interesting Fisher mini-bio

[Firedome]

fun article about Avery F. written around 1960?... pretty impressive list of clients!
A couple of year later another name was added: JFK, bought for his Cape Cod Summer White House House.
In the White House his wife Jackie had a custom built Stromberg-Carlson installed in 1961.
Some years ago I talked to the tech who installed it.

The Million Dollar Avocation
by John M. Conly​



When, in the course of Siamese events, it became desirable for young King Phumiphon to take himself a bride, the international brotherhood of heads of state was thrown into a perplexity. For what does one give as a wedding present to a man who already has everything (including real white elephants)?

Not among the perplexed, however, were President and Mrs. Harry S. Truman. King Phumiphon was known to be a music lover, and Mr. Truman was the only American President ever to be seen in public following a performance of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony with a score. These circumstances simplified maters. The Trumans called promptly on the man likeliest to solve their gift problem: Avery Fisher.

Within weeks, from Mr. Fisher’s New York factory there went out bound for Bangkok a most magnificent high-fidelity custom phonograph. Set into its hand-rubbed woodwork was a large silver plate, inscribed with the good wishes of the donors. “As if,” says Fisher now, with a hint of a grin, “the King was likely to forget who gave it to him.”

The order for the King of Thailand did not disturb the Fisher establishment a bit. In the last twenty-one years, Avery Fisher has become, beyond much question, the leading purveyor of phonographic high fidelity to the world’s Very Important People. If you visit the Maharajah of Indore, you will find in his palace a Fisher phonograph. And one of the most elaborate of all Fisher custom installations adorns the living quarters of the Shah of Iran, Mohammed Riza Pahlavi. “Quite a hi-fi man,” Fisher comments, “as well as a good sports-car driver; the two things seem to go together.”

The list of Fisher’s notable clients resounds so nicely and reflects so much hard work, taste, and attention that a small sampling of its membership seems warranted: Max Ascoli, Irving Berlin, Dr. Arthur F. Burns, Lee J. Cobb, S. B. Colgate, Bing Crosby, Thomas E. Dewey, four of the Mesdames Du Pont, Mrs. Marshall Field, Dr. Alberto Gainza Paz, Ira Gershwin, Huntington Hartford, III, William Randolph Hearst, Jr., Lillian Hellman, Henry J. Kaiser, Elia Kazan, Joshua Logan, Claire Boothe Luce, Frederick March, Gian-Carlo Menotti, Mitch Miller, Henry Morgan, Newbold Morris, Malcolm Muir, Mrs. J. C. Penney, M. N. Rand, Roy Rogers, Baron Maurice de Rothschild, Andres Segovia, Edward Steichen, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, Jennie Tourel, Alfred Gwynne Vanderbuilt, and Sergeant Friday.

The only trouble with this list is that Avery Fisher would consider it incomplete, because it does not include Mr. Gold. Mr. Gold is the operator of a neighborhood hand laundry in New York, and he came calling upon Fisher one day last year. (Fisher, incidentally, owns or leases nearly a block of buildings in Long Island City, and it takes a good ten minutes, from a standing start, to find his office.) Gold had put together a high-fidelity music system which incorporated several Fisher components and which did not seem to be working as it should. He was distressed. Fisher received him (he receives everybody) and astounded him further by suggesting that they go to Gold’s home.

They did, and Fisher reports on the venture: “I went in and I saw a record collection second to none I know of, at least in quality, not even to WQXR’s, let alone my own. Not only LPs but 78s. Everything was there that ought to be there, the choicest and most essential things.” He went to work on the music system and quite easily made it sound right. But he will not forget Mr. Gold in a hurry. Mr. Gold is the man whose name, Fisher hopes, is (or will be) legion. “This is our intellectual nobility,” he says, “make no mistake about it. And it is a very encouraging thing.”

