spoke about those things that you need, that should have. And if a product didn’t have it, it was. It go by the wayside.
Brad: I own a pair once. I traded. What were they? That quite an advanced speaker drive unit
It could have been tonally nice and a pleasant experience. I remember the Celestion What were they? That quite an advanced speaker drive unit, actually, they were using for the base mid.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
>> Brad Serhan: an aerolam cabinet. Aerolam.
>> Andrew Hutchison: are the, SL6000 or 6600? 600. SL6, which then in a chipboard box. SL 600s in a, Yeah, yeah. The honeycomb, aluminum material, which. Yeah. And that they lacked, I thought. I mean, I owned a pair once. I traded. Well, I just, for some reason, without that box making a noise, they seem to. They seem to lack a bit of personality or something, but, I don’t know.
>> Brad Serhan: Did you.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Did. There was a bit of that. Bit of a lack of body and a bit of a sort of a, ah, I don’t know, a bit of. A bit of nothing about them. But then maybe there was a bit of a Celestion thing there as well, because I’m not. I haven’t really ever found them to be completely to my taste. But, Right, but, Yeah, I look at, Before we go any further, I want to, It’s time for an ad break. We’ve got to pay for this bullshit somehow, so.
>> Brad Serhan: Yeah. Yeah.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Ah, so, we’ll be right back with more of the brad.
>> Brad Serhan: Yes, indeed. Well, I’ll be welcoming you back as Richie Benaud So that’ll make for everyone to know when we’re back.
>> Andrew Hutchison: We look forward to that.
>> Brad Serhan: Thank you, sir.
Dellichord loudspeakers designed and manufactured in Australia
>> Andrew Hutchison: Back in a sec, folks. Dellichord loudspeakers designed and manufactured in Australia, in fact, manufactured in their own facility in Brisbane. Three different models, three different flavors, and all built up to a standard, not down to a price. On demonstration now in HiFi, dealers across the country and available also direct. Have a look@Dellichord.com. dot au dot.
>> Brad Serhan: Yes, indeed. Mata stuff.
Richie Benno welcomes Andrew Hutchinson back to the MCG
And welcome back to the MCG. It’s Richie Benno here with my, erstwhile friend, Andrew Hutchinson. And thanks for allowing me on the program. Go ahead, Andrew. Sorry.
>> Andrew Hutchison: It is an absolute.
>> Brad Serhan: Cut that out. Cut that out. Start again.
>> Andrew Hutchison: No, no, we’ll. We’ll just keep rolling.
>> Brad Serhan: Forge.
There was quite a bit of european HiFi in the local scene
Okay.
>> Andrew Hutchison: But in the break, the brief break, we did remind ourselves that there was american HiFi in the local scene. And, other. I mean, there was quite a bit of european stuff. I mean, there were, and I remember, ads for dual turntables and
>> Brad Serhan: Oh, Jesus.
>> Andrew Hutchison: And I’m trying to think who it was. And I used to deal with them years ago, might have been Falk. Falk and we sold those, we sold gazillions of those turntables and when I was a child, and Thorens of course, and there was a bit of telefunken and Ah, what’s those other kooky german electronics brands that were kind of cool looking, but I think the overriding kind of gear that’s sold in this country, certainly by the mid seventies, was japanese electronics. Yes, supported in many cases, by speakers that, whose heritage lay in, the United Kingdom. But you mentioned Klipsch. I mentioned Klipsch, but you mentioned an experience with those and also, ARs And I think AR actually, I mean, I think. Well, we never, we never sold much in the way of ARs, but we sold other things like, you know, sort of, I must admit they were slightly lowbrow products along the lines of Cewin Vega and Jensen and things like that, which, you know, I suppose we sniffed a bit at. But you know, hey, that’s
what some people wanted.
Andrew recalls first encounter with high quality stereo sound 40 years ago
But tell me about the experience, with the ARs, although that was a recent experience, I think. But the klipsch, la Scalas from years, ago.
>> Brad Serhan: Yeah, well, this goes way back to 1980, Andrew. And that was, I was working at, Douglas HiFi in George street in the city. And I had a service department upstairs, thanks to a fellow by the name of Reinhard Resch. Not the beer, not the beer. And he. He employed me to work, upstairs for his service department for Douglas. He was over in our time. This is all information that really is not important. But I was doing my uni course, and so part of a sandwich course was doing this sort of work. So, I got, I had an opportunity to go down into the store quite regularly to listen to gear. And they had a setup in their demo room of clipsla scalars, with a Linn Sondek turntable with a grace 707 arm. I can’t remember the cartridge. And I might have been crown amplifiers, I can’t remember, it’s irrelevant. But I’d been to listen to the Sunnyboys at the trade union club and a few nights, a few evenings back. And then I had the opportunity to bung my lp down, the Sunnyboys album, m down on the LP12 and then far out. That that combination for my then youthful ears just sounded so, so close to what I heard. M. in my. A sense of the dynamics and the scale and the punch. Whether that was going to be great for classical music or brass music, I’m not. I can’t tell you because I didn’t play. I did play that system a bit, but I can’t remember really what it sounded like part of that, but yeah.
>> Andrew Hutchison: It would have had a similar punch and character, obviously, to a, Well, I don’t want to denigrate it by suggesting to you know, horn loaded front of House PA speakers, but I mean there is, you know, there’s going to be a. There is a slightly similar sonic signature, I suppose, but Yeah, but obviously a sweetened and more accurate, more polite version of perhaps what you heard at the pub.
>> Brad Serhan: Yeah, but what it did bring to the party, so to speak, or to the equation was that had the scale and dynamics, indeed, high sensitivity, obviously, but it just punched. So it was visceral and it gave, immediately gave me that feeling that I was back at the concert. Despite the limitations of it, you know, you’re still not going to reproduce sound that level that a live band versus something fun on vinyl. No, you know, I love my vinyl, but. So it, it did convey the sense of scale and power and Yeah, it was, it was memorable.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, clearly, because that’s a hundred million years ago and you. Yeah, you indeed remember it. yeah, I mean it kind of is so. Ah, that’s 40.
>> Brad Serhan: 40 years ago.
>> Andrew Hutchison: 40 odd years ago. It’s interesting how the human brain works, isn’t it? You know, that you can’t remember what you did, literally, as people say this morning. But, but I mean, I think that’s partly youth and having. Being memorably impressed and,
>> Brad Serhan: Discovery.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Mmm m discovery, indeed.
>> Brad Serhan: It’s discovery. I think there’s a certain amount of, oh, I didn’t know sound could be like this.
>> Andrew Hutchison: And it was actually as much as it was common in a way. There was lots of HiFi stores, there was plenty of gear around, there was lots of gear being sold. The eighties was a great time to be in the HiFi industry, but, still a small percentage of the community at large would wander into such a shop or be exposed to such high quality sound. Do you think? I mean, that’s the way I remember it. I still think it was a kind of a niche interest at that serious end of the scale. Everyone had a stereo of some description because what else were you going to do? M yeah, I mean there was, there was I mean the great thing for the HiFi business back then was that there was really literally, literally nothing else to do. That you could ride your bike, drive your car if you were
>> Brad Serhan: Yeah, motorboat maybe.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Maybe. It may be a boat. you could. You could get into cameras. You could.
>> Brad Serhan: Yes.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, you could get into HiFi obviously and really. And women of course at some point.
>> Brad Serhan: But what else were you going to depending on? You know, depending on.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well yeah, but back then you know, probably borderline illegal or something. I don’t know. It’s not something you mentioned in mixed company.
>> Brad Serhan: I think the first Mardi Gras was 1979.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well there you go. So it was just, it was just starting honestly Queensland at that stage and perhaps still today, 25 to 30 years behind the rest of the country. So yeah, I can say that as a queenslander sometimes people will say oh yeah, you don’t have daily savings up there. You know, how far behind are you? And Or if you say that to them they they quote usually 20 years actually. But Not the hour of course that there actually is difference. But I Yeah, no, we probably got distracted. there wasn’t. There wasn’t a lot to do. And Music I think more than HiFi was probably a big part of people’s life.
>> Brad Serhan: No, you’re. I think you’re right, Andrew, that the disposable income would go towards a house or a car and kids education maybe. And then really it was the hot. Really that was the high technology thing at the time maybe.
>> Andrew Hutchison: And a color tv for
>> Brad Serhan: And a color tv and, and effectively to give you an idea of what it was like in Sydney.
There were three magnetic sound, leisure sound and quality HiFi shops in Sydney
I remember that in the number of shops in Sydney in this. In the CBD there was. There was a gobsmacking amount of shops m in that city area. in York street alone I think there were. There were three within magnetic sound, leisure sound and quality HiFi within 50 to 70 meters of each other.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Oh, I remember that.
>> Brad Serhan: And leisure sound and leisure sound. That’s four.
>> Andrew Hutchison: I remember I remember walking around one city block on a visit in the early eighties. And Yeah there was definitely three shops in close. Close Succession. And I Was. I was impressed by you know, things that I hadn’t seen before which of course is easy to believe. But There’s all sorts of things on display that And. And each store had its own little clearly as they do today, had its own personality, had its own kind of equipment I guess, you know.
>> Brad Serhan: Yeah.
>> Andrew Hutchison: So yeah. And there were, I suppose they were more in the city then than less in the suburbs. But then that was about the time that the suburban, suburban shops started appearing obviously Len Wallace, probably not one of the first, but you know, probably. Well for me it turned my head a little bit because he had things like Meridian, which That’s right, I had a bit of a crush on. So
>> Brad Serhan: Yeah, yeah, Meridian, yeah, well, yeah, and, and they’re active speakers.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well the active speakers were the thing and it wasn’t even necessarily the fact that they were active, it was the. I just like that. Well, I was one of the first speakers with a narrow baffle and a deeper carcass.
>> Brad Serhan: So they look pretty, pretty nice actually.
>> Andrew Hutchison: I think so, you know, so I like, I mean I don’t know whether it’s real or not, but you sort of look back at it feels like things change pretty quickly in the sense that floor standing speakers, not that the meridians were, they were stand mounts effectively, but the. I’m just using floor standers as an example of today. You can go into a shop today and they’re largely the same format they were 25 years ago, or maybe even 30. They’re basically narrow baffle, deeper box. They’re a certain height, somewhere between 900, 1050 or something. And they, you know, that’s what they are. Whereas seventies and eighties things. There was a lot of change. Obviously we were going from a, ah, wider front, you know, from a shallower, wider box probably because of bigger drivers, bigger base units. And And moving towards that small drive unit, narrower box and the meridian were probably one of the earlier purveyors of that shape, I guess. And maybe that’s, maybe that’s why it caught my youthful eye. But you know, but I don’t know how they sounded because I don’t think Len turned them on for me because there’s a 15 year old wandering around Lane Cove. Probably thought I was a homeless child or something and I. Anyhow,
>> Brad Serhan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The thing is that I suppose I can’t remember them either. I can remember them, but I can’t remember the sound of them. yeah, I have heard them of.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Course, in later life because I’ve repaired quite a few pairs.
>> Brad Serhan: Oh, okay.
>> Andrew Hutchison: And they sound quite nice. they do, they do have that meridian sound where they’re quite clean, a little bit polite, quite, you know, quite nice, you know, reserved, slightly reserved.
>> Brad Serhan: But, yeah, there is slightly reserved indeed.
Andrew: What was your other american HiFi experience
>> Andrew Hutchison: So you were, What was your other american HiFi experience, if there was one? And did it. And did it have a lasting, impact or what was. Or what was the thing? I mean, the way you speak to me was really the Celefs, probably at the nub.
>> Brad Serhan: Yeah, that’s a. I mean, that’s a great question. And I normally say great question because it gives me time to think about an answer. So give me a second. That’s a tremendous question, Andrew. And, I clap my hands with joy that someone’s finally asked me this question.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, I do think back, and I
mean, an eight inch two way was a common design back then and some of your earlier designs were that size. Okay, so, yeah, I guess it was an eight inch two way that you. There must have been an eight inch two way that you loved at some point other than clearly your own products, which were excellent. But, you know.
>> Brad Serhan: Yeah.
I don’t know if we’ve ever mentioned Orpheus loudspeakers during this interview
>> Andrew Hutchison: I don’t know if we’ve ever mentioned Orpheus loudspeakers yet during this.
>> Brad Serhan: no. Well, you might have mentioned it at the start.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, maybe.
>> Brad Serhan: Question.
>> Andrew Hutchison: I did.
>> Brad Serhan: You did. But I will answer the question because far away, I often don’t answer questions. I meander first, give back stories and then forget what, what the out question was. Well, get there now.
The key thing was that, um,
So the key thing was that, in that sort of Dick Cohen quest to find a speaker to work with Linn Sondek and et cetera, and the ME we, went to a lot of stores and I got to, as I was saying, there was about twelve. Felt like twelve shops in the city. So you could just walk twelve. Some are.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
>> Brad Serhan: HiFi. There’s one down Kent street. there was, the three.
>> Andrew Hutchison: What? Kent street HiFi.
>> Brad Serhan: Yeah, there’s Kent street, HiFi. And there’s also one in Castle Ray street as well.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Why am I talking Castle Ray street HiFi?
>> Brad Serhan: Yep. original names.
