Hafler See --> David Hafler Co.

Hagemeyer N.V.
Dutch trading company that took over the Yorx International company in 1994 and sold Asian sourced low budget brown goods and portable multimedia products under the Yorx brand and later under their own GPX brand. Actual division that handled the AV stuff was called Trabelco N.V. but that company was listed in the Dutch Antilles for tax purposes and unlike most such European trading operations was mostly unkown in Europe but quite well known in the USA as a budget provider. Later sold budget audio products under the Koss brand, but they licensed the brand from Koss in the Americas and Europe. Hagemeyer sold the Trabelco business unit to its USA management team in 2004 who founded a US listed company called GPX Inc. that continues using the same brands and business models.
Homepage: http://www.hagemeyer.com

Hairekuto
This is as far as I can gather the name of the Japanese company that sold products under the Hi-Lect brand. Initially sold a high end phonographic moving coil pickup intended for use with quadrophonic systems in the early/mid 70's but when sales of quad products fell off a cliff in the latter half of that decade it was re-branded as the Hi-Lect 2017 stereo phonographic cartridge.

At the same time the company sold headshell wires made out of pure silver and they become so popular that they later added interconnects, tonearm wires and other cable products made out of pure silver and the company is one of the pioneers of using silver in the modern audio world alongside compatriots Audio Note/Kondo. Timeline is unknown, they seem to disappear off the market in the early 80's but there are Hi-Lect silver cables being sold new as late as the early 90's but not known it the company survived for so long or if there were simply NOS stocks floating around.

Haitai See --> Etronics

Hammond See --> Hammond Manufacturing (Canada - Radios 1923 to 1926 and Amplifiers 1927 to 1940's)

Hans-Hubertus Esser
German gentleman based in the village of Hummeltal near Bayeruth in Bavaria, that started selling test cards for calibration of video cameras under the Esser Test Charts brand in 1985 after buying the technology from “Döss Klischee Und Litho GmbH” in Nürnberg that had pioneered the technology of TV camera test charts in the late 1940’s and early 50’s.

Due to the highly specialised nature of the company it newer grew larger than 5 employees, but by 2004 they were offering 141 types of test charts in addition to untold custom made variations, up from the 16 that the company originally offered when it started out in 1985, and amongst their clients were literally all TV and broadcast camera manufacturers and OEM's. In addition the company made transparency illuminators. The trademark and product lines were sold to Image Engineering in 2006.

Harksound See --> CEC

Harvard Kyoto (Car audio, budget CE products) See --> Harvard International

Head-Direct (Headphones etc) See --> Tianjin Leaders Technology Ltd.

Heart Audio
Dutch company that appears to have started out in the late 90’s and was a part of the Rik Stoet high end hi-fi retail shop that is based in the Hague. Originally sold modified CD players that were commodity players, usually from Marantz, that had had the analogue board disabled and replaced by a valve based board, these were referred to by the company as “Tubed CD players” and often branded as “Tubed by Heart”. These became quite well known in the early 00’s since this was before the onslaught of low budget Chinese valve based CD players and the valve based alternative at the time was a high end player from a specialist concerns costing a few thousand euros while a modified one from Heart typically set you back less than a thousand.

They also introduced a line of valve amplifier kits around the turn of the century called StoetKits initially compromising 3 models that like the CD players got to be quite well known at the time. Although primarily designed as kits, fully 2/3ds of them were sold fully built and the line was successful enough that the company was by 2005 selling these in 7 variations. In a similar timeframe Heart set up an internet store called tubes4all.com that sold valves and related electronic parts.

By 2003 the Heart operation was under the auspices of hi-fi distributor Music Matters (Now known as HiFI Matters) and were based in the same premises in Zoetermeer as MM, but that company appears to have been owned by Rik Stoet as well. Heart also added a tuner model that was upgraded in a similar manner to the CD players, i.e. the output amplifier/buffer was replaced with a valve based one. In 2004 Marantz stopped making the models that the company had been manufacturing and they had problems finding replacements simply because most affordable commercial CD players had by that time stopped having the analogue output section on a separate board. The company disappears in 2007 with a simple announcement that all 3 operations (Heart/Stoetkit/Tubes4all) had stopped trading and that remaining stocks would be sold through the Rik Stoet store (all long gone by now). There appears to be some sort of technical/repair support available via their website.
Homepage: http://www.heartaudio.nl

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 but was taken over by Rank Organisation in the latter half of the 1950's. Company went independent again I believe in the latter half of the 80's but I have not been able to verify when and how, and expanded by buying a manufacturing facility in East Germany but went bankrupt in 1996 and was taken over by Recoton German Holdings.

Herald Electronics See --> Olson Electronics

Hervic Corporation
Small company based in Van Nuys in California, USA that was incorporated in 1977 but had existed in some form or another prior to that. Distributed and rebranded all kinds of photography related products and sold them throughout the United States, most of these products originating in Europe but in the latter half of the 70’s some Japanese products start showing up. Company was run by Otto Hervic and its heyday was in the early to mid-1970's but it was still going as a one man operation as late as 2002. Audio products you are most likely to see with this brandname are Microphones and Headphones that where sold as home cinematography accessories, the latter where sourced from an unknown UK based company. Not believed to be related to Hervic Electronics (Below).

Hervic Electronics
Company founded by and named after William Herskovic in 1972 and based in Sherman Oaks, California, USA. Distributed British audio products such as AR Sugden & Co, Keith Monks Sound Systems and Goldring in the USA and later added Eon Research And Development Corp., Dynavector and more to their line of distributed products, but they also sold products under their own Hervic brand, most of them sourced from local OEM's like SAE although a few Japanese products showed up with the Hervic name on them as well. It does appear that the company was involved in a little bit of skulduggery in regards to Sugden, but loudspeakers from the 70’s bearing Sugden’s “Connoisseur” brand turn up from time to time in the USA that are not from A. R. Sugden but seem to have been made for Hervic by an unknown OEM. Appears to go out of business in 1981 or thereabouts.

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