What's In a Name ?

I have a few distinct childhood memories of my grandpa and his beloved TV. He would sit around with his cronies and they would argue like madmen about which TV brand was better. There was much shaking of fists in the air, hitching up of pants for emphasis and questioning each other's sanity. These arguments usually ended in a flurry of cursing.

These old guys were nice enough and my grandpa was pretty cool ( he would fork over smokes and beers to me when grandma wasn't looking), but to be brutally honest, these old cats didn't know their ass from a hole in the ground when it came to technology, particularly TV's.

As I grew older and graduated from electronics school, they were still going at it. With my new-found knowledge, I found it difficult to not tell 'em all to shut their pie-holes, but I kept it to myself. They were still going on ad infinitum about the merits of Zenith TV's or Admiral TV's. I just didn't have the heart to tell them that there was absolutely no difference. In those days of analog TV's there was pretty much only one way to make a TV.

Stick a bunch of tubes in a chassis, hook 'em up to a very large vacuum tube that shows images and you got yourself a TV. Coupled with multiple variations of the ubiquitous rabbit ears, the results were pretty much all  identical. Cable TV came along , but it didn't change much. You were still relegated to about 300 interlaced lines of usable signal and it sucked. Yet they kept arguing, some of them going to their graves secure in the knowledge that Zenith TV's ruled.

Around that same time I began working in a specialty electronics store that just happened to have one of the last tube testing machines in the city. The same types of old guys would often come in there after yanking all the tubes out of their ancient b&w Zenith. Sure I could test them, but they had neglected to label the tubes and would probably require some engineer from Western Electric to get their piece o' shit Zenith running again. On a side note, this store was in a mall that was directly across the street from the region's largest mental hospital. It made for some interesting days that involved a lot muttering to invisible friends, listening to infinite loop headphone demos all day and lots of sticking of tongues onto 64 volt tube radio batteries.

As I grew older and began frequenting bars on a regular basis, I was reminded of some of my grandpa's homespun wisdom: never talk religion or politics in a bar. words to live by indeed, but I would amend that to include Elvis and stereos.

For some reason, bar discussions would often turn to music or, by association I guess, stereos. I learned many years ago to avoid these discussions for several reasons; a) it's futile, b) the other guy is probably way drunker than you, c) maybe he's just an asshole or d) the bar's PA is so bad that you can't hear yourself or the drunk on the other stool.

I quit drinking long ago, but I still go to bars to see bands once in while or attend the odd party. What perplexes me is that , after all these years , I am still encountering the same people wanting to have the same arguments, seemingly stuck in an endless tape loop of their own. If there is a hell, it would comprise of drinking bad beer and repeating the mantra " Harman Kardon, Harmon Kardon" while satan blares The Eagles and forces you to memorize vintage Radio Shack catalogs.

I still can't quite get a handle on misplaced brand loyalty. I guess that one could attribute that to the aftertaste that the advertising industry has created by incessantly drumming names into our collective psyche. More's the shame, because in most instances the best and highest quality brands spend the least money on advertising. A lot of people will just randomly drop names just to make conversation or simply haven't done the research to see what lies beyond their familiar experiences.

It kind of reminds me of another type of booze-fueled barroom argument; which brand of beer is better. Many endless nights have been wasted by barflies with pedestrian taste in yeast-based libations arguing about whether Budweiser or Miller is " better" ( In Canada it would be Molson vs. Labatt). In either country a lot of these bacchanalian discussions often devolve into fistfights. With all the small independent beer makers, there is no reason to drink mainstream swill, much less lose an eye or body part over. These arguments still abound and these Bud-swillers fail to understand that what they are really arguing about is which brand creates the fastest green apple two-step the following day. Maybe they argue about which toilet paper is better. In all honestly, if one is drinking Bud or PBR all night, a toilet paper argument might make perfect sense at some point in the evening.

High-end and specialty manufacturers almost never advertise in the mainstream media. A lot of these companies have a limited advertising budget and it is best spent in specialty publications or paying some smart IT guy to fine tune SEO's for very specific target audiences. McLaren automobiles won't be taking out an ad in your local Sunday paper anytime soon and neither will high end audio companies like Krell, Linn or Devialet, you probably won't see used hand-built bikes by Retrotec for 20 bucks on craigslits and your favorite craft brewery will likely not be sponsoring the upcoming tractor pull on Billy-Bob's back forty.

Beautiful engineering and also fits in a pizza box.

A lot of people view high end audio like some strange hybrid of elf-magic-bullshit from Lord of the Rings or some made up fantasy from someone who has indulged in prodigious quantities of very low grade hippie-crack. Aficionados of high end audio are sometimes naively confident that they have science and the laws of physics on their side. True as that may be, the laws of physics have rarely contributed to winning bar arguments ( unless it culminates in one of the boozers passing out and falling down, see Isaac Newton).

A recent "discussion" with a professional-grade drunk left me frustrated. Through no intention of my own, I ended up in this lunatic's "studio". By studio, I mean a dingy room in a commercial building where this goof would paint flowers while drinking many bottles of screw-top wine ( all the while hiding from his mother who owned said building). I politely asked to change the subject, but he kept ranting about his "Karman-Hardon" that " made in Germany so it must be good". I had a difficult time extricating myself from this situation. There was no logic that would work on this level of obstinacy and inebriation.

For some strange reason, Harman Kardon is one of those brand names that people like to drop. Maybe because it sounds exotic or even German ( as a side note there is still some smokin' and hellishly expensive gear coming out of Germany such as MBL and ELAC) . For the record Harmon Kardon was started in upstate New York in 1953 by Sidney Harman and Bernard Kardon. Kardon was bought out in 1956. Even though they were credited for inventing the soon to be ubiquitous receiver, things changed and by the time the 70's rolled around it was a mainstream product. It continues to suck to this day.