>> Brad Serhan: Sydney Australians. Like sort of this, sort of barebones Sydney Harbour Bridge, Sydney Opera house. Nothing flamboyant. It’s not simple.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Let’s keep it, keep it. We want to know. We want to know where the thing is geographically located based on its name.
>> Brad Serhan: Yeah. So.
>> Andrew Hutchison: And perhaps in a time before Google maps, that did make it easier.
>> Brad Serhan: It make it. It did. There’s some.
>> Andrew Hutchison: I wonder where the Sydney harbour bridge is. One. Would you know, an american tourist was thinking to themself.
>> Brad Serhan: Yeah.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Exactly as they were walking down, Collins street. But it came in Melbourne.
>> Brad Serhan: Yeah, I got it. so basically, to answer that question. So when we were on that quest with Dick Cohen, I got, I went into. It wasn’t Kent. There was another bunch of guys who did shore cartridges, SME tonearms. And they had KEF 104ABs and the Celef range.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Brad Serhan: And I’ll, Never. For some reason I liked the sort of seven or eight inch design that were ubiquitous around then. And there was something way that speaker, whether it was the white, it’s sort of this white cone, Peelus white cone, paper cone with a, Seas H211 tweeter. There was something about the look. But then when the fellow fired it up for us, it just engaged me. And I was never. Yes, it’d be great to do a, to design a big floor, stander multi way thing, which I sort of did initially in 1980. But when I heard this in 82, I thought it surpassed the KEFs to my ears yet. And yet I bought the KEF 104ABs because I could get them at wholesale because I was working at Douglas HiFi in the service department, which meant I could get access to their stuff, so I couldn’t afford to buy the Celefs.
>> Andrew Hutchison: well, it didn’t make it. It. Yes, it put a slant towards the KEFs when you were buying.
>> Brad Serhan: Yes.
>> Andrew Hutchison: And I see a less the retail margin as it was back then. Yeah, yeah.
>> Brad Serhan: So look, basically I didn’t. I quite like the kiss. They sort of very rich and warm and they hugged you. Yeah, absolutely. It’s sort of voluptuous in a way. but that was the speaker I coveted. And I mean, it doesn’t sound like very high aspirations, but the Celef mini pro was a cracking design and that’s what I think it was sort of what I could actually, I thought I could reproduce, as in my early days at trying to tweak random speakers. So that was the speaker that struck a chord. And then I then saw a review in the HiFi News and Record review, UK magazine, June 1982.
>> Brad Serhan: and they had this review on it and they were saying nice things about it on the KEF, I know, on the Celef mini pros, and that your always needs someone to say, hey, you’re thinking the right way. It’s some, a pundit that knows more than you, supposedly. And And I said, gee, they like it. Right. That’s great. And then I saw the measurements. I think Martin Collins did made the measurements and he actually had the ability, or he actually measured them. Obviously the tweeter and bass driver connected, but then he did it without one connected. The tweeter not connected. The bass not connected. I can see where the speaker was rolling off. I had a nitric chart recorder at the time. that’s what I was using to measure my speakers with, with a microphone, of course. And I wanted to emulate that speaker. And I could get, I knew the bass driver was a Peelus and I could, I could purchase in Australia. I knew I could get the seas tweeter. No, I actually went to seas. Actually, seas sold me a few.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Brad Serhan: And, so you’d almost say that’s.
>> Andrew Hutchison: When the business started. To a degree, if you’re dealing with the drive unit manufacturers or more to the point, they were dealing with you. yes.
>> Brad Serhan: And they were willing to sort of, well, seize willing. I think I got the Peelus in Australia and I’d already done a six inch two way which didn’t have a brand name.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yep.
>> Brad Serhan: So that was a magnavox six inch with the H211 tweeter.
Andrew Martin: Where did the Orpheus loudspeakers come from
So it already sourced the seas tweeter.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
>> Brad Serhan: And then. Jesus. A long, boring story, but I’ll persist. So I’ll persist for just pure historical purposes.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Gonna pop out the other side in a second.
>> Brad Serhan: Keep going.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Keep working at it.
>> Brad Serhan: The genesis of Orpheus. just gestation periods too long. But what happened was I thought stuff and I’m gonna have a crack at designing it. So I tried to emulate, not knowing what crossover they were using, but I had to look, look at, okay, they’re crossing over at approximately this frequency.
>> Andrew Hutchison: M could you see from the, the public, public published dry, base and treble responses only. Could you suss out the acoustic roll off? Like the rate? Yep, yep. Yeah, yeah.
>> Brad Serhan: And they, that gave me clues. And then, of course, I didn’t have values, nor did I want to have values, Andrew. I basically wanted to, it was a homage.
>> Andrew Hutchison: That’s right. You don’t need them anyhow.
>> Brad Serhan: Ah. Neither then homage to it and, and then not plagiarism, but just a homage. Yeah. Okay. That’s approximately where they cross it over. But I’m going to listen to it. And, and then I started to sort, of course I’m measuring it in different room surroundings, you know, probably nowhere near as accurately as Martin Collins in some sort of anechoic chamber or whatever. But it was my, I really just was determined to get it in the zone. And then I then started manipulate the crossover once, I sort of had it cross the over proxy was the cone cry was the bass driver. Hardening up was the tweeter quacking, all those things you have to look for. Listen, for when designing a two way, was it possible for the eight inch or 7.5 inch Peelus driver to reach. Reach out to this H211 tweeter and vice versa? And could they, could they could they could be there a, significant marriage between a melding of the two. And so that speaker I worked on in 83, but then I finally finished it off in 84, and that’s when I started Orpheus loudspeakers in 19. 84, 40 years ago.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Who we got there. So.
>> Brad Serhan: Christ.
>> Andrew Hutchison: So that was. So that was that, The word eludes me, but that marriage of those two drive units in a. I’m presuming approximately two cubic foot box. Was, Was model one, effectively. What, what did you call it?
>> Brad Serhan: Well, it was known as. It was known as the Orpheus dolomite.
>> Andrew Hutchison: And so you’re. I’m going to cut you off again. Orpheus dolomite. Obvious references to some kind of. I don’t know, I’m no expert on greek mythology or wherever the hell that comes from, but you could fill me in.
>> Brad Serhan: dolomite being a mountain range in Italy. So.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, the dolomite, actually, I did.
>> Brad Serhan: But the car, that is foolishly.
>> Andrew Hutchison: I actually realize. I know, but the orpheus. A lot of your models seem to have a. Is that. What’s the connect. Where’s the Orpheus thing come from?
>> Brad Serhan: When I say, I mean, it’s a thing. It’s a thing. It’s greek mythology. And, Orpheus was a beautiful musician. I can’t remember my own story or the story. Not my story. Orpheus. All I know is that Orpheus played up incredibly. What a. What, a harp?
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
>> Brad Serhan: It came to harps. He could harp on like nobody else. And his fingers are just, you know, delightfully touched. I mean, I’ll stand corrected here, because it’s been a long time. Actually, I’ve got the note of the narrative in a brochure. Hold on.
There really weren’t many other models that had anything to do with greek
anyway, let’s go through my old.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Brochure file, dig it out.
>> Brad Serhan: I can’t find it. anyway, so he was a beautiful. And the gods loved his music. They just loved his music. So, I’ll update you next time we chat about it. But, the key thing where I.
>>
Andrew Hutchison: Got Orpheus, actually, when I think about it, there’s not many other. There really isn’t really that many other models that you had that had anything to do with the greek thing was. I mean, because there was Minotaur. There was. Well, the minotaur was the one that was. There was a few.
>> Brad Serhan: And the dolomite was because the old man loved english cars and always wanted to get a jaguar, could never afford one. So he would buy these, you know, he’d buy Holden HD, Holden X two.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Don’t tell me, try.
>> Brad Serhan: And then he went on big. Yes. He effectively went on to get a. Maybe as a midlife crisis, he purchased a dolomite sprint.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes. Oh, dolomite sprints. Okay. Yeah. Good, good car. And it’s day kind of thing, you know.
>> Brad Serhan: And it had. It had overdrive in third and fourth.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Quite, absolutely.
>> Brad Serhan: And double overhead cam.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, absolutely. Double overhead cam was the thing that I was going to mention. And I think twin side drafts are some description, but I can’t quite remember. But a friend did, did have one back in the day and I remember having it. Yeah. And I remember having a, He was in the band that I was involved with and I wasn’t playing an instrument. Of course. I’m in the HiFi industry, I’m incapable. But I was involved with the lighting and sound and Ah, we had this at 02:00 in the morning one day we finished, you know, obviously we’d had a couple of drinks, I guess, and I challenged him to a duel, to the other side of town, which we undertook at great speed, proving that Mazda RX4 is very, very marginally faster than a dollar might sprint. But, Faster.
>> Brad Serhan: Did it handle it faster than. Did it handle as well as the sprint?
>> Andrew Hutchison: There were no corners involved, so the Mazda was capable of winning, but,
>> Brad Serhan: Damn.
>> Andrew Hutchison: But the Yeah, obviously the dolomite was probably a handler compared with an rx four. I mean, basically a tip truck is a handler compared with an RX4. But, So although I’ve been told tip trucks, a term you’re not meant to use anymore, any old people say that. So, Should we say some kind of earth moving equipment that gets the dirt, the earth moves?
>> Brad Serhan: I like that.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes. Anyhow, so.
>> Brad Serhan: So the dolomite sprint was the sort of. It was the base.
>> Andrew Hutchison: So there was. Yeah. It was on your mind. Yeah. Okay.
>> Brad Serhan: It was on my mind. I got to drive. I was allowed to drive it occasionally and I just wanted to make sure it didn’t have the reliability of the dolomite sprint british layout.
>> Andrew Hutchison: It would be hard to. Would be hard to replicate the.
>> Brad Serhan: No, so it had to. So the dolomite was. That was the first Orpheus model. and then after that, it sort of,
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, there’s some history, because I had no idea that it was related to perhaps the car, which, of course, is related to the mountain range dolomite.
>> Brad Serhan: Yeah.
>> Andrew Hutchison: However, the Italians would like to pronounce it. So, Yeah, yeah.
>> Brad Serhan: So, so that’s, that’s a. That’s sort of, in a sense, the, the first model. and then there are other models that came after that.
>> Andrew Hutchison: You, sold them mostly through dealers, and I guess, in hindsight.
>> Brad Serhan: No, I didn’t. Not. Not initially.
>> Andrew Hutchison: No, there’s that.
>> Brad Serhan: Right.
>> Andrew Hutchison: M. Well, that’s my next concern.
How did the sale of stereo speakers happen in Australia back in the 1970s
My next question. So how did the, how did, how did the, how did the sales happen?
>> Brad Serhan: Well, it, it was the day. Those are the days when we had a thing called trading post.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay. Yeah, right here.
>> Brad Serhan: So I mocked up a.
>> Andrew Hutchison: For those international listeners, it’s a sort of a classified newspaper. There’s no news stories in it. It’s just ads, secondhand stuff, anything.
>> Brad Serhan: Electronics, garbage, cameras, old cars.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Probably a good way to gain an insight is to watch the castle.
>> Brad Serhan: Yeah. Yes. That’s it. Yeah. Great movie. so I I composed a hopefully, what I hope the thought would be a compelling advertisement.
>> Andrew Hutchison: If you got a copy of the ad like it’s in a. You got a clipping scrapbook somewhere?
>> Brad Serhan: No, I wasn’t that anal. I didn’t chronicle that. But a friend of mine bought a pair of dolomites, handed me back a whole lot of, minotaur, dolomite and Apollo brochures. There’s just classic. A four in various light yellow, cream colors or whatever. And so what I did was I sort of just spoke about the enclosure. I’ve got it in front of me now. Just happenstances. I didn’t have it for this particular, for this particular podcast. It just, it lobbed on the table.
>> Andrew Hutchison: It’s always there.
>> Brad Serhan: ah. just to remind me where I come from, where and where I haven’t gone. I mean, really, it hasn’t changed much. Sorry, I’m getting shrill. so basically, just, I went on about the cabinets being rigidly constructed with special care pages. Edge clamping technique bracing is placed to stick panels and thereby raise the panel resonance. All that blah, blah, blah. Eliminating the influence of blah, blah, blah. Tarp padding is strategic, tacked and glued. and all that. And then I spoke about the drivers, the crossovers being polymerized polypropylene solons, I think I was getting at the time. and what I was trying to do is, say, what I was trying to convey was that you’ve got the marvellous english brands, which are much touted and well deserved, no doubt, but we’re doing it over here for a much cheaper price, more competitive price, and we have an australian flavor. What if that was that? And then, and we had, I just had the three model lineup and I paid whatever it was every couple of weeks. And would you believe.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
>> Brad Serhan: Surprise, surprise, sergeant. gamma pile. they, we actually had some very interesting characters who wanted to listen to the speakers who pop over to my place and, and I, you know, we were back, the classic backyard operation in the lounge room. And, I had some great characters come on over. there was one particular fellow, and I thought we provided service for a few people, actually, because, you know, those who are lonely.
>> Andrew Hutchison: so it was sort of a multifaceted business, really.
>> Brad Serhan: Well, it was, it was back then. And there’s one particular fellow who came to the door, very interested, listen to the speakers. And he said, do you have Frank Sinatra? Yes, I’ve got a couple of albums here myself. Oh, great. Bring them on. M in. And then I think he just came. It was like a live. I felt like we were an audio library, if you like. He came along to listen to some of my stuff and then had a cup of tea, an iced vovo and a ginger nut biscuit. And, Did you bring a small pissed off.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Bag and a pillow? Oh, no, he left. Okay.
