Bob Crump passes away over holiday.

JUST saw this and am shocked. Bob was a truly good guy. He will be missed by MANY.

I will relate a story that I hope will be of interest to more than just me. Several years ago, when I had gotten back into two-channel audio, I was visiting a shop in Berkeley, California. Two guys were in the shop milling about and talking to the guys working there. One said he was there to pick up a copy of Stereophile because he did not want it seen delivered to his house anymore. :-)

The two of them struck up a conversation with me and were very pleasant and offered me a couple of suggestions regarding some questions I had. At the time I thought to myself that these guys knew more than anyone in this shop, or most any shop I'd been in, for that matter. Very unusually, I did not introduce myself, nor did either of the two. When they walked out of the shop, the owner said, Great guys, huh? - or something to that effect. I said, yeah, do they live around here? He said, you didn't know that those guys were Bob Crump and John Curl?

Later, I had several conversations with Bob and he joined a "cartel" of four of us that pooled in money on a Wally Azimuth Tool when he could have just bought one himself.

RIP, Bob!

I first got to know Bob a few years ago, as we spoke on the phone after I purchased a Blowtorch from an original owner --- he called me to find out about the new owner of one of his babies. Since then we enjoyed time together at CES shows and Ribfest '04. My wife and I still recall how much fun it was to have Bob as our house guest for an entire day just listening, drinking, eating, and of course "having way too much fun". I know it was his time to go, but will always regret he was unable to move to Oregon for at least a few years. I've been grieving the loss of Bob all week, but tonight I'll celebrate his life at a Misty River concert here in Bend,OR. and I'd like to think he'll be listening in.

Jim Elmslie

Just a quick update. Maybe Bob will finally make it to Oregon or at least Washington. His body has been cremated per his wish and his brother will be taking the remains to the northwest when he returns home. On two other fronts, I believe that John Curl will be completing several remaining Blowtorches that have been promised to customers and that an interested party has been found that will be picking up the wire portion of Bob's business. The gentleman in question has been in the manufacturing and sales end of the business for over twenty years and was involved with Townsend Audio when it was manufacturing product in the US. Although nothing has been finalized, I believe that he will be purchasing the remaining assets and trying to reinvigorate the business, initially focusing on Bob's current designs. Hope that this happens as it would be nice to keep the TG name alive.

My TG speaker cables are as good as anything tried in my system which includes Audience AU24 and Cardas Golden Ref. Actually, they're better than the AU24s.

About 3 years ago Bob loaned me some of his speaker cables for a shoot-out with the anaconda-sized 18 K dollar Kharma Exquisite cables on a top-notch system that included big Kharmas, Manley Reference DAC and the belt drive CD player the name of which I forget right now. The results were very, very close. Bob was the best.