Everything seems to encourage Fisher; there has been a kind of serendipity in the course of his life. He is now in the beginning of his fifth decade, a sturdily built man with an orderly thatch of graying hair, dark eyes, and a ready and rather gentle smile. He was born in the Yorkville section of Manhattan into a family to whom music and phonographs both were an important part of recreational life. His father, Charles Fisher, a real estate specialist, owned one of the nation’s biggest collections of acoustic horn gramophones. The boy Avery was allowed to study violin as early as he wanted to, which was pretty early. He is still a proficient violinist. At the Fisher home on New York’s East Side there are regular chamber music concerts in which Fisher plays first or second fiddle, depending on the music and performing company.

Despite this musicianly bent, when he went to NYU he majored in biology, taking a B.S. He didn’t use it. He went instead to Dodd, Mead and Company, book publishers, where he learned book and typographical design. He became very good at this, as is attested by his success with it since as a lucrative hobby. The latest set of books he has designed is Sir Winston Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples. Fisher loves to be accosted at parties by people who ask him: “Did you know there’s another Avery Fisher, who designs books?”

Profession (book designing) and avocation (high fidelity) exchanged places in 1937. Like sundry others in his present calling, Fisher began his high fidelity experimenting so that he himself might enjoy reproduced music at its best. Broadcasting and recording had far outsped the home radio and phonograph. So pleased was he with the results of his labors that he was anxious to share them, and he also saw that they might be marketable. In 1937, therefore, he quit the book business and founded the Philharmonic Radio Corporation. His first chief product was a chassis which incorporated a TRF (tuned radio frequency) receiver and a twenty-five-watt beam powered audio amplifier. He would not tolerate it now, but in its time it was probably the best in the world. He built radio-phonographs as fast as he could, but never quite fast enough to answer the demand. Our latter-day yearning for music, unparalleled in the world’s history, had caught up with him.

The war interrupted the joy ride. Fisher sold his company to a big corporation and directed it, through the duration of hostilities, in the production of electronic mechanisms for war.

[Firedome]

Pt 2

Once the war was over, he cut loose again and got back to music. In 1945 he established the Fisher Radio Corporation. It is a dual operation, as all his manufacturing has been from the beginning. For prosperous folk, short of time or indolent, he makes assembled console phonographs (designed as furniture by Avery Fisher). For venturous music lovers, who feel themselves partners to Casals or Klemperer, he makes high-fidelity components -- amplifiers, preamplifiers, FM-AM radio tuners, remote-control switches (including a stereo balance control that may prevent many a nervous breakdown), and the like. These also are styled tastefully, but with a difference. A Fisher amplifier is, perhaps, a little heavier than it needs to be, by virtue of its oversized components. There is a built-in challenge: if you can lift it you will love it. On Fisher preamplifiers there are always a couple of knife switches, which are completely unnecessary except that they denote a kind of raw, masculine efficiency. Flip one of these and you feel as if you are governing the S. S. Constitution, or at least a sizable yacht. A button to push or a knob to turn is not the same thing. Designers have to be psychologists, and Avery fisher is a very good designer.

His designs upon his customers, however, are entirely benign. He thoroughly enjoys his work, and one gets the impression that this is mainly why he performs it. He thinks profit comes after the job well done and must wait upon it. Accordingly, his procedure in business is a little strange, especially to the people that work for him. One rule, for instance, is that any customer who calls Fisher through the office switchboard get to talk to him direct; even Fisher’s secretary cannot prevent this.

Fisher has the gift of making right decisions in split seconds and of picking people to surround him who can think nearly as he does. This allows him the liberty of being a business artist, a considerable liberty which he takes seriously. He admits pride in a few things. One of them is the fisher FM tuner 90, which he thinks helped convert Continental Europe to FM (it outsells all other tuners there) and thus brought better music home to some thousands of Europeans. In other artistic matters he is almost fiercely modest.