>> Brad Serhan: No, no, but I’m taking the piss. But in a sense, that’s. Let’s not mock those days. I am. I think it actually, it made me realize the different types of character characters are involved in, in music, what they’re wanting from their music. And sometimes you were never going to get a sale. Some came over, because they had the time to either put shit on australian stuff, which is also fine, and, in a pleasant way because I didn’t want them to choke.
>> Andrew Hutchison: They were in your home, so I guess they were toning down the disdain a little bit. But,
>> Brad Serhan: Yeah, that’s right. That’s a great way to describing it. Anyway, so. But there were times we got, I got sales and I went out to various people’s places with the speakers in tow, with speaker stands and I doing home demonstrations and surprise. I actually got some sales and, one fact, one fella that I. This is a nice tale because he’s still a dear friend today. A bloke called, there were two Trevor Wilson, and there’s the Trevor Wilson one.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Would have thought one was enough, but,
>> Brad Serhan: Oh, he’s gorgeous. Me, Trevor Wilson, who represented Peter Stein’s ME amplifiers. There’s that Trevor, true stalwart of MEs, that technician Trevor.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
>> Brad Serhan: Who’s a wonderful fellow. And there’s another story there which I can tell you offline about Trevor. as in. As in nothing licentious or lewd? No, no, lewdy lewd. More about the fact he was the first HiFi shop I ever visited.
Trevor Wilson was early money on Orpheus speakers
I’ll go off on a tangent. Trevor Wilson had it worked in, or either owned a HiFi shop on military Road, Cremorne or something like that.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Brad Serhan: And I went in with a pair of my speakers with the prototype crossover on the outside so I could adjust it. And, Trevor could have told me to piss off. He was bored. He had plenty of no customers in the shop. He said, I’ll come in. Yeah. And he actually had a listen.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Right, so this is Trevor the tech we’re talking about.
>> Brad Serhan: To Trevor the tech.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
>> Brad Serhan: me, Trevor. And he’s a very direct sort of fellow.
>> Andrew Hutchison: That’s a. That’s a very polite way to, Yes. I mean, you have to love Trevor for his directness.
>> Brad Serhan: I loved. I love a direct Trevor. Call me old fashioned. I mean, I’ll just. It’s all out in the open. But what happens is when you see the flight of the ball, so to speak in cricketing parlance, when you can see the flight, you can either block it or you can sort of step down the pitch and drive
it, or you can step in the back foot and hook it. And that’s what Trevor did. She gives you a clear side of the ball. You know what’s coming at you. Whereas other people are different. They disguise it and they get you with a googly and you’re fucking bowled. There are a few dealers that did that to me in the nicest possible way. up shot is that he gave. He gave me a chance and he really liked the product. And he told me, he said, okay, the speaker. And he said, go away and get it dressed up properly. And, And I think you have something. So there was some he gave me that said, you just need some.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Trevor was. Yeah, so he was early money on Orpheus. So that was. That was,
>> Brad Serhan: He wasn’t the first shop he. He was closed. He didn’t actually. I think he either closed the shop or he was working for someone. I can’t remember.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Brad Serhan: But effectively, he gave me the wind in the sail. All these fucking metaphors. Nautical metaphor. so he gave me the wind, the sail to keep pushing. And then. But I still doing the trading post stuff.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Brad Serhan: And. And basically the other Trevor I mentioned lived in Lillyfield, not far from me. And Trevor had been in audio a little bit, as a sales rep. And he had a pair of those KEF the modern. Maybe He had a bandpass woofer, the KEF 104, it was called. And It was. It was a. Was a floor standing speaker. And He’s using a bandpass woofer. I can’t quite remember. But he was. He was looking at. No, he’s looking at buying those. Did he own a pair? But he got itchy feet and he heard. He came over to my place because he was literally sort of five minutes drive away and heard the Dolomites screw in front panel. And And he really liked them. So I took them over to his place in 1985, I think. And he purchased a pair.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Wow.
>> Brad Serhan: He still has them today.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Wow.
>> Brad Serhan: Is that wrong? Yeah.
>> Andrew Hutchison: They’re a collectible.
>> Brad Serhan: But he was the guy that he was taking me around. He started He started the process of saying, brad, I’d like to help you get some HiFi stores.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
>> Brad Serhan: And what he did was he. He managed to get me Sturman’s audio in Sturman electronics as it was then in Woollongong in 1990.
>> Brad Serhan: And they have been our. Along with Len Wallis audio. our best store in terms of
Continuous support thanks to Trevor Wilson and Matthew Bond from Tara Labs
>> Andrew Hutchison: Continuous support.
>> Brad Serhan: Amazing character.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
>> Brad Serhan: Continued support thanks to Trevor Wilson. So it’s it when you’re. When you’re doing it the way and you’ve done it yourself with your speakers when you’re doing it at That we’re basically. You’re flogging stuff through trading posts. You build relationships with people. Like they’re going on a journey with you. And you’re hate the word journey, but you start to sort of become in a sense, friends because you’re sort of working with them to get the system right. I’d sometimes help them get equipment or whatever and help this. So that those little pivotal moments sort of kept me going. Getting sales through trading posts just long enough. I managed to sort of sort of hop along or crawl along, get. Making some money out of that. And then finally got into my first retail that I think was music by design. Matthew Bond from Tara Labs. Tara labs speaker cables. He.
>> Andrew Hutchison: He.
>> Brad Serhan: Prior to starting Tara Labs, had a shop in Bondo Junction. And He. He listened to my speakers and took them on. And then Len Wallace then also took them on in 87.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Okay. Yeah.
>> Brad Serhan: Yep. And that was thanks to Ralph Waters from Richter right. Now. Ralph waters from Richter loudspeakers or Richter acoustics. He and I got to know each other and we’d have muck around design days.
>> Andrew Hutchison: muck around design days. How does that work?
>> Brad Serhan: Yeah.
>> Andrew Hutchison: What happened there? Well, obviously beer was drunk or something.
>> Brad Serhan: Well, I’m not a drinker, but he would.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Not that I know Ralph well, but would he have a beer or would he have something else? I don’t know.
>> Brad Serhan: He might have it.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Beer or whatever.
>> Brad Serhan: Something that he found in the, in the bushland. no, no, he would have a beer and I’d have a coffee and, and we’d. We either fall about laughing at our attempts to get something right. I mean, it was just sort of, what we’re doing is R and D, I suppose. but he’s a very, urbane, you know, he’s a character, so.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, I presume he certainly was,
>> Brad Serhan: Always character and, and he’s a dear mate, even though I haven’t spoken for a while, but he’s a dear mate. And we supported each other because we’re both on a quest to try and establish our footprint, our sonic footprint in stores. And, so he was at a different price point to me. He was a lower price at that stage. And, so if he went to a store and didn’t break through, he would say, hey, Brad, visit these guys. I think they’re after more expensive speaker, something like that. And he went to lens and then said, have a crack at Len. I think you should go there. So I went there and managed to get the Dolomites and minotaurs in there through Doug, the wonderful Doug Isaacs, who got them. And then Len and Nigel. and then it started to fall from there, but. And then Ralph Waters, he ended up getting into Richter, into Len Wallace audio, and they’re still there now. And, you know, Ralph did really well. In fact, Ralph was a mover and shaker, but that’s another story. He was. He was a great promoter. Ralph.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, I’ve got it. I’ve got a notation here to bring Ralph up in a future, in a future recording, a future podcast, as I believe the kiddies are calling it today.
>> Brad Serhan: podcast. Yep. Or potties. and Ralph, I think would be. I think we should. Yeah, we should chase Ralph up because he tells a great story. Great raconteur, Ralphie.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes. That would be, That would be good. And I think audience would, be very. I mean, there’s a lot of love still for Richter. I mean it’s There’s a lot of love for all of you still. It’s just the difference is that Richter’s still on the floor. Even though it’s not the kind. It’s not really the same product in any way that it was because I.
>> Brad Serhan: Mean no, it’s it’s it’s it’s become.
>> Andrew Hutchison: It’s had to move times. The reality. Yes. And because it’s still a very sharply priced, very good value for money product.
>> Brad Serhan: Incredible.
>> Andrew Hutchison: You can’t do that with making while making cabinets in the outer suburbs of Sydney.
Ralph Waters: Richter’s product is more sharply priced than ours
So
>> Brad Serhan: No, no, that’s right. And then Martin Gosnell, Doc Martin, you m know he, he is a very, very bright, engaging fella. And Brian of course is a champ. And he owns Richter brand. And so you. It’s still got the spirit of the original fist.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Oh, absolutely. They’re pros. And It’s. It is a. In fact it shows. I’ve been next door to them a couple of times, which is really annoying because obviously their product is much More sharply priced than ours. So Yeah it’s You know, clearly ours performs, you know, at a higher level. But The reality is they both sound great and
>> Brad Serhan: Yeah.
>> Andrew Hutchison: And yet theirs is, you know, it’s exceptionally sharply priced and great value. But I had little to do with Ralph back in the day. But he did visit me once at my store.
>> Brad Serhan: Oh, did he?
>> Andrew Hutchison: And he. It was, it was kind Of hilarious. And he just sort of meandered in, I believe either in either in thongs or bare feet. And said, oh, you want to. I’m Ralph Waters. Would you like. Didn’t have that accent. I can’t actually quite think how he sounded. But
>> Brad Serhan: May I mimic him?
>> Andrew Hutchison: Please do.
>> Brad Serhan: Well, temp, it’s been a while. And goes, hey, Brad. Yeah. Hey, Brad, could you What are you doing next week? Would you like to come down and come down and do some design stuff? And he used to cock his eyes just because we did a lot of. I’ve stopped. Keep going, Andrew.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Well, that was now that you’ve done your very good impression, I think quite accurate because certainly bringing back memories of that moment where he did come in very casual and asked whether I’d like to have a listen. I said yeah, absolutely. Because you know, yeah, I mean I’ve got, I’ve got Brad Serhan stuff here. But you know, he’s like, yeah, that’s no fucking good. And, he’s a knob. I think that’s the exact words he used. He’s a knob.
>> Brad Serhan: Audio knob.
>> Andrew Hutchison: He’s up himself. So, yeah, so he brings. And they sounded great. And of course it was more. It was a different product to yours. It was not a lot cheaper, but the floor standers was what he. There was a couple of different floor standers and, Maybe a medium and a larger one and. Or a small and a medium, I don’t know. But they sounded, they sounded good. And I had all sorts of things there that were pretty decent and they, compared very favorably. Very easy to listen to, very. No, no obvious engineering flaws whatsoever. And, a very good, well rounded product. And, we did sell a bit then, and then in later years sold quite a lot more, but under, you know, following ownership of which that business has had I think maybe four or five owners over the years. And, Yeah, and actually most of them have carried the baton on pretty successfully. Yeah.
>> Brad Serhan: Bright.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Brian.
>> Brad Serhan:
John Cornell.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
>> Brad Serhan: And
>> Brad Serhan: But what was the other fellow’s name prior that, Oh God. Ken Dwyer.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Ken, yes. Ken Dwyer had a job. John Faye John Faye.
>> Brad Serhan: And again, it was Doc Martin, or I like to call him doctor Martin.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Oh, that’s right. That’s where he started.
>> Brad Serhan: Doctor. Physics is Martin.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Yes. Yes.
>> Brad Serhan: Yeah.
So there was a theme from Martin continuing the design. But look, the key, the thing about Ralph is that you have to say
So there was a theme from Martin continuing the design. hand. The baton was sonic. Baton was handed onto him. And But look, the key, the thing about Ralph is that you have to say they had sort of the v word, vigor, vim, verve, though. It sort of, sort of, in a sense, a little like Ralph’s personality. Yeah. Cheeky.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Look, they just. They’re just good speakers. I mean, they were that. Yeah, but they were. They, which. They were charmers and they. They made music and,
>> Brad Serhan: Yeah, that’s.
>> Andrew Hutchison: They made music and as did yours. Absolutely. But in a probably slightly more revealing, kind of way, I would say, but yeah, yeah.
Woody Richter: Some people prefer one thing and others prefer another
>> Brad Serhan: And that’s, that gets down to my old theme about audio Monet. Audio Monet is in, as in when I went to the, excuse my french, the Musee D’orsay.
>> Andrew Hutchison: yeah, okay.
>> Brad Serhan: I haven’t really. Anyway, so the went, when I was in Paris, finally got over to Paris with the family and I can remember. Remember looking at the Monet, the impressions in and seeing Monet’s paintings for the first time was gobsmacked at the way the natural light popped into the building and the way it hit that. Hit that, The oil brushstroke. Painting. And the way it hit, it just dispersed. It would. And it went beyond the picture frame. It almost felt like the, the pond and the, and the lilies and the, and the willow tree or whatever it was, actually went beyond the frame. And I always felt that. But you could have someone next to you, prefer the manet rather than the Monet. And it’s just a, it’s. I think what, what I’m trying to say is, it’s. In fact, you can cut this out if you want. What I’m attempting to say is nothing.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Nothing’s to be cut out. Keep going.
>> Brad Serhan: Okay.
>> Andrew Hutchison: It’s impossible. I don’t have the technology.
