Haitai See --> Etronics
Heath
A company started in the 1920's to make aircraft parts, went into the surplus electronics trade in the late 1940's and started selling electronic kits shortly thereafter. Was one of the pioneers of selling high quality audio kits in the 50's and 60's under the Heathkit name, many of their valve designs especially beloved in some sectors to this day, note that the company traded in Europe under the Daystrom name. The company is still going but has exited both the kit and the audio business. For more information on the company's past products and history visit the Heathkit Virtual Museum or this page on the history of the Heath company.
Heco GmbH & Heco Electronics GmbH
German manufacturer of quality loudspeakers originally founded in 1949, went bankrupt in 1996 and was taken over by Recoton German Holdings.
Horny - Hornyphon See --> Vindobona (1923 - 1936) & Radiowerk Horny (1936 - Present ?)
Infrared Research Laboratories
USA based manufacturer of generic remote controls that the company marketed under the SoleControl brand, one of the first if not the first maker of such contraptions, bought out by Recoton in 1994 after it stopped trading.
Ingelen See --> Ingelen
Intelligent Audio Systems
Founded by Ken Kantor (ex-Acoustic Research (AR)) around the turn of the century and did make at the least one subwoofer design ?.
International Business Machines (IBM)
This may come as a surprise to some but yes, IBM was actually active in the audio business particularly in the 30's, although most of them their products were intended for PA use they also saw use in Radio stations and recording studios. Amongst their products were microphones, amplifiers and mixers. They were also active in the dictation market from the late 50's and into the 70's after they bought the intellectual properties of Pierce Wire Recorder Corp. and were actually the biggest manufacturer of dictation recorders in the USA in the early to mid 60's. Official homepage.
International Jensen
Based in Benicia, California, USA. A long running manufacturer of loudspeakers and loudspeaker drivers, although it had successfully got into car audio electronics through it's German subsidiary. The company was by the mid 90's a leading manufacturer of home and automotive loudspeakers but faced increasing competition from far eastern manufacturers and outside of the car audio business their attempts to break into the more lucrative parts of the home audio business had not been totally successful, but along the way the company had acquired a number of companies and brands including Acoustic Research (AR), Advent, Phase Linear,Now Hear This (NHT), Mac Audio and Magnat. After having been run at a loss for a few years the company was effectivly split into 3 separate companies in August 1996 and sold off in parts, the consumer and marketing part of the company was sold to Recoton were it continued as the semi-independent Recoton Audio Corp, the OEM loudspeaker driver division was sold to a company called IJI Acquisition Corp that was in fact expressly founded by IJ CEO Robert G. Shaw to buy that operation and the OEM business receivables were sold to the Harris Trust and Savings Bank, this did not go through without problems however and a number of stockholders sued all of the partaking companies and their advisers but to no avail.
Isophon
German loudspeaker manufacturer founded in 1929, sold the first 2 way loudspeaker systems in 1935 and manufactured both drivers and loudspeaker systems (mostly PA and other Sound Reinforcement units though) well into the 70's but gradually phased out production of systems and survived mostly on providing car audio drivers to the German automotive industry. Sold to Thomson in the 1980's, the brandname is however licensed to Acoustic Consulting which manufactures mid and high end loudspeakers. For support for older Isophon products contact Lange & Partner..
ITT (Germany) See --> C. Lorenz
Janssen
In store brand used by California, USA based hi-fi & electronics chain store CAL Stereo in the 1970's, mostly loudspeakers, unsure who was the OEM supplier.
Kabushiki Kaisha Fidelity-Research
Legendary Japanese producer of tonearms and pickups founded in 1964 by a former factory manager at Grace by the name of Osamu Ikeda, the company usually traded as just Fidelity Research and they were based in Tokyo. The company made phonographic products that had an excellent reputation in particular their tonearms and MC pickups but company ran into financial difficulties in 1984 and closed down. Ikeda-san however bounced back with his Ikeda Sound Labs company that makes specialised phonographic products with some influences from the earlier FR designs.
Kasprzak See --> Zaklady Radiowe Kasprzaka (ZK - ZRK)
Kensonic Laboratory See --> Accuphase
Kinergetics Research
US based manufacturer of high end audio separates including CD players and amplifiers, company was wound down by it's owners in 2000 as it was not thought it would archive profitability in the foreseeable future. For repairs in the USA try this company, they should be able to get you in contact with an ex engineer or try contacting the gentleman here below who is a former head tech for the company
Fred Pham, 26103 Belle Porte Ave. Apt D, Harbor City, CA 90710.