His fiddle bow is a Hill, of some renown, but his violin is not of famous make. “If I were to sequester a Strad or a Guadagnini,” he explains with fervor, “for amateur use, it would almost a sin. These instruments should be put at the disposal of professional artists, for the public, not kept in private homes. Anyway,” he continues, “this is an age of reproduction, of reproduction that can almost be called perfect.”

Patently, this is where the reporter must come to the aid of the man scanned, for never in his life would Avery Fisher audibly presume that he has been of assistance to the endeavors of Johann Sebastian Bach or Ludwig van Beethoven. Yet he and his colleagues and competitors in the reproduction of sound have so served, beyond any doubt. Never before in the world have so many people listened so earnestly and with such reward to so much good music as now. And most of it happens in living rooms.

Charged with a proposition like this, Mr. Fisher becomes at once gruff (which is uncharacteristic), charitable, and institutional. What he says is, and you are bound to believe him, “It’s a very honest business.” He ought to know.

[electra225]

I moved this topic to the new Fisher board.

[TC Chris]

Pt 2
Charged with a proposition like this, Mr. Fisher becomes at once gruff (which is uncharacteristic), charitable, and institutional. What he says is, and you are bound to believe him, “It’s a very honest business.” He ought to know.

That's an interesting quotation. It was probably true when "hi-fi" was a niche hobby. In those days specs mattered, of course, but also how things sounded. If it sounded bad, it would not sell for long to a market of informed buyers. But then we got into the power wars when advertising departments demanded big numbers. That led to very creative methods of power measurement that had little to do with actual useful power output. The FTC had to step in and create a trade regulation rule to govern power output claims.

Just before the FTC stepped in, a friend and I took our amps to Mac Amplifier Clinic in Columbus, OH. Old folks will remember those wonderful events. My Heath amp, rated at 20 WPC, met its specs at rated distortion, full frequency range. His "100 watt" amp (50 WPC) from a chain competing with Radio Shack (name escapes me) put out less undistorted power than my Heath. It was a clear demonstration of honesty vs hype. It cemented my devotion to Heath and its honest engineers.

Chris Campbell

[Firedome]

That's funny Chris, I did exactly the same thing in 1965. I built a Heathkit mono amp that was a Christmas present in Dec '64. Once when I was visiting StereoLand in Towson Plaza (a frequent occurrence, the folks there were very tolerant of a 14 yr old kid coming in all the time, I must say!) I saw an poster promoting a McIntosh clinic, one of the many product lines they sold. My Dad took me there on that date, and a very nice gentleman in his 30s, who I later found was Mr. David "Davy" O'Brien, "Mr, McIntosh Clinic" himself, kindly agreed to test my humble Heathkit, alongside all the McIntosh, Fisher, Sherwood and H-K products they had sold there being brought in. He ran it through it's paces on the B&K analyzer and produced a hard copy of the graphs showing distortion, power rating &c. He pronounced a fine little perfomer that met it's published specs! I was thrilled! and have also had a soft spot for both Heathkit and McIntosh ever since. Davy O'Brian was a legend at Mc Labs and continued to do clinics into the 21st Century. He lived right here in the Binghamton area and I read his obit in the local paper about 10 years ago.

[TC Chris]

I still have the graph that Mr. O'Brien drew of my Heath AA-22's power response curve. I also remember being a bit hesitant about presenting my little Heath amp at a Mac clinic--all those big amplifiers!!--but he did not sneer or condescend and the little amp performed much better than most non-Mac devices.

The amp that failed miserably was from Olson, a Radio Shack/Lafayette competitor of the time. My friend took it back and demanded his money back, showing the wretched graph from the Mac clinic.

Chris Campbell

[Firedome]

I'm pretty sure that Olson stuff of the time was made in Japan, I know some early Realistic and other "cost conscious" retailers did as well. I had an-tube Trio (later called Kenwood) receiver from around 1964 that was actually excellent quality, and I'm told that Sansui stuff of the era was really good too, so they clearly varied by manufacturer.