>> Brad Serhan: I’m walking the plank on this. All I’m trying to say is that there, all we can do is, Woody, our people, we’re trying to recreate from amplifier or speaker designer point of view, whatever it is, we’re trying to trick the listener. We’re sonic illusions. We try to trick the listener into thinking there’s something live in the room or, a spooky presence.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Absolutely.
>> Brad Serhan: A poltergeist, if you like, of what was recorded in the past. And it’s an interpretation. So Richter might have it have a certain interpretation. I had a certain interpretation, and you have a certain interpretation, and, but one person might prefer the manet. I can’t remember any other impressions. That’s our word. First. I am in it, but, or Monet.
>> Andrew Hutchison: And, Oh, there’s another one on the tip of my tongue. I have a computer in front of me. You’d think I could press the keys, but, Keep going.
>> Brad Serhan: But my poorly expressed point is that, all we’re trying to do is trick the listing into thinking that that’s the sound that they remember when they’ve been to a concert or, a live brass band or whatever, and it’s just interpretation. So Ralph’s interpretation was just as valid as mine or as yours. And, and it’s just whether people switch on to one or the other,
>> Andrew Hutchison: I don’t know why I spoke. M well, it’s, it’s, it’s impression impressionists, or it’s, it’s wine, or it’s, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s any experience that some people, you know, cars, people prefer the way one drives to another. you know, it’s, it’s humans, and, some prefer one thing and some prefer another. I’ve been told that some people prefer giant dodge ram trucks, for whatever reason, to get around in. And, others prefer you know, you know, other things, I’ll just leave it at that. So, you know,
>> Brad Serhan: Sorry that. I apologize for that. So, I mean, there is.
>> Andrew Hutchison: There is a taste aspect to it but, I think clearly yourself and Ralph got on because you were in fact not competing at all in you both at different price points, different shape speakers, but also a different take on, The performance. The way they reproduce the performance.
>> Brad Serhan: Yeah. Ah. Slightly different take. but it sort of worked for us, for both of us with a lot of shops because it wasn’t slightly different and different price point when in fact we used to go up. We used to go to, say, park beach, HiFi and a few other stores. we travelled together to sort of cut the costs and cut the cost.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Double the, penetration. I mean, basically one of you would obviously hold the owner of the store down. The other one locked the door. But, Then hang on, you’d be locking yourself in. Oh, I don’t know. It doesn’t work. Customers, you can lock in. But, yeah, we’re going to take a quick break and, we’ll be right back.
Dellichord loudspeakers designed and manufactured in Australia, in fact
Dellichord loudspeakers designed and manufactured in Australia, in fact, manufactured in their own facility in Brisbane. Three different models, three different flavours and all built up to a standard. Nothing down to a price. On demonstration now in HiFi, dealers across the country and available also direct. Have a look@Dellichord.com.
>> Brad Serhan: Marvellous stuff and Marvellous stuff And welcome back to the MCG. Yes, indeed. Marva staff Australia, two for 22. And there’s no doubt in my mind we’re in a bit of trouble, but with the sort of buccaneering cavalier, Andrew Hutchinson, that the.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Did you,
>> Brad Serhan: Will be fine. Mother stuff and fuck me. Oh, shoot. I didn’t mean to swear. And Bill Lawry’s, of course, got the effing pigeons in here and they’ve just shadowed the beige and the. And the cream sports kit that I like to don when I’m in the central commentary position. Can bill. Anyway, enough of me being a fuck with. Cut that shit out. Sorry.
>> Brad Serhan: Go ahead.
Andrew: The podcast is Not An Audiophile – The Podcast. The gist of it being that the people are not audiophiles
Welcome back.
>> Andrew Hutchison: We. We were, we were, We’d mentioned Richter and I will mention now that we will discuss that in a future episode as, And. Yeah, and if you can, If you can, talk to Ralph at some point, maybe once, Once you can play him an episode and let him understand what’s, going on, he might be interested. So, we’ll just. I think he would basically do it do a general wrap up. So I guess this is going to be episode one of the Not An Audiophile – The Podcast. The gist of it being that the people on it are not audiophiles. Not that we got it in for audiophiles. But to me it’s an unfortunate term. But it’s It seems to be quite popular these days. Everyone. Everyone’s an audiophile. But anyhow, We’re not. I mean, well we’re not in the sense that the people, ourselves and other people that will be interviewed On the podcast are Not audiophiles. They’re audio professionals. Which. Yeah, kind of makes a change from. From The other people that do audio related podcasts. I guess we have a different perspective. They’re not saying that’s better.
>> Brad Serhan: Oh no. I would never say that.
>> Andrew Hutchison: It’s. It’s different. And it comes from being. I guess It comes from perhaps trying to make a living out of creating, repairing, designing, manufacturing, selling.
>> Brad Serhan: Yeah.
>> Andrew Hutchison: HiFi equipment.
>> Brad Serhan: Yeah. That. It’s from that perspective if you like. And And where would we be without audiophiles?
>> Andrew Hutchison: Life would clearly be simpler. But
>> Brad Serhan: We can’t say that. Maybe. No. Oh, Andrew. Curb and gutter. Curb and gutter. No. No. In a sense we’re coming from it. I suppose. I suppose audiophiles are passionate about music. And there’s some that are passionate about music and the equipment and the tweaking and the challenge of improving the system. And that’s all part of the buddy fun we love.
>> Andrew Hutchison: The reality is that I mean we clearly both love the technology and the equipment, the electronics, the engineering, what have you. That’s absolutely part of it. But then I think for both of us the music is Probably what got us here in the first place. Or certainly At least half of it, if not more. Well look, I think we’ll call it quits at that. We’ll be back. We’ve got more of the Brad Orpheus story. There’s obviously other things to talk about. There’s many other people both of us know that will be interviewed in due course. So I would say to those that have made it this far that you can
Look forward to more of the same, if not a little bit better structured
Look forward to more of the same, if not a little bit better structured and organised. Perhaps. But Yeah, but Anyhow, I’ve enjoyed it. I hope you have, Brad. Thank you for joining me. And We’ll be back very soon.
>> Brad Serhan: Yeah. Marvellous stuff. And Andrew, it’s been a joy to ride side saddle with you. If you like. anyway.
>> Andrew Hutchison: Right, of course.
>> Brad Serhan: Giddy up.
>> Andrew Hutchison: All right, look, look forward to next time. Talk to you next time. Thank you.
>> Brad Serhan: Cheers, mate. Thanks, guys.
TRANSCRIPT
SEASON 1 – EPISODE 004 – Brad Serhan & Orpheus Part 2 with Kiat Low in the 90s & 2000s
Brad Serhan is a renowned loudspeaker designer from Australia
Andrew Hutchison: That expression, t. Yes, t or small parameters. Yeah, indeed. Yeah. And you might be able to throw some light on how not so much how those parameters came about, but the fact that you more or less knew the guy because you’re so old. Back again for another installment of not an audiophile today, we speak to Brad Serhan again, renowned loudspeaker designer, worked around the world, admittedly mostly in Australia, but he has done designs that have been sold, everywhere. today is episode four. We’re going to speak to him again about the period of his earlier brand, Orpheus and how it’s progressed to ultimately, conjoin with Maurice Swift and become Serhan and swift. Without any further ado, Brad Serhan. Brad Serhan is on the line for round number two of the history of Orpheus.
Professor Small was famous for his work on Thiele small parameters
And bar, one question that I want to kick off with, this segment hour is really about the nineties and entering into the new millennia. Exciting stuff. And it is, but I want, but I want to, I wanted just to get you warmed up and primed and in the mood for discussing all those wonderful stories from the old days. yes, it, it, it occurs to me that you while at uni, were in the presence on a number of occasions of a famous loudspeaker guru in the form of Mister Small.
Brad Serhan: Professor.
Andrew Hutchison: Professor Small.
Brad Serhan: Doctor, I think that might be, I think professor.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, I’d say surely professor, I would have thought, yeah. yes, you can tell how much research I’ve done. I mean, the guy, the guy and his friend are well known by the expression t’s parameters.
Brad Serhan: Tsmol parameters.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, indeed. Yeah. And you might be able to throw some light on how not so much how those parameters came about, but the fact that you more or less.
Brad Serhan: Knew the guy harking back to, I think this is going right back to probably 1979, though I might have touched on it in the last podcast. I was desperate to gather Ghana, information on Thiele small parameters. I sort of just started to read about that sort of stuff then when I was at uni. And then I knew that small, was there, professor Small was there at the university and on a higher floor, much higher floor.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Brad Serhan: Yeah, I had, I had, my neck was craned from looking up and saw. But anyway, I went to the electrical engineering part of the building and someone put me in contact with him. I discovered that he was there, still lecturing, and I knew of him already from my reading. So I thought, shit, I better get somehow get to meet him and see if he’d, actually talk to me.
Andrew Hutchison: So, at that stage he wasn’t really. I mean it’s a. I mean he, I was going to say he wasn’t a household name. He wasn’t, he was never a household name. What I meant to say was he, was perhaps not as universally well known at that stage because the papers and the concept was just a happening thing or been around for a few years, I guess, but, all. Were you somewhat starstruck is where I’m going.
Brad Serhan: yes, because one, he knew infinitely more than me. Number two, I knew of his, of his notoriety with regards to Thiele small parameters and the papers that he had done following up from Neville Thieles because I’d read those papers and once I discovered that he was based in Sydney, at Sydney University, I thought, bucket this, I’m going to see if he’ll have a chat with me about a couple of things. And I think I went up with some lame idea of chatting to him about RG and taking that into account. When you’re calculating the qts of a driver and trying to tune the base, a base reflex system, well, you had.
Andrew Hutchison: To have a reason, something else.
Brad Serhan: And also his port. Port correction or I can’t remember. So. But he seemed very, very nice fella and he gave me, he wrote this stuff, the formulas down for me.
00:05:00
Brad Serhan: and then it was just making that connection, I suppose. And it did help me, but I didn’t pester him after that.
Andrew Hutchison: Did he, write the formulas down off the top of his head in front of you on a piece of paper? Wow.
Brad Serhan: Yes. Okay.
Andrew Hutchison: All right. Yeah, yeah. His brain was clearly dramatically more agile than mine now is. But what, what age was he, at that stage do you think?
Andrew Hutchison: He would have appeared old to you as you were twelve years of age? But what? you seem like a 50 year old or younger.
Brad Serhan: I would say. What’s funny you should say that. my memory was he’s, I would, I would think he would have been about 40.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Brad Serhan: Okay, I guess about. Look, I was what, 23?
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Brad Serhan: At the time. So, I’m trying to look it up on Google now as we speak, but, I haven’t been adroit enough to, discern, that.
Andrew Hutchison: Anyway, he appeared in the distant future. There will be a researcher sitting beside us who will, look things like that up.
Brad Serhan: Yeah, but look he. I’m there. I hope he’s alive. Anyway, he went on to kef, I’m pretty sure it left kind of rings of Oakland, Sydney union. Then he went on to kef and did research there.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep.
Andrew Hutchison: Where he, taught Andrew Jones everything he knows today.
Brad Serhan: Very possibly, yeah. I’m not sure about that.
Andrew Hutchison: Not sure. I think Andrew Jones from his stories was working under someone else. But, Yeah, he might. Dunno. but anyhow. Okay, so I guess it’s an interesting connection that he was.
Brad Serhan: Yes.
Andrew Hutchison: As you remind me, though, he’s not. He wasn’t really. Well, he was australian in the sense that many Australians are Australians, but they aren’t necessarily. They weren’t necessarily born here, but we still regard them, quite correctly as Australians. But, he was, possibly canadian. You, of canadian heritage.
Brad Serhan: That’s my memory, that he would have been canadian or american. But I. Look, I’ll.
Andrew Hutchison: That’s really, really annoying, isn’t it? You know, you really want him to be Australia.
Brad Serhan: Well, what he did is he, he landed in Australia.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Len Wallace says Neville Thiel helped launch his loudspeaker business in Australia
Brad Serhan: Lobbed into Australia and followed up with Neville Thiele’s fine work.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Brad Serhan: and, and Thiele released his stuff, I think around 61, 62. And he, he isn’t. He was an Australian. So you nominally australian, you know.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Brad Serhan: yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: I mean, look, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t really matter. We’ll regard him as australian in the same way as Russell Crowe and you know, you know, Sam Neil are all Australians.
Brad Serhan: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. Yeah. Especially if they do do really good things. so he was a pip, like, I suppose that was that, brush, with someone who knew, so much. And he was generous with his time. So I really appreciated that. And it was just that, launching point, I suppose, 1980, when I started to sign my first speaker, which I spoke about last, time we.
Andrew Hutchison: I would imagine it would have spurred you on like, you know, from the point of view that, such a gentleman would at least not, put you off the industry, so to speak.
Brad Serhan: No, that’s right.
Andrew Hutchison: If he was some kind of Marco Pierre White character, he was sort of, you know, pointing and spitting. He might have Look, go away, child. Come back in ten years time when you know something kind of thing. yeah. Might have. May have made you think differently about, this, otherwise quite fun industry to be involved with.
Brad Serhan: So.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, jumping completely sideways. so the decade rolls on. and at the end of that decade, you’ve built a loudspeaker business. You’re, turning quite reasonable numbers. The product is now in dealers around the country.
Andrew Hutchison: Or. Yeah, pretty much. Maybe 91, 92 or something. You sort of.