Tel : (310) 534-5336 or (310) 408-7597...
Kinshaw Electronics Ltd. 
Small British company founded by Peter Hawkins that started out in 1991 and made amplification products and DAC's, but stopped production in 1995, however Mr. Hawkins started a new company in 1997 called Goingon that acts mostly as an electronic design consultancy but does provide some support for Kinshaw customers including spares, repairs and upgrades. We have minimal information on the Kinshaw RIAA Preamplifiers. Official homepage. - Kinshaw pages
Kyocera
Originally Kyoto Ceramics, this is a Japanese manufacturer of ceramics, electronic parts and consumer electronics primarily as an OEM. Manufactured Hi-fi under this name after they merged with Cybernet in 1982, some of their products were really innovative and benefited greatly from the company's research into advanced ceramic technologies, in particular turntables and cassette decks, by the latter half of the 80's this gave them a reputation not dissimilar to what Nakamichi had at the time, but the line suffered from distribution problems as the hi-fi market in particular and consumer markets in general were not really the company's forte and they exited this market segment shortly thereafter. The company also acted as an
Lawson & Parsons
Small British manufacturer of valve amplifiers supplied mainly as PA equipment but also in the later years as hi-fi equipment, originally started by ex-Marconi engineer Gordon Lawson shortly after WWII as G. R. Lawson Ltd. but ran into financial difficulty at the turn of the decade and took on a partner named Parson and thus the new name. While the new company was initially somewhat successful it was always under funded and was wound down in the latter half of the 50's when Lawson went to work for Beam-Echo Ltd..
Leak
British manufacturer of consumer audio products based in London. There is an interesting site that has info on the Leak company, but sadly the proprietor of that page seems to loose interest in the company when it starts developing transistor amps and no info on the company after it was bought by Thorn-EMI..
Lear Radio & Lear-Jet
Company was started around 1949 by Bill Lear who was one of the original founders of Motorola, introduced a wire recorder in 1945 Lear-Jet based in Grand Rapids in the state of Michigan, U.S.A. .
L. M. Ericsson
Although these days this Swedish electronics giant is primarily known as a manufacturer of communications equipment they did for large parts of the 20th century operate in and around the audio sector, primarily in the PA field were they supplied both systems and individual units, the company was something of a symbol of over engineering and reliability and their systems were some of the most expensive you could get. The company also owned the legendary hi-fi manufacturer Sonab for a while. Official homepage. - Swedish homepage
Lorenz See --> C. Lorenz
Luxor Industri AB 
Founded in 1923 in Motala, Sweden by Axel Holstensson to manufacture crystal radio sets but quickly grew in to one of the larger Swedish radio manufacturers. Expanded into other areas of Brown Goods manufacture and in the 1950's became one of the first European mass manufacturers of television sets. Despite being small on an international scale and with marketing and distribution almost entirely limited to the north-western part of Europe, Luxor was actually a full line manufacturer, by 1976 the company not only sold a wide range of TV and hi-fi products including separates and high tech products like video recorders but also TV games and cheaper products like portable radios and suchlike, it had a workforce of over 2600 and a turnover of more than 700 million SEK pr. annum. However disaster struck later that year when the company's TV manufacturing plant burnt to the ground, since TV production was by this time a mainstay of the company this was a blow from which it never really recovered as the increased competition in the market in the following years did give it the necessary room to recover. In 1978 the company formed a new division called Luxor Datorer (Datorer = Computers) and introduced the ABC80, a Z80 based personal computer that became very popular in northern Europe and the first satellite TV set-top box. The ABC80 is intriguing since the only computer experience the company had prior to this was a very limited production run of terminals for Saab but nevertheless they made quite a success out of its manufacture by utilising their CE manufacturing know how and existing production facilities, for instance the monitor that came with the ABC80 was a modified portable TV and so on, this enabled the company to offer their computer products considerably cheaper than comparable imported items despite having a much smaller market and superior specifications, another factor was that the company also sold the computer through their existing dealer network but in most other countries computers where sold almost exclusively in computer and electronic stores rather than in electrical retailers. The company however hit cash flow problems in 1979 and was nationalised later that year. Luxor was reasonably successful under government control but mounting pressures from their competitors forced the Swedish government to get rid of the company and it was sold to Nokia in 1984 who merged the Brown goods part of the operation with Salora which still uses the Luxor brand to sell their products in Sweden, the Luxor Datorer operation was closed down in 1986 but the set-top box manufacturing part of the operation survived.
Next Page : Defunct Audio Companies. - M