Designer Hall of Fame

A Designer belongs in the Hall of Fame when a they create a world class product at a real world prices. My hat must go to Coincident's Israel Blume

I would nominate Robert Fulton of Fulton Audio. Bob designed/pioneered many products that at the time were considered laughable to many people who viewed his efforts as, "part of the lunatic fringe". For instance Bob's blue turntable mat, that when rotated around the spindle of the turntable was tunable for the best sound. (Hey, after experimentation with Oracle mats and others I know this works. Give this a try, it might be just the thing your analog rig needs to put it over the top!) No turntable arm was complete without the addition of Bob's special litz headshell leads. Before Noel Lee was hawking "Monster Cable" there was Bob Fulton, who's Fulton Gold interconnects, "Fulton Brown speaker wire" (I still am using this on the front channels of my home theater system.), and then the almost inconcievable and unbendable "Fulton Gold" set the standard for years in speaker cabling. As I remember the Fulton Gold was so thick and heavy that if one bent it properly, it could almost support a pair of Rogers LS35As as both speaker stands and cables. There were many contented customers and audiophiles who had us mod many a Hafler amp, preamp, Dalquist DQ-10, and Acoustats by rewiring them with Fulton Brown. I'm pretty sure this happened in other areas of the country besides St.Louis too. Bob always had a bag of what then were unlikely tricks to demonstrate as he visited dealers across the country. Today these tweeks are accepted and I suppose millions?, thousands?, hundreds? are raked in by the tweekers today. Bob's lps that he himself recorded and produced, quaint though they often were, would be considered state of the art by today's standards. I know, I still own a couple. He also was a speaker builder and manufacturer of considerable talent and inspiration. He built the "Fulton J" speaker system, which kind of reminds me of some of the earlier Wilson designs (and many others) so applauded today. The man built subwoofers that were the size of washer and dryers and man did they sound great. However installing them in a custy's home was sure a chore. At any rate I'm sure there are others who might remember Bob Fulton better than I, as I was just a kid with a good ear and love of music sending myself through college at the time. Bob Fulton's products could bring out the midrange in your system that was to die for. Today we'd call it analog and tube sounding.
I'd bet the catalogs issued by Music Direct, the Cable Company, and Audio Advisor would be filled with Fulton products if he was around today.

Robert Fulton founded the modern interconnect and speaker cable industry- before him there was no-one. Of course he was thought of as a snake oil salesman, but many of his claims are now borne out by the continued existence of the cable industry itself.

Just before he died, Bob had created a new speaker that used a concept he called the 'oval window'. It was some sort of modified Helmholtz resonator- Bob claimed that the oval window cut off one octave below the cutoff of the woofers in the speaker. Whatever you might believe about that, I can tell you that it did play some of the most effortless bass I have heard in a speaker.

Alot of memories here for me...some great designers without question. Mark Levinson, the man, should also be included as forwarding the state of the art in SS audio reproduction.

How about Stefan Kudelski? His equipment is in use by almost every radio and TV station on earth. Surely he must be the most famous of all designers mentioned previously.