Brad Serhan: Yeah. So if we step back across the 1990 threshold, it was sort of 87. I can’t remember whether we discussed this in the last episode. Ah. Episode, Episode. Yeah, it’ll do. It was 87. I got the Orpheus speakers into my first retailers and I think I touched on that with the last episode. So. Len Wallace. Music. by design and, you know, six. Six shops in. Six shops in Sydney, which you couldn’t. It’s amazing.
Andrew Hutchison: It’s utterly amazing, isn’t it?
Brad Serhan: It is amazing because you could not know. No dealer now would sort of put up with. And fair enough, you don’t want to have three or four dealers carry a product because they’d be too much. You know, dealers want to be able to be profitable, which is
00:10:00
Brad Serhan: fair enough.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, I don’t want too much, you know, arguing with the opposition, I suppose, over, you know, The same product. But the, price was. You know. But the, I mean, you wouldn’t get. I doubt there are six dealers in Sydney today selling BMW. So that, That was quite a, breakthrough, really.
Brad Serhan: Well, it’s not me beating my chest about how many dealers it got. Well, maybe it is, But it was more the fact that when you think about that in 19. 8887-8089 People seem to be sticking to their local areas generally. Sure. They might have driven around to do that. It was perfectly acceptable, apparently for. For Orpheus or, Richter, You know, the other brands to be out there in so many shops.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Brad Serhan: Which is surprising. That wouldn’t happen now.
Andrew Hutchison: No, it wouldn’t. And. But I think people. Yeah.
Sam says ABC show may have helped boost sales of Australian loudspeakers
Certainly more mobile and of course, ultimately, or infinitely more mobile with, You know, scouring the Internet. So,
Brad Serhan: Yeah, absolutely.
Andrew Hutchison: So,
Brad Serhan: So the point of me bringing that up is that that sort of. As I went from sort of 88, 99 into 90, we’d start to consolidate dealers. And it was interesting that australian dealers suddenly, the market turned. There was a sort of sense that it was okay to buy australian, that we. There are other australian brands out there as well. So. Richter, obviously, Colin, Whatmough’s. What my loudspeakers who’d been going was going longer than me. had been going longer than me. Gotta get my grammar right. Duntech was starting to really hit its straps.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, actually, there’s a thing, isn’t there because the infamous or famous not really infamous episode of towards 2000 where the Duntechs, the big, oh yes, the big suckers were featured. for those not familiar with the show it was a, well I think at some point it was an ABC tv show which back in the days when there was a handful of channels and so yeah, a national audience saw an australian made pair of loudspeakers presented as being exceptional. And my memory is that they recorded a performance live and then played it back for the, for the, towards 2000 presenters or the audience to try to decide you know, which, you know, to hear the difference or be deceived as to what was live or recorded music which of course even, even then I chuckled that. But I mean fantastic exposure for australian made loudspeakers there on that night, you know and I don’t know what year that was but maybe that played a role because that was, that was actually probably, I’m gonna say that was mid to late eighties actually. Was it or was it late late eighties do you think? Was it the.
Brad Serhan: I would have thought it was late eighties but yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay so, so it may have played some role in that that, that change where people regarded you know, an australian designer manufactured product as, as a suitable thing to spend their money on.
Brad Serhan: Yeah, it, it was the sort of thing that opened the door in a sense.
Andrew Hutchison: Mmm.
Brad Serhan: Okay I’m just typing in now just to confirm that just to get a sense of us having some And It looks like I’m just trying to fill the experts apparently.
Andrew Hutchison: And of course there’s no date it filled the experts. Yeah. Okay, well that that was, it was a great story and it was exposure that you know, money could buy Sam.
Brad Serhan: Sad. Sadly they haven’t come up with a bloody date here. I’m just, buddy, I’m just Poor at scrolling, through.
Andrew Hutchison: But anyway I can’t search the Internet and talk at the same time.
Brad Serhan: Well I’ve just shown that I can’t either. So let’s just cut this, cut this section out. My apologies for that.
Andrew Hutchison: Well I think the audience is entirely capable of pressing a few keys and showing us up as being far more expert at finding this information out. But my childhood memory is, you know, it’s, I’m going to say mid to late and eighties this time.
Brad Serhan: This time around. I said to you earlier before we press record that I was going to be more lucid visa vis information and I have now found that miserably.
Paul Keating said Australia was buying too much imported stuff in 1986
So let’s take two. Let’s just talk in general terms. What happened was Paul Keating made a statement back in 1986, remember, rightly, about Australia becoming a banana republic because we were buying too much imported stuff.
Andrew Hutchison: Indeed.
Brad Serhan: Good on you, Paul. That helped because suddenly there was a little bit
00:15:00
Brad Serhan: of a. Ah, let’s. Let’s look at australian made stuff. This is so the timing of Ralph Waters and myself going out and touting the loudspeakers around. And no doubt Colin Whatmough and other people and Duntech. Suddenly there was a bit of interest from, local australian dealers. So. And the fact that they were open minded and they gave us a. It gave a few of us a crack. Fantastic. So. And then we started to establish a bit of a footprint, if you like, a sonic footprint. And, it was then a case that was okay to be australian and australian made, Australia designed or whatever. So that got us to 1990. We were starting to establish that little bit of, territory, if you like, in terms of shops that had our speakers not just in Sydney, but around the, new South Wales country. And then Queensland and Victoria. which. Which I think we got up to. now this is going. I’m going to go back to Walter Brennan, the great old guy who has played, a role in the real McCoys. And another cowboy tv show. And he’s an old guy and he used to go, no Bragg, just fact. I don’t know why I remember that rubbish. But anyway. Well, don’t break. Just back. Anyway, we had 26 or 1227 stores.
Andrew Hutchison: Wow.
Brad Serhan: Now that’s. That’s not a bragging. That is just how the hell there were that many shops back then.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, you know, that many.
Brad Serhan: It would be stupid enough or it was great enough to take on our product.
Andrew Hutchison: And it was a different time.
Brad Serhan: It was a different time. So anyway,
Andrew Hutchison: Well, on can I cut in? And just. Just for the audience, say that my knowledge of the late eighties, early nineties is that there was probably 100 to 130 or maybe even as many as 150 somewhat specialist HiFi stores across the country. And now this. 20. What’d you just say? 26 or 28? You got up to 20. How many?
Brad Serhan: I think if I. I think it was about, not about. I think it’s 27.
Andrew Hutchison: 27. So there’s hardly any more than 27 specialist HiFi stores in the country now. Certainly up and down the east coast. That’s about, Yeah, well, there’s there’s there’s a. There’s a touch over 30. I guess. But you know and then plus a handful you know through Sa and wa. I’m not even sure there is a specialist HiFi store in Darwin anymore. And You know that’s kind of Yeah. Weird.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah there was one in every regional town. If not two or three. Yes. And
Andrew says he started making cabinets by himself in 1993
Brad Serhan: Now what we found with that though Andrew was of course that You know Kiat joined Kiet. Joined me around 1993 I think, or 92. So
Andrew Hutchison: A pivotal moment. So we’ll just. Just hold that thought. So. So 93. Kietlo became somehow, you know was giving you a hand I guess. But because this is. This is the decade we were meant to be talking about, I suppose.
Brad Serhan: Yeah. And that’s what I was building into that we actually started. I started by myself. I was doing this by myself up until Tony Wong and Kiat low joined forces.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Brad Serhan: with me. So the upshot why I’m telling you this, the upshot is that there were the long road trips up to various stores around the place and securing the dealers.
Brad Serhan: And it started to roll forward at a reasonable rate. We started to get some reasonable press from HiFi magazine reviews. But I was probably starting to struggle being able to supply. Not probably.
Andrew Hutchison: I was struggling to survive as a one man show. I mean you. I mean can you. Do you want to talk about what. How many. How many what volume you were trying to create basically by yourself? Or is that, you know, secret information? But I mean I. The numbers will be quite high compared with what we all do as smaller manufacturers today. I mean I’ve seen photos out at the cabinet factory that you’re involved with where there was a lot of speakers being assembled. Although you’re. That might have been all Ralph’s. I don’t know. I mean. I mean do we talk about.
Brad Serhan: No, probably what. To be fair, probably quite a few of those enclosures or cabinets with Ralph’s.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Brad Serhan: But so. So. So I. What effectively, when I was a one person show I had a cabinet maker, of course. So it wasn’t just one. So I had a cabinet maker and a couple of great cabinet makers. one, one italian fellow that was in Summer Hill. Great guy.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep.
Brad Serhan: did beautiful work. And then Terry, who I
00:20:00
Brad Serhan: met through the pyramid HiFi people, Terry is a fireman that also worked all these days off with making. Making cabinets and did a very bloody good job as well. And then sort of. So I would do assemble the crossovers and do a lot of the assembly out at the cabinet makers to make it easier to do a production run.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Brad Serhan: And then I think from memory, I’m not sure whether Kiat had joined. I think Kiat and Tony had joined me 93. And I think we then went across to JJ cabinets. Graham from JJ cabinets. So. And that. That worked nicely because, Again, I was able to take the crossovers down to Graham’s and just have an assembly line approach to things.
Andrew Hutchison: Which is kind of the thing I’ve seen the photos of, I think. Where you’ve got lots.
Brad Serhan: Yeah, yeah, that’s right.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. I mean it looked like.
Brad Serhan: So to answer your question, big fella. Yeah, answer your question. In terms of turnover, I had little red book, little red and black book and it’s somewhere here. I honestly can’t quite remember how many.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, it doesn’t.
Brad Serhan: It was 20. You could. It got up, it got going. It actually got going for the Dolomites, the Minotaurs, the Apollos, which I was running back then. And then it got going nicely. Then we introduced a model which was below 1000, which is called the metaphor, which is a twin four. A twin four design. And that was
Manufactured by Colin. Colin’s a great guy. And we got on really well
Manufactured by Colin. Mort, I think was Morton acoustics. Colin’s a great guy. He generously said, brenda, I’ll give you good paying terms. And we got on really well. And so he made a hundred cabinets for me.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Brad Serhan: But he did some prototype or pre production enclosures. So I went out with that design and touted them around the stores and pre sold them.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Okay.
Brad Serhan: So suddenly I. Let’s say, Of the hundred made, I probably pre sold 55 or 60 to stores because they’re below the. That was when we’re around that time of 25 to 27. 27 stores. And it meant that I knew that I could afford to pay Colin.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Brad Serhan: And. And they. They. That’s when I started to turn over. I had had the more expensive models. The more. You know. I don’t. Yeah. Bugger. We’ll use the more audiophile high performance speakers. The Minotaur, the Dalmatia Polo.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Brad Serhan: Ah, models.
Andrew says people in HiFi retailing hated audiophiles when he was 16
Andrew Hutchison: And you can use the word audiophile.
Brad Serhan: What’s it not an audiophile. Well, is it okay to.
Andrew Hutchison: I don’t know what the rules are. I haven’t quite made them up yet. But, I mean, I guess really the gist of the. Not an audiophile is that we’re. We’re probably not audiophiles. We’re more, you know, designers, manufacturers, figure operas, installers. What have you? But,
Brad Serhan: Do you want to appeal to audiophiles and music lovers?
Andrew Hutchison: Absolutely. Well, yeah, I mean, I just. I just love the term music lover. Equipment love or whatever. I just. The not spending minutes on it. But the audiophile, it’s just the word. Back as a child, I was. I was kind of, see, I started in HiFi retailing when I was 16 and the people that I worked with kind of hated audiophiles. Right. I mean, the word wasn’t really around then, but they. They.
Brad Serhan: Pejorative. I can’t. It’s a majority.
Andrew Hutchison: They sort of may have. There was a. There was only. It. Look, it was in an aboriginal town, but there was. It was still, because there was HiFi dealers everywhere. There was lots of business being done and there was. Yeah, and there was, The point is that there was a few. There was a few hobbyist type customers and there were two kinds. There were two kinds of them. They were the ones that bought things and the ones that never did. And the gag really was that, how many times can I speak to this guy and never sell them anything? And it wasn’t that they were buying it somewhere else. There was nowhere else to buy it without driving for hundreds of kilometers. But, and there was not a mail order, as we called it back then, wasn’t really a big thing. But, So there was this. You were sort of, you know how you absorb things as a teenager. I guess I was. My head was messed with as far as the more, extreme end of the, hobbyist sector of customers, when you consider that 99% of the people we dealt with came in, listened to stuff said. That sounds fantastic. Can I buy it? Yes. Done.
Brad Serhan: Good. Whereas what you maybe the word buff. I mean, buff me, baby. I mean, but buff, audio buff. Oh, yes. I haven’t heard the word no buffs.
Andrew Hutchison: Not.
Brad Serhan: I like a bit of buff.
Andrew Hutchison: Buff.
Brad Serhan: You know what I mean? I’ll be buff.
Andrew Hutchison: Buff’s good.
Brad Serhan: You know, stuff like that.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Brad Serhan: Oh, what are you? I’m an audio buff. See, that was often. That was Bob.
Andrew Hutchison: well, you’re more the
00:25:00
Andrew Hutchison: boffin and.
Brad Serhan: They are the buff, I think.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, you’re more the boffin. and they’re more the buff, are they? The boffin is more the engineer and the boffin.
