Famous defections

[Gregadd]

Over the years we have some very distinguished designers leave their parent company for Greener patures.

Burce Brissin left Monster Cable to form MIT. John Curl left Mark Levinson

Can you name your fvorite defector?

 

[MylesBAstor]

Over the years we have some very distinguished designers leave their parent company for Greener patures.

Burce Brissin left Monster Cable to form MIT. John Curl left Mark Levinson

Can you name your fvorite defector?

John didn't really leave Levinson. As I understand it, he was more of a subcontractor for Mark.

How about Kevin Malgrem leaving VS to found Evolution Acoustics?

Scott Frankland left MFA and formed Wavestream Kinetics.

Ron Sutherland had his hands in a few products including working with Gayle Sanders at ML and now has his own electronics line.



Sure someone can come up with some cartridge designers too.

 

[puroagave]

Allen Perkins from SOTA to his own co., Spiral Groove
Kevin Voecks from Snell to Revel
Andrew Jones from Kef to TAD
Tom Cogliano from Levinson to Cello
mike moffat from Theta digital to Schiit audio, his new co. with jason stoddard
Dan d'agostino from Krell which he founded, to his new co.
Nelson Pass from Threshold to Pass labs
Michael Ritter and Pflash Pflaumer from pacific microsonics to berkeley audio

 

[Gregadd]

Levinson to Cello to Red Rose.

 

[docvale]

Levinson to Cello to Red Rose.

And more recently to Daniel Hertz...
If I'm not wrong, the chief engineer in NuForce was from Spectral, isn't it?

 

[MylesBAstor]

And more recently to Daniel Hertz...
If I'm not wrong, the chief engineer in NuForce was from Spectral, isn't it?

Franco Serblin from Sonus Faber to his new speaker company.

 

[MylesBAstor]

Allen Perkins from SOTA to his own co., Spiral Groove
Kevin Voecks from Snell to Revel
Andrew Jones from Kef to TAD
Tom Cogliano from Levinson to Cello
mike moffat from Theta digital to Schiit audio, his new co. with jason stoddard
Dan d'agostino from Krell which he founded, to his new co.
Nelson Pass from Threshold to Pass labs
Michael Ritter and Pflash Pflaumer from pacific microsonics to berkeley audio

Tom Colangelo from Levinson to Cello to Viola Labs

Actually Dan D'Agostino went from Dayton-Wright to Krell to D'Ag

 

[puroagave]

And more recently to Daniel Hertz...
If I'm not wrong, the chief engineer in NuForce was from Spectral, isn't it?

demian martin, he founed entec before consulting with spectral. he also consults with constellation audio which is a cornucopia of the 'whos who' in audio engineering.

 

[mep]

Levinson to Cello to Red Rose.

Mark didn't leave those companies to start the next one. They each went up in flames.

 

[puroagave]

Tom Colangelo from Levinson to Cello to Viola Labs

Actually Dan D'Agostino went from Dayton-Wright to Krell to D'Ag

yeah, colangelo...i read somewhere he's deceased. a great designer.

 

[MylesBAstor]

demian martin, he founed entec before consulting with spectral. he also consults with constellation audio which is a cornucopia of the 'whos who' in audio engineering.

Demian also served a stint with Monster Cable and NuForce along the way too plus his new company Auralita.

 

[puroagave]

Mark didn't leave those companies to start the next one. They each went up in flames.

a few of the red rose tube amps were existing chinese designed/built stuff re-badged.

 

[Gregadd]

Mark didn't leave those companies to start the next one. They each went up in flames.

Actually he was forced out of Levinson.

 

[FrantzM]

Dave Reich from Classe to Wherever he is now

 

[MylesBAstor]

Actually he was forced out of Levinson.

Depends on which version you believe. From Stereophile:

Sandy Berlin entered the world of high-end audio after leaving the Harman fold and moving to Connecticut in 1976, to participate in a fellowship program at Yale's Institution for Social and Policy Studies. He learned about a financially troubled audio company nearby from the mayor of New Haven, who was interested in creating employment opportunities for city residents and thought an industry expert could help stabilize the operation. Berlin soon teamed up with the firm's founder, Mark Levinson, but a series of clashes between them culminated in a 1984 bankruptcy. When the company's assets went on the auction block, Berlin purchased them and used them as the foundation for Madrigal Audio Laboratories, which, under his direction, produced new generations of Mark Levinson–branded products designed and built for exceptional performance. "My feeling was it would be nice to have a company that never made any compromises, that sold . . . the best," Berlin said in an interview in Audio magazine some years later.

HP wrote about it also.

 

[mep]

Again, the key words were the Mark Levinson company was "troubled" and it ended in bankruptcy. The bottom line is that ML drove every company he ever owned straight into the ground.

 

[Gregadd]

Depends on which version you believe. From Stereophile:

HP wrote about it also.

My memory is fading but... According to HP bankruptcy was forced by Leivsons new partners filing an amended tax return increasing the firms tax liabiltiy. It seems Mark was a poor businessman who needed to go. It left a bad taste in his mouth because he was denied the use of his own name in any new company.

A lot of these guys were just one step ahead of the creditors.
gregadd

 

[puroagave]

Dave Reich from Classe to Wherever he is now

when he left classe, David designed the original dreadnaught amp for theta digital. another great designer. the dr-2, Dr-3, dr-6 and dr-9 were all great sounding amps.

 

[docvale]

I think that the founder of Aesthetix came from Theta.

 

[Bill Hart]

My memory is fading but... According to HP bankruptcy was forced by Leivsons new partners filing an amended tax return increasing the firms tax liabiltiy. It seems Mark was a poor businessman who needed to go. It left a bad taste in his mouth because he was denied the use of his own name in any new company.

A lot of these guys were just one step ahead of the creditors.
gregadd

There was actually a pretty interesting trademark litigation that came out of that, in which, if memory serves, the district court judge, after saying he really wasn't very interested in trademark law, and could basically care less, ruled against ML in his quest to continue to use his name professionally after it was purchased as part of the acquisition of the ML company. On appeal, after the 2d Circuit excoriated the district judge for his attitude toward his job, the appeals court allowed ML to continue to use his name, although not as a 'brand' (e.g. 'Cello by Mark Levinson'). Anybody with access to Lexis can find this, it was a published decision.