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Kasprzak See --> Zaklady Radiowe Kasprzaka (ZK - ZRK)
Kensonic Laboratory See --> Accuphase
Kenwood Electronics Inc.
Company founded in 1961 in California, USA by George Aratani who provided the finance and Hiroshi William Kasuga, an American businessman of Japanese descent that had worked with A&A trading Co. and Radio Shack to procure electronic CE and communications equipment from Japanese OEM's. The name Kenwwod was simply chosen since it would have a similar pronunciation in both Japanese and English and other well-known brands existed in the USA at the time that started with Ken such as Kenmore and Kenworth, Ken in Japanese means province or canton BTW.
The company initially worked with a number of Japanes OEM’s but quickly settled into a relationship with the Trio company and over the years the co-operation between the two had become close with the American company often taking part in the specification process. Kenwood was in fact so successful as a marketing concern that it became much better known than Trio in the Americas, even though Trio branded products were generally available there, in the end Trio bought into the Kenwood Electronics company in the 1970’s, in 1981 decided to rename itself Kenwood in order to have only one brandname worldwide and bought the naming rights from the USA company and in 1986 bought the Kenwood Elctronics Inc. company outright and merged it into its own North American concern and the combined operation is now known as Kenwood U.S.A.
Please note that the original name of the Trio corporation was Kasuga Radio Co. Ltd., there is no connection between the company name and that of William Kasuga’s family name, it is just a not very unlikely coincidence given that Kasuga is a fairly common Japanese last name..
Keroes Enterprises
Company founded by Herbert I. Keroes in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA in the latter half of the 50’s. Initially the company was used for the IP that Mr. Keroes generated in regards to the Acrosound company that he owned, but copyrights and patents filed from the late 50’s were assigned to KE and not Acro, some of the later amplifier designs from that company also featured a K logo in addition to the Acrosound name printed onto them
It was believed that KE had been purely a holdings company but recently there have showed up a number of transformers for sale that bear the Keroes Enterprises name, and in addition to that we have found a reference to KE owning or rather using the Acrosound brand later on but that might be a misunderstanding. However we have no idea if the transformers made by KE were made by Acro or are from after that company went bust.
Keswick Audio Research
A mid/high end loudspeaker manufacturer based in Ferrybridge, Knottingley, Yorkshire in the UK and run by Dean S. Hartley, timeline is uncertain but Mr. Hartley joined Monitor Audio in 1998 after the takeover of that company by Dave Collins.
KHS (Home install systems) See --> Hanser Music Group
Kinergetics Research
US based manufacturer of high end audio separates including CD players and amplifiers. Actually started up in 1971 by Tony DiChiro and Ken Cowans as a R&D shop specialising in cryogenic refrigerators and deep sea diving equipment, branched into the manufacture of specialised diving equipment for the oil industry in 1973 and in 1974 set up a electronics manufacturing division that specialised in audio and video products for professional undervater applications. In 1980 they introduced the Compusound loudspeaker that featured acoustic processing electronics, but despite the name the processing electronics where analogue BBD's and since these where quite successful in the market the company turned it's attention to the manufacture of home hi-fi products and by the late 80's had become a pure home audio company. KR 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, Mr. Hawkins went on to found a new company in 1997 called Goingon did prowise support for Kinshaw products and he now has a company called Hawkshead 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. - Mr. Hawkins Kinshaw pages
Klein Technology Group LLC
USA based company owned by Douglas Klein that bought ADCOM in 2001 and ran it until mid 2006. The company still has a webpage but there is no info on it and Mr. Klein no longer works in the audio business.
Homepage: http://www.kleintechgroup.com
KOYA Sound See --> Yuantian
Kraco
Company was founded in 1954 in Compton, Califoria, USA and sold auto sound accessories. Company is still based in Compton but is currently called Kraco Enterprises Inc and only manufactures floormats for cars.
Homepage: http://www.kraco.com
KR Enterprise S.R.O.
Company founded in 1994 to sell the products of Vaic Valve and disolved around the year 2000 with the partners going with KR Audio Electronics and Vaic Audio.
Krypton See --> Kryna
Kudos Audio Limited
Two British companies sharing the exact same name, first company was founded in 1991 as an offshoot of an UK engineering company and manufactured a loudspeaker stand called S100. It got rave reviews in the press but did not sell in any great quantities since it was considerably dearer than similar stands available in the UK marketplace at the time.
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The later incarnation of the company goes out of business in late 1998 and had been dissolved by 2000, and the last we heard from Mr Vanns was that he was working in the insurance industry. The manufacture of the speaker stands and the trademark were taken over by Neat Acoustics who continued making the stands up until 2005.
As far as we know the S100 and S50 were the only products the companies delivered, the S100 was made in 46 and 60 cm heights and was by 1999 retailing for 379 UKP for a pair, by the time Neat had taken over the S100 had an RRP of 495 UKP and the cheaper S50 had an RRP of 159. The latter is BTW externally identical to the S100 apart from a slightly smaller upper plate and a simpler cone arrangement, and like its bigger brother was made available in 46 & 60cm sizes. Current manufacturer of the stands is Kudos and they are basically making the S50 stands little changed from its original incarnation so they should be able to get you spare parts such as cones, however the S100 in no longer being made and you may need to hunt around for replacement feet.
Kustom (Home install systems) See --> Hanser Music Group
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
Homepage: http://global.kyocera.com
Kyungbang Fonica See --> Fonica
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