Brad Serhan: And the buff is more the enthusiast engineers buying. But I take your point, Andrew.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Brad Serhan: I just like the idea of maybe buff. it has got you feel polished and, you know, when you’ve been buffed, it’s either you’ve been doing a lot of workout stuff and getting that six pack or he’s buffed. That’s a modern day pilot so he’s a bit buffed or she, buff. Yeah, buffless. But the other thing is buff in the old days is I can remember the old man would say, brad, duck, duck down the front yard and just give the old car a bit of a buff with the polish. would you just wash the car? Go and buff it if you would?
Audio sham. Well you know the english language is you know notoriously changing
Audio sham. What about audio shammy? I mean the firewood’s redundant nowadays but look, let’s not decry people who are audiophiles because they’re the same as that. They love their music and I love, you know, buffing around.
Andrew Hutchison: Well you know the english language is you know notoriously changing constantly and it is, it’s evolving sometimes m hard to cope with the change as an older person. You know there was a time when, when a Mickey mouse watch meant that it was shit and you know in, in a. Well that’s sorry. There was a time when when there was a time when something was Mickey Mouse meant that it was crap because it was a trinket that you’d got at Disneyland for a dollar.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: And then at least in this country at some point during my you know younger life it changed from being a piece of crap to something with that a whole lot of people would now describe as Mickey Mouse as in it’s fire today. This is astounding. This is the, this is the state of the Mickey Mouse art. So yeah so anyhow whatever so stuff changes but yeah yeah audio fault.
Brad Serhan: Remember audio?
Andrew Hutchison: But I was, I was, to finalize my point it was simply that I was, we had a bit of a snigger out the back at the people who talked a lot of crap and never bought anything and I guess yeah it stuck and yeah look I’ve spent a further lifetime in retail and it’s, I’m not as afflicted as I once was but anyhow it seemed like an okay.
Brad Serhan: Indeed but it goes back to the days and I appreciate your situation when you’re 16 1718 and people not buying and impressionable it reminds me in the last podcast when I’d have people when I was doing the trading post sell yes you’re providing a service and whether, albeit it could well have been a library service to listen to music just a bit of conversation and that’s what I suppose you’re going to have people who are going to do that and that must have happened in the HiFi shop since as well, that you see people kick a few audio tires and see what they can.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, I mean, and look, it’s entirely understandable. I mean, you know, I, you know, you kind of expect it. But as a car enthusiast, I don’t go around and hang around the Ferrari dealership. It’s sort of, you know. And the thing is, the joyous for them is they just kick you out. They go, mate, you’re in the wrong shop. You know, forwards up the road, just zip up there. You’ve got the wrong f. It’s. No, it’s Whereas, you know, you don’t get to be, you know, I’ve, you know, I’ve always been polite to all people. And there’ll be people listening, going, he wasn’t polite to me once. He was quite rude. But He said, he said that Well, we won’t go into the intricacies of it, but you know, anyhow, I think we went off at a bit of a tangent there.
Brad Serhan: No, my fault. I apologize.
Andrew Hutchison: We were, 27 stores, is where we were at. And Okay, so you said some audiophiles. Yeah. Audiophile products is where we were at. Yes.
Brad Serhan: Yes. So we had a high performance line.
Andrew Hutchison: I just used the word without being nasty about it.
Brad Serhan: No, you did. And that’s perfectly fine. Performance line.
Andrew Hutchison: I’m growing.
Brad Serhan: It didn’t matter. It’s a high performance line. Which helped, with the. Was the the icebreaker or whatever. for the For the metaphor to get out there, you know, dollar 700 or whatever it was. And that’s. That started to kick now, thanks to people like Colin Moore, that helped. And then Tony Wong, my dear friend Tony Wong, who used to sell my speakers at Milverson Sound, he was one of the six dealers.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Brad Serhan: Tony knew, a bloke by the name of Kiat low who we’ve mentioned before.
00:30:00
Brad Serhan: And Kett was interested in potentially joining forces with Tony. And Tony was going to put the, the surly tanto, as I like to call it, the hard word on me.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Brad Serhan: And I thought this, it was appealing because I thought, yeah, I’m starting to struggle, with getting the speakers out the door with the high performance line, if you like. And Kiat was going to bring hard work ethic in. And so as Tony. Tony was going to go out and help sell, and you know, go around the shops. And that started us off, In this three way partnership back in 93. I think it was. And that made a difference.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, no doubt.
Brad Serhan: Kiat was an architect originally. but was also doing a lot of advertising because he had a very, very modern apple computer back then. And was doing all sorts of, advertising for various, retailers. naphtha electronics and stuff like that. So he was drawing an income in to bolster the orpheus, income. So, it helped purchase drivers, etcetera. But also kept brought in. He had a high work ethic. One of those blokes that just. You pushed hard. I’m not saying I didn’t push hard. I was pushing hard. But he, he was, he came in with, that sort of let’s get this done. I’ll get that done. you do this. and it was. He was a good foil. Oh, yeah.
Kiat and I argued a bit occasionally, but not in a bad way
We argued a bit. And all the usual stuff that you do, but.
Andrew Hutchison: Sorry, you argued a bit occasionally.
Brad Serhan: like he was what? He was a funny bloke. Was. And someone say I was a funny bloke.
Andrew Hutchison: So before, before Smoko or did you just wait till lunchtime?
Brad Serhan: You’re teasing me out there.
Andrew Hutchison: You try to.
Brad Serhan: No, no. What would happen is Tony was. Here’s the story that I worked out. Kiat, I hope you don’t mind me saying this, Cobb. So he. We, drive down to Lugarno and he had the. He was renting premises down there near his house. So I moved out of my, my work premises, my house, and started working down there because we had three really good rooms we could work with. And I would come in, into the Lugarno workshop. And if I had a coffee in the morning, I worked out. I shouldn’t have a coffee in the morning, right. Because Kiat would be slightly agitated in the morning. And I used to get in at 930 or something like that. Or ten because I was used to designing and working at my own hours. So,
Andrew Hutchison: Sorry, you got in at 930 or ten?
Brad Serhan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I’d work back later anyway, you know. Anyway, he’d probably cut this bullshit out anyway. So you were working.
Brad Serhan: So what happened was that I worked out because I. If I had the caffeine that I could, I could, I was hypersensitive, him being slightly towy or doing stuff. And I thought, you know what? we’d argue over inane things, but not in a bad way. And I realized because we were side by side, you know, side saddle. I’d be working on the computer, blah, blah. M doing measurements and he’d be doing some other stuff. I worked out if I don’t have the coffee in the morning. I’m calmer.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Brad Serhan: And then, he was fine. I was fine. And then, I’d have my coffee at lunchtime and we were fine.
Andrew Hutchison: but so there was like a witching hour, sometime between when you rolled into work, apparently as early as 09:00. Hard to believe that happened once. And then. And then, And then. So sometime between that time and midday, there was, like, there was a delicate balance. And then after that everything was fine.
Brad Serhan: Yeah. Fucking earth. Well, certainly, this wasn’t every day, but I. He would do things loudly to sort of indicate he was doing work, that he would. Loudly. He’s doing, you know, moving stuff around. And I was thinking, no, don’t. you. You’re just trying to say to me that you’re working and I’m working at the computer on the speakers. And I thought I had. I hit the keyboard harder so you could hear.
Andrew Hutchison: The thing is, I mean, if you were at a. If you were at a computer working in the early to mid nineties, you were almost certainly working or maybe playing solitaire, you certainly weren’t surfing the Internet. So,
Brad Serhan: No, no.
Andrew Hutchison: That’s a great old expression, surfing the Internet. You know what I mean?
Brad Serhan: That’s right.
Andrew Hutchison: You weren’t. But I’m only bringing some facebooking or something.
Brad Serhan: Oh, stuff. There was no such
00:35:00
Brad Serhan: thing back then. And the point I’m making is that with any partnership or, you know, with Tony, Tony was out on the road. so Kiat and I just got. We got used to each other. And, but it was, occasionally there was a bit of Frisson, but I think it sort of made us closer because we’re still great mates now. And, we laugh at some of the, antics we got up to.
Andrew Hutchison: Like the, Well, there was that infamous story you once told me about the. That happened on the footpath or something out the front. But anyhow, that’s another story.
Brad Serhan: That’s another story. So we both survived. And the good news is Kenta. Yeah, yeah. Kiat and I then drove all the way north. I think we visited you. We did the big northern trek.
Andrew Hutchison: Did you go all the way to Cairns? I think.
Kiat: Cairns is 1700 kilometres north of Brisbane
Did you? Almost. No. Yeah, you did.
Brad Serhan: No, almost. We actually, we started our trek to Cairns and thought how much longer we got to go. And we looked each other. No way. It was hot and we looked each other. Let’s just fly up there. Kiatsid there is a classic story. I think it’s a classic story.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, just to give some, the listener a sense of scale. I always find it hilarious that, It’s about 950 or 1000 ks to Brisbane from Sydney. And then it’s You know, there’s hundred k steps up the coast to each town for a while. Yeah. But Cairns is still 1700 kilometres north of Brisbane. So,
Andrew Hutchison: It’s a big state. So,
Brad Serhan: It’s a very big state.
Andrew Hutchison: Although we think about it, you know, there’s a fair bit of country south of Sydney. So I suppose the new South Wales coastline is 1415 1600k. So,
Brad Serhan: Yeah, but anyhow, it’s a bit of. Anyway.
Andrew Hutchison: But yeah, you’re right. If you’re the wrong time of the year, you don’t want to go too far north.
Brad Serhan: No, but the interesting thing about that. So, Kiat, I’ll get back to that classic story about traveling north and doing all those demos to various dealers, having Tony and Kiat arrive. And it meant that we started to get, Had the ability to go out and tout for more business. Also, production levels went up and we were able to supply, dealers in Melbourne. We started. We broke through into Melbourne in 89, 90, Ah. Leading edge audio audio trends and eventually Tivoli. And it certainly started to get a roll on, which is fantastic, so.
Andrew Hutchison: Indeed. And it’s gonna.
Brad Serhan: No, go ahead.
Andrew Hutchison: No, you go ahead. But I should say we. We should have a quick break just for the purposes of making, Sure the recording is actually working. I mean, the numbers are changing, so I guess it’s working. But I. But, Let’s
I’m interested to know where Orpheus peaked in the nineties
Let’s finish that thought, which I’ve probably stopped you from. Probably, You probably don’t remember where you’re up to now. You’d broken into Melbourne and then.
Brad Serhan: Yeah, and then we. Yeah, but did you want to have a break?
Andrew Hutchison: Well, you could finish the point, which I shouldn’t have cut you off on, but.
Brad Serhan: This feels like a normal conversation. If you could remember what the recording button on.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, this is the point I’ve forgotten because, you know, it’s the good old days. What I want to do is I’ll have a break and then I want to come back and I want to fast forward through the nineties, to some degree, but picking out where. Where was the peak. I’m interested to know where things were powering, Because I feel like, You know, you developed the range of the new era of Orpheus to some degree. Must have started not long after what we’re speaking of now. And And I mean, the, you know, the business seemed to, The product was everywhere is what I’m trying to say. And there seemed to be broad acceptance at some point. I’m thinking mid to late nineties. But I mean, you know, anyhow, we’ll be back in literally no time at all.
Hi, Andrew, I run a business called HiFi and stereo
Hi, Andrew here. yeah, same Andrew as, just talking to the guest. I run a business called HiFi and stereo. In fact, I don’t really run it. Sharon, Hayden runs it. And you can speak to her whenever you want about getting your high quality HiFi equipment fixed. That’s right. We do a lot of technical work for various people on various types of things. But my area of expertise is high quality home, HiFi equipment and, you know, all of the stuff you would expect. Turntables, tape decks, amplifiers, dacs, loudspeakers, etcetera. if it’s home HiFi, then we can fix it for you. We’re based in Brisbane in Australia. So if you are in the US or Europe, we can’t help you. But anywhere in Australia, we can. We do have equipment shipped in from all over. So, if you would like a high quality repair done on a high quality piece of equipment, it is what we do. It’s like a little boutique of
00:40:00
HiFi repairs. So, get in touch further information at HiFi and stereo.com dot au. Thanks for listening.
Hey, folks, we’re back after a 30-second break
Hey, folks, we’re back. it was a long break, for us, but, in fact, probably only took 30 odd seconds for the listener. So, Brad, Brad Serhan, by the way, the, you know, the, the, take, to. What the fuck is the word for guy who started fucking Orpheus? Not the original. The founder. Creator.
Brad Serhan: The founder.
Andrew Hutchison: All right, take two. Hand clap.
We’re interviewing Brad Serhan from originally Orpheus loudspeakers
Hey, folks, we’re back. Not an audiophile podcast recorded, in the studios of HiFi and stereo in Brisbane, Australia. the studio being a desk with a very inexpensive recording device, parked nearby. We’re interviewing today Brad Serhan from originally Orpheus loudspeakers. And hi again. We. Hello, Brad. And we, as per episode one of this marvelous podcast, we’re, discussing, the travails of Orpheus loudspeakers and ultimately, moving on to, in the future, Sir Hannan Swift, which is Brad’s current, trading name for his excellent, mewtwo mu three. Or is it the fu three? No, it was gonna be the f you two, wasn’t it?
Brad Serhan: No, no.
Andrew Hutchison: Lost the mutual mewtwo, then the floor standard. The f you two.
Brad Serhan: Well, fu three, which sounds a little licentious, bit of lewd, I think, just.
Andrew Hutchison: But,
Brad Serhan: Yeah, yeah, but Morris. Morris must. With my marvelous partner. He. He. He didn’t mind the idea of the fu. Because f standing for floor. Floor stander. the fu three.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Brad Serhan: but we thought it might be better just to go mew three or mu three? F for floor.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes. So that’s so kind of out now, isn’t it? We’re jumping sideways, but.
Brad Serhan: We’re jumping sideways. But I just want to mention Morris. Morris, Morris and I, you know, Sir Han Swift, the, Marvis. Morris Swift. Anyway, I’ve used marvelous too many times.
Andrew Hutchison: so we always.
Brad Serhan: Yeah, some.
Andrew Hutchison: And we’re going to talk to Morris in a future. not too. Not too far into the future, but a future.
Brad Serhan: Yeah, broadcast.
Andrew Hutchison: So, you,
Orpheus was the speaker that propelled the brand into stardom
So three things I want to briefly cover because we’re going to wrap this up in the next 12.76 minutes. And that is, I’m interested to build up towards what you feel was the, highlight of the nineties as far as volume, the amount of dealers and the excitement factor. But you wanted to also talk about, a couple of things so far away. there was the. The input from the, quite, well regarded english engineer who at the time worked, with Wilson Benesh. There was also, the famous brawl on the footpath out the front of the premises. Or was that not.
Brad Serhan: No, I was going to talk about that.
Andrew Hutchison: No, no, no. The, And then there was. There was the new models that propelled Orpheus, the brand, into some level, of stardom, really well, almost surpassing the infamous Ralph Waters product. But,
Brad Serhan: I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t. I daren’t say that. Yeah, no. What? Just trying to collate my thoughts. Okay. So we had the metaphor burst forth. That was the speaker that was below $1,000 and started to sort of snare a few shops. And then we came out with another model, which was. Which started to change names. rather than having Minotaur metaphor, dolomites, Apollos. We went into CS 28. CS 18.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, that’s right.
Brad Serhan: Yeah. That was on kids prompting. But look, doesn’t matter.
Andrew Hutchison: I thought about those, but, yeah, I think I sold a few of those at one point. CS 28 rings a bell. Yeah.
Brad Serhan: Okay, so, yeah, so CS 28 was a larger meta floor standing metaphor. And, we. We brought that out in about night, I think, 1994. So it was another version and a bigger version. Of the metaphor. And it again was sort of just dropping that price down to sort of quasi compete with Richter and a few other brands, obviously that price point. So we could start to get some turnover, the notion being we’re a little bit more profitable. And that started to get kickstarters into more stores and we started to get a little bit more turnover. we still aspired to do the sort of more high end stuff. So we’re still continuing down that line. and I’m just trying to. Apologies for this. I’m trying to remember when, when it
00:45:00
Brad Serhan: started to really roll. I think this. What happened was we managed a couple of things. One, that we managed to get into the ABC.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Brad Serhan: And that was something I sort of. I always coveted. One. I love radio and all that sort of stuff. And, and a guy by the name of. Bloke by the name of Phil Carrick who purchased a pair to pair of Orpheus Dolomites back from the music room. Greg Long, and there’s Davis and co. Back in 1989, Phil owned a pair of Orpheus Dolomites. I went and installed them at his place and we became great mates. He loved the sound of the Orpheus and was working at, I think either classic fm or radio national and was often helping produce or record stuff, there. And he asked if he could borrow a pair of minotaurs and take them in to demonstrate to some of the studio engineers there, one of them being Alan McLean. Alan ended up buying a pair of cs 28, but that’s beside the point. he. Alan, I think this is right. And Phil can correct me. One, of the engineers could have been. Heard them and really liked them. And then we got our first order in 1991 for a pair of. There were minotaurs at the time of the metaphors and then they started to buy more.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Okay.
Brad Serhan: And then we. I think we then start, I went out touting them to. Oh, I have a feeling my memory was that triple J heard about them.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Brad Serhan: Through an alternate source. Anyway, we. We managed to. The triple J guys came to my place and they had a pair of ls three five a’s with them. So they said, we’ll just want to get an idea. And I demonstrated the minotaurs against the, the ls three five a’s or with the ls three five as. And they decided to purchase some as well. Then that leaked through to Don Bartley from EMI Mastering studios. and then I had to go and do a demonstration to some of the Emi people, including Don Bartley, who’s a gun mastering engineer. Great bloke. And so they ordered, a few pairs of minotaurs as mastering speakers. And it was sort of that thing where the word got spread around. And then suddenly we were getting orders for classic FM, ABC classic FM for their listing. Studio, whatever. I’m just.
Channel ten were looking for loudspeakers for monitoring and referencing sound
And then it started to go out to regional, stations as well. Canberra, even my hometown, Musselbrook, had Had a pair of minotaurs there, where Philip Adams did his broadcast. he’s Late night live broadcast.
Andrew Hutchison: Can you do it?
Brad Serhan: There you go. Mussel Brooke. He did. He lived up near scone.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Brad Serhan: And. And he would. He would do Sydney occasionally, but, he did it for Musselbrook. So that sounds all very egotistical, but just information. So we managed to snare ABC.
Andrew Hutchison: Impressive. So some of the. Some of the finest voices at the ABC would have been listening to themselves now. They would have used headphones, I guess. But it, probably did music, though. yeah, would have been great.
Brad Serhan: So radio national, triple J classic FM. then EMI 301 mastering studios. And then we even snared a couple of us. channel seven went out and did, I think we did some speakers for. Small speakers for the Andrew Denton show, I think was Doug Mulroy. It was one of the things where the word got passed around. Sounds like a poem. and indeed. And And then we managed to get channel ten, which I. Channel ten, I think that was again. But that was. I think channel ten was thanks to a guy called Glenn Carrick. Another Carrick, another great fellow who’s a passionate music lover and an audio buff. and he. They were. Channel ten were looking for loudspeakers for monitoring and referencing sound because they’re doing a whole lot of home theater surround sound stuff for channel ten. And we. We put ours in amongst the Rest of the.
Andrew Hutchison: Put out a tender kind of thing.
Brad Serhan: Yeah, that’s the word.
Andrew Hutchison: Tender.
Brad Serhan: And then we managed to snare that. So we ended up again. This is sounding a lot of bloody chest beating, but Bagrat. I’ll do it. we managed to get our speakers in the. Maybe that was late nineties or early two thousands. We got them into channel ten. Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, I think.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Brad Serhan: And I think Perth. But look, I’ll have to update you on that. So look, the key thing was that we harness that to, promote the product to. To establish our bona fides. Yeah. Yeah. And it helped psychologically knowing that
00:50:00
Brad Serhan: that there was a narrative we could love to the dealers and customers that they looked. We straddle both the sort of professional area in, in that sense, mastering and monitoring and hopefully still make a musical product for everyday listeners like ourselves. Andrew, so.
Andrew Hutchison: Indeed. Yeah. Well that’s
Brad Serhan: So that was a pivotal point for us. I knew about the true.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, I didn’t know. I didn’t realize you. I had a feeling you’d done something with channel seven. But the rest of it is Yeah, I wasn’t so. I mean, EMI 301 is. Course probably the Well, in the day when the music industry was banging along and there was money thrown around, it was this studio, certainly in Sydney at least. And Yeah, very impressive stuff. So we’re going to probably talk to some of these or talk more about the detail of those list of names you reeled off in future episodes. But I. Because there’s some very interesting people in there who are highly skilled and I’m sure have their own you know, tales to tell.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
I wonder whether Australians lost interest in Australian products over time
Andrew Hutchison: So sort of to wrap things up a little bit for today, you You feel We were going to sort of sort of pinpoint. I have my own reasons for wanting to do this. To pinpoint when. When the. The peak might have happened in volume and of course it’s not that it peaked and then went away and obviously the brand continued on into the two thousands and really exists in some form still today. Today, yeah, website. So, Yeah, but I Sort of just wondered where. And I just wonder whether there was a tailing off of interest in australian products which we kind of know there was. And I just sort of. I’m trying to pinpoint when that might have been. Probably into the two thousands, I would guess. But
Brad Serhan: Well I. I’m not sure whether, whether the interest Well, whether Australians lost interest in australian products. I think it’s still. I still think that Australians are still very open to Aussie products, or designs. But in terms of Orpheus, you’re meaning Orpheus in a sense. Where I think we started to kick off was that sort of late, late nineties where it felt like we were on the move. And around about that late nineties period, that’s where Nick Hanson came into play. we had This is, this is the thing about Kiat Kiet was dynamic. He could build stuff. So he built a mezzanine level at Lugarno and he sort of. At that stage I think he ended up buying those premises. They were up for sale in Lugarno. So he built a mezzanine level. he. He sort of was storing stuff there and it started to get pretty crowded. So he ended up getting a factory at Peakhurst, which. Which was a pretty big factory and a very reasonable price.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Brad Serhan: So we could store. We could store all the stuff, the cabinets, and have a proper, production line. There’s a mezzanine level. I think it was already there. Or maybe Kiat built, I can’t remember. And that’s around about that time we got that. We had a couple of fellas, two or three fellas doing assembly work. and then a fellow by the name of Nick Hanson popped into, audio connection and he was on holidays from the UK and supposedly here for a year and a. He.
Andrew Hutchison: Quite a holiday. that’s. Oh, yeah, it’s a good decent length.
Brad Serhan: Chunky. It’s a chunky holiday. And now Nick was my memory. What. How was the bugger? I might have been 29, 30, something like that. And he. He had worked at Wilson Benesch as a. He. He had a degree as a mechatronic engineer. I think that was the term.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Brad Serhan: And he worked. Got a job at, Wilson Benesch, I think was part of one of those programs where you can put someone on and the government pays you. But he turned out he bloody more than useful. They threw him the deep end to some design work. Or again, I’ve got to be careful what I say. I don’t know whether. I can’t remember whether he’s working in association with other people. But he was doing design work and had a passion for music and a good ear. so he’s out on holidays, for a year. And, he asked audio connection where he might be able to get some work, you know. Ah, either selling HiFi, because he obviously was passionate about it. And Joe Reidegger, I think, recommended, that he call Orpheus. call us, I should say.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Brad Serhan: And.
00:55:00
Brad Serhan: And then I can remember going and pick him up and bringing him back down. And I, think he was quite enthralled by the fact that arrived at an HQ Holden and a 173. Three on the column. Three on the column.
Andrew Hutchison: Beast.
Brad Serhan: I think it was the low compression one that, was, very economical.
Andrew Hutchison: Very well. You get that?
Brad Serhan: Yeah, I did have the suspension done, so it handled well. What’s that?
Nick Katz made a big difference to the way we progressed the business
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, all the suspension. Yeah.
Brad Serhan: Model. The suspension level springs, white line sway bars. I mean, there was an RTS version. The handling.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, the road train suspension system.
Brad Serhan: Yeah. So this thing, this thing could, its cruising speed around corners the same as its top speed anyway, around. The upshot is that’s badly told. So I went and picked up Nick and they thought he just looked at me and said, he’s a car. He was a car and aficionado as well. he loved cars. So he got in the car and decided that, oh, this is bizarre. he did love the fact that the air vents. When we, when he first we were driving along the freeway section to get down the lugarno, he flipped the air vent and at a particular speed, it just kept on rotating like a fan. It was just brilliant. It just kept on rolling around in circles. And he just loved it. He said, I thought, this guy’s good. we’ve got to employ him. I don’t care what he’s like, but he gets it. So I drove there and drove him to Lugarno. And he just said to us, he looked at our situation, at the factory, said, oh, I know what I think we can do. This is the wrong way around. You should have it this way. As far as the way you approach the assembly, this, this and this. And what salary would you, would you like? he said, look, I’m happy to go with this, but I can guarantee you that I’m going to make a difference. He just. Not cockily, but he said, look, I’m going to make a difference to your production. And also just advice. Kiat said, yeah, let’s do it. And I was right behind that. So what a great bloke. What a. Just he got on with the blokes who were the uni students who were doing the assembly. and, he, he just, he was just one of the guys, a perfect foil for Kiat and I. And I was over at Lugarno and.
Andrew Hutchison: So he would kind of stand between you and stop the,
Brad Serhan: Oh, no. Kidnapped kid kids. My brother, my audio brother. And,
Andrew Hutchison: I’m sorry, I just enjoy the, stories of the v words. Vim, vigor, vigor. Verve.
Brad Serhan: Vivacious. Kiat was certainly vivacious. vigorous. so, what he brought to it, again, he helped us in a big way. But not only that, he would bring out. So I’d be over at Lugano doing design work or whatever and listening, and Kiat would be at the fortress, the fort. And Nick would come over and sort of just check to see that I hadn’t fallen asleep or something like that. That’s what Kiat would say. And he’d come in and say, oh, hello, brigadier. Cup of tea? Oh, yes, please. Cup of tea. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Jolly good, sir. Tea? Sugar with that, sir. and all that sort of banter that we went on with pretending to be brigadiers. And he and I started to do a lot of listening together, as did Kiat. Kiat had a great set of. Has a great set of ear, but he would come over and listen with me. And then we started doing a bit of tuning of speakers together and throw ideas around. And So he would be popping over not every day, but more often not in there with a cup of tea, do a bit of listening tests, bit of feedback. So, he made a big difference to the way we progressed the business, but also from a design point of view. He was an excellent sort of person to work with, as you know, with the Kiat as well. So he kicked us off into the two thousands, if you like.
Andrew: Why does the second world not get more coverage
Andrew Hutchison: Okay. So really that was you. Were you really kicking some goals and getting somewhere and sort of bringing some sort of first, world, sort of order to the production line, etcetera. So, yeah, not implying that it was third world prior to that.
Brad Serhan: Oh, nothing wrong with third world.
Andrew Hutchison: But it was just wondering, second world, where do you think that is? Why does the second world not get more coverage?
Brad Serhan: Well, that’s a great point, Andrew. I don’t know. It’s. It must be the fact that, They want to put a gap between the.
Andrew Hutchison: We need a decent cap because when you have a look at the photos there is clearly. There’s literally a world of difference. Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t think anywhere is really third world anymore. I guess some places are, but anyhow. Hey,
Brad Serhan: No, just a quick one. A quick one.
Andrew Hutchison: Just
01:00:00
Andrew Hutchison: go anywhere. But I feel like you do and I don’t know.
Brad Serhan: I’ve got another ten. My dog.
Andrew Hutchison: I’ve been looking at the time and.
Brad Serhan: What time is it now, brother?
Andrew Hutchison: It’s brother.
Brad Serhan: Why am I saying brother?
Andrew Hutchison: Brother?
Andrew Hutchison: Well, we’ve been going 25. We’ve been going 21 minutes.
Brad Serhan: Okay. I’ll regale you with a quick story and you can bung it in somewhere else or whatever the. I think that if there, it relates to Nick.
Andrew Hutchison: Sure.
Brad Serhan: Okay. But it relates also to the fact that Kiat and I. Tony had left at some stage and he actually went to get a proper job, actually earning proper money with Wharfedale and a few others. And he was very successful there. So Kiat and I with this battler mentality, you know, we’re battlers. We can’t afford to pay ourselves much money. So we decided though, we need to go and see our dealers from Sydney. All the way up the coast, all the way up to New South Wales coast and then, into Queensland and then up, further up.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep.
Brad Serhan: And we were doing it on the smell of an oily rag. And given our cars, probably did leak oil. It was actually an oily rag. So if you allow me, the first stop when we went from Sydney to Taree, we visited Newcastle. The wonderful Terry Anderson and John Cornell, all those great blokes in, Newcastle. And then I. A bit tired so we thought we’d stop at a caravan park in Taree. Perfectly fine establishment.
Andrew Hutchison: What a wonderful town.
Brad Serhan: Yeah, great town. Taree. Dear mate Ian Dodd hails from there. Anyway, so the toilets are a little bit funny, but there’s a bit of leaking.
Andrew Hutchison: Sarcastic about Taree than you are. but I’ve never seen so many.
Brad Serhan: I have a lot of Taree friends, Peter rip right now. So I’ve got to be careful what I say.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Brad Serhan: I don’t, you know, on the manning. On the mighty manning river. See, the key thing is then we thought, okay, we. We then, progressed up the coast and so who have we saw? And then we got to the mighty ridge mill stereo m and, rich reg mill. Great bloke with his son. Lovely people.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, yeah.
Brad Serhan: I was going to say Tony was. It’s. Tony Mills was the owner of his dad’s shop.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Brad Serhan: Yes, you’re right.
Andrew Hutchison: I think the old man had already departed the scene at that point. But, we’ll see.
Brad Serhan: It might have retired.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, I can’t honestly remember, but yeah, Tony and his son. Yes, certainly, yeah, yeah.
Brad Serhan: So Tony really, really knowledgeable bloke, one of those. One of those just steady operators. Knows his stuff new, his stuff. And his son was a great bloke as well. So we managed to get toady, mills on board.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Brad Serhan: And. And we’re tired. And, we sort of said, tony, which way should we go for accommodation? It was getting late and, he said, I’ll just go south towards Mount Gravatt, I think it. Is it gravat or cravat?
Andrew Hutchison: No cravat.
Brad Serhan: Yep, yep, yep, yep.
Kiat recalls going to a place called mango pubs in the nineties
Well, there’s no cravats where we went. Put that way. There’s no steam english gentleman type with a scarf and all that sort of booky stuff.
Andrew Hutchison: You didn’t go to the joint where sort of down a dirt road or something, did you?
Brad Serhan: Yeah, yeah. So we went to this place which was we’ve stopped in to this motel. It looked very nice. And, you know, it, it can’t remember what year it was. It was in the mid nineties, something like that. And, how much? Kiat said to the lady at the front counter and she said, oh, it’s, I think I remember her saying, it’s discounted this week. it’s quite. So, it’s $70 a night.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Brad Serhan: Now, you know, that, that’s quite expensive for those days. You know, $100 was very expensive in those days. And kids, said, nah, too expensive. So we rejected it. Okay, so each other. This is getting late. And then we sort of drove further down the road and we saw a place called mango Palms.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay, mango.
Brad Serhan: He’s beautiful. Mango palms. Neon side with neon. Start again. Neon sign with it flickering on and off. Yeah. One with letters. I think it was the o that was flickering. It was just main. So it’s main meng park.
Andrew Hutchison: That’d be it. Yeah. Mang.
Brad Serhan: Anyway, mango pubs had a whole lot of mango trees.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, palms. Yeah, mang. Palm.
Brad Serhan: Palm. Mango palms. There’s a whole lot of mango mango trees there. And there’s a dirt road.
Andrew Hutchison: The whole point is. Yeah, mango. What’s a mango palm anyhow? I mean, there’s a mango tree which looks about as much like a palm tree as a ham sandwich. So, okay, it’s a fusion.
Brad Serhan: It was a fusion of the mango in the palm tree, so.
Andrew Hutchison: Subtropical fusion.
Brad Serhan: Yes. There was a. I don’t know whether he managed to get them to mate.
01:05:00
Brad Serhan: I don’t know. But the, the fact was, it was a co, it was a mango coconut that tastes like mango. I have no idea.
Drove down this long dirt road and there we arrived at an old fibro place
Drove down this long dirt road and there we arrived at this sort of fibro, old fibro place. And a bloke that looked like Bill Hunter came out six foot four with one of those, you know, the whiskey nose, the veins and.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, yeah, fairly red paws, lots of.
Brad Serhan: In a ruddy face.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Brad Serhan: And he came out, was very gruff and his wife was a partner or whatever, was petite, and came scurrying out and to greet us and. And it was something like. I can’t remember, but let’s embellish a little bit. $20 a night, like something like that.
Andrew Hutchison: So expensive.
Brad Serhan: Very cheap. Yeah. We were ushered into this esteem establishment where there was a double bed and a single bed and an old tv up in the wall. And I thought, well, it’s Friday night. Footy on. I’ll, I think I’ll just, or Thursday night 40. Can’t remember. It was my turn to sleep. Sleep on the on the double bed and kid had the single.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Brad Serhan: So I put my I actually put my sleeping bag down and Kiat hopped into the bed. Songs sleeping bag and Kiat’s sort of bloke that unlike me he likes to sleep with his top off and just have some sort of little scantily sort of little underwear or something like that. Box of shorts or something like that.
Andrew Hutchison: Geez.
Brad Serhan: Whereas I like I’m all buttoned up and I like to have a t shirt on and you know I don’t want my skin touching any of the sheets. plus you’ve got anyway I’m on top of the sleeping bag.
Andrew Hutchison: Just sort of condom like sleeping Baghdad that you’re in as well.
Brad Serhan: Yeah. Prophylactic if you like. Yeah and I’m lying until they’re watching the football. And Kiat goes off to sleep. And half an hour goes by and he’s very tired from the driving. Half an hour goes by and I can’t show you but I’ll have to use words to describe the slightly erratic sound of him scratching. Yes scratching himself. And I initially it was the odd scratch. He’s just itchy. And then it reaches sort of a sort of spasmodic crescendo of him scratching. Still asleep mind you. And next minute as only Kiat could do there’s this explosion fuuuck got out of bed jumping around scratching all over and bugger me he had these welts on him. Yeah bed bug. Bed bugs. And he. He was oh that itch is all buggering for the whole night he had to hot hop into the shower and thankfully the hot water system was working. Bung on the shower put it to full full ball heat and then slept on top of his sleeping bag. Now what’s the point? Oh yeah. So we didn’t ask for our money back. We just scarped early. Just didn’t.
We went down to reignite the Melbourne market. And we stayed in some really swish hotels
Anyway we get to Mackay. The guy takes the product on. This is Mackay fair drive. We’re tired. Where are we going to stay? I thought oh christ here we go again. What are we going to sleep on? You know an ants nest somewhere out bush or something. I just had no idea. And Ken’s the thing called Dolphin Head resort.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh yeah.
Brad Serhan: Off the highway.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Brad Serhan: Do you know it?
Andrew Hutchison: hang on. We’ll know. Yeah we’ll do. I think that’s yeah that’s no I was thinking of a different resort. Out of town. Down.
Brad Serhan: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: It’s called black, beach or something. Black’s beach or something. It’s not.
Brad Serhan: It could have been that. It was Dolphin Head resort. Dolphinhead?
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Brad Serhan: And he said, let’s go have a look at that. I said, resort? That sounds pretty swish. okay. We drove there and we got there and my m. God, it was sort of this vista of opulence. So, we went in to check it out and no we didn’t. We made the call. Kiat said, bring them to see. I don’t know why I had to bring them. He said. He said ring them and see what they do. Corp do they do corporate rates and they did. I think they dropped out. Yeah. Corporate rates. And, and they, they just probably made it up and said, here we do. And they said, oh, it’s 130 a night. Which after this offer of $70 a night the previous night, you’d think, well, no. but. And he said. Came down a whopping twenty dollars to one hundred and ten dollars a night.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
Brad Serhan: And I said, will you take that? He said yeah, we’re taking it. We’re sleeping there. I’m not, He’d been bitten. Once bitten, twice shy was the old say.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Brad Serhan: And then we went in there and there were swimming pools that were shaped all way around the different rooms. So you could just go out of your room and dive into the pool and swim around to the sort of what it was just. Beautiful spot. And then it’s. Instead of the shit that we ate, the stuff that we ate on the previous night, we had I think kangaroo on. Not that I ate the
01:10:00
Brad Serhan: kangaroo, but kangaroo, on paper bark.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
Brad Serhan: You know, it was, it was sort of an esoteric sort of menu. I I must say that, we never ever stayed in accommodation that was No, we didn’t rough it again.
Andrew Hutchison: No.
Brad Serhan: And then we segway to Nick Hanson.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Brad Serhan: So when Nick was. Nick joined us, you know, a bit after that, when Nick was going to leave, after he got him to. He stayed for three years and we couldn’t get an extension on his visa anymore. we went down to reignite the Melbourne market.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
Brad Serhan: And we. And we stayed in some. In the CBD in some really swish hotel. and Kiat decided we weren’t ever. We weren’t to ever suffer again. We had to go out feeling fresh and vital and that we’re worthy.
Andrew Hutchison: He worked it out.
Brad Serhan: So. Yeah. Yeah. So that that was, that was sort of the story. Of how we used to go out with the Batman mentality. And, and
Andrew Hutchison: So yeah, there was a trans transition from
Brad Serhan made significant inroads into broadcasting
Doing it not so much on the cheap, but you know, keeping the overheads to a minimum, but getting on the road to Actually, actually living and Having a. You know, having a set successful business and actually reaping some of the
Brad Serhan: Some of the benefits we still didn’t pay us. We was careful with any money.
Andrew Hutchison: We’re just staying in better hotels. So yeah, I think we may have had a battery failure there at some point. We may have lost a couple of seconds and I won’t quite know where yet. So let’s Backtrack just a touch. So I think we were saying that With Nick Hanson’s input things were optimized, if you like.
Brad Serhan: Optimized. So the pivot points were Or turning points in football parlance. Kiat and Tony, Kiat Low and Tony Wong. and Nick Hanson arriving on the scene. and then there’s another guy called James Galloway that also was working there as a university student. Very bright young fellow that sort of came to the fore in the two thousands. but yeah, those are the two pivot points. As far as people, we had wonderful helpers along the way. people that sort of helped out and helped us move forward. obviously Phil Carrick and Glenn Carrick and Don Bartley. So a few pivotal things sort of cracking the ABC as well. So.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, that’s completely impressive. I had no idea that you made as many inroads as you did into broadcasting. And yeah, For all, obviously the right reasons, the product worked, sounded great, was, was enough of a monitor loudspeaker, to do the job they required. But at the same time, I remember that loudspeaker is a very sweet lesson. And I don’t think I sold too many because back in the day, let’s face it, that was a relatively expensive loudspeaker for its size at least. Yes, but it was a premium product. So Okay, thank you again, Brad. Brad Serhan.
Brad Serhan: Thank you, Andrew.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, thank you. It’s been an absolute pleasure. Great stuff. All right, talk to you again.
Brad Serhan: Chat soon, mate. Bye.
01:13:08
Please Listen Carefully by Jahzzar http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jahzzar
Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported— CC BY-SA 3.0
Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/please-listen-carefully
Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/GGVFRIgP7uc
CREDITS –
Guest management, regular co-hosting – Brad Serhan
Host, audio production – Andrew Hutchison