Manufacturers :
A Al Au B Bg C Ci D E
F G H I J K L M Mi N
O P Pi Q R S Sl T Ti
U V W X Y Z 0-9

Distributors :
Europe - Asia - Australasia
America, Carrib. & Pacific
Africa & Middle East

Defunct Audio Companies :
A- B - C - D - E - F - G
H to L - M - N & O - P & Q
R - S - T - U to 9

Record labels :
A - B & C - D to G
H to N - O to S - T to 9
Defunct Record Labels

Jargon/Glossary :
A & B - C to G - H to M
N to R - S to 9

About Audiotools.com

Record Players - Tonearms
Discontinued Turntables
Pickups - Discontinued Arms
78 Rpm. - Phono Preamps
Discontinued Pickups

Reel to Reel - DAT
Vintage formats - NR
Compact Cassette - Mini Disc
Microphones - Other Formats
Vintage Open Reels

SACD - Compact Disc
Valve Audio - Headphones
Loudspeaker Drivers
Cables and Connectors



Please send any factual corrections, dead links, information and/or links that you feel that should be on this page to the page maintainer but please note that I do not have an Internet access at the moment so there may be some time before I can answer.


Defunct Audio Manufacturers - R

Rabco Co.
Company formed in 1968 by Jacob Rabinow to manufacture a linear tracking arm that he invented, there were problems with the arm and it's manufacture from the start and Mr. Rabinow more or less gave up on the idea and sold his company to Harman Kardon in 1972, they continued selling the arm and even turntables using this brand for a few years afterward but discontinued it's use in 1980.

Radiofabrik Ingelen Figer & Co KG See --> Ingelen

Radiola See --> Amalgamated Wireless Australasia Ltd. (AWA) (Australia) or RCA (USA)

Radionette See --> Tandberg

Radiotechnic Laboratories See --> Pierce Wire Recorder Corp.

Radiowerk Dzierzoniow See --> Diora Świdnica

Radiowerk Horny A.G.

Founded in 1936 in Wien when the Austrian arm of Philips took over the bankrupt Vindobona company. This turned out to be a smart move on Philips part as they were the main creditor and supplier of the original company and would thus have lost out if the company had not survived, further more the Hornyphon brand had become well known in Germany and Britain in addition to being by far the biggest supplier of radios etc. in Austria and became profitable soon after production was restarted. From it's founding and until 1947 the company was mostly occupied with the manufacture of it's own products but after that period Philips increasingly began to integrate the sales and branding of the various companies they owned world-wide and Philips products began to appear in Austria branded Hornyphon and products from RH were increasingly sold outside of it's home country branded as Philips, by the 60's the Hornyphon name had all but disappeared except as a local brand. The factories continued however and were for a time the main source of certain tape recorders lines from Philips, their excellent but seldom seen professional tape recorders were for instance designed and manufactured at the RH factory and later some video recorder lines were produced there as well. The usage of the Hornyphon trademark appears to have been dropped in the 1980's and I have not been able to find out for certain if the factory is still going but I believe it was one of the factories that disappeared in the "Rationalisation Programme" of Philips in the early 1990's, when the company sold and shut down a large number of product lines, technologies and factories in an effort to simplify it's management and financial structure (remember "downsizing" was the business buzzword of the late 80's, early 90's).

Despite what you might think the Horny and Hornyphon names did not have any negative or "entertaining" connotations in English at the time when the company's products were at their most popular as an export product (1930's), the company's main export markets were actually the English speaking world, in particular portable gramophones and radios from the company were popular with the English expatriates that were working in various corners of the British empire since they used more standardised parts, were more easily repairable and had a wider tuning range than the equivalent British product not the least due to the use of better passive parts that withstood extremeties in humidity better. It appears that slang usage of the word "horny" was limited to the former colonies in America until the 1970's.

Radmor
Founded in 1947 in Danzig, Poland as a radio workshop, operated throughout the communist years as a radio and communications equipment manufacturer under the name of Zaklady Radiowe Radmor and had a line of hi-fi separates that were sold locally under the Unitra brand and after the privatisation in the early 90's under their own name. Exited the audio business in the 90's to concentrate on manufacturing communications equipment, changed their name to Radmor S. A. and is one of the success stories of the new Polish economy. Official homepage.

Recoton

Company founded in 1936 in New York, USA by ex-Polydor France manager F. Behrendt to import a German phonographic preamplifier and shortly thereafter started importing European phonograph stylii and record needles, the outbreak of war in 1939 meant that the company had to turn to domestic suppliers to survive and in 1952 it bought the Eldeen Manufacturing Corp. and changed from a distributor into a manufacturer overnight. That same year Mr. Behrendt sold the company to Herbert. H. Borchardt who had been employed by the company since 1943 and he added his son Robert L. Borchardt to the board in 1961, despite the change in ownership Recoton continued as a specialised supplier of stylii until 1968 when it decided to diversify by entering the audio accessories business in anticipation of the company going public the year after, unlike their previous products most of their accessories were bought in from OEM's rather than being in-house designs or productions. Until 1976 the company was mostly active in the phonographic sector of the industry but it started diversifying further in 1976 when it acquired Tape Services although it did bolster it's standing in the Phonographic sector in 1980 when it acquired the phonograph related business assets of Fidelitone and in 1988 when it bought some of the assets of Transcriber Inc..

By 1976 R. Borchart had taken over the presidency of the company from his father and he initiated an aggressive expansion strategy that initially saw the company move into other CE businesses in the early 80's such as the video and phone accessories markets, expansion into other markets with the establishment in 1987 of Recoton Canada as a joint venture, but while the company was very well known in the USA and during it's last years probably the best known supplier of audio accessories over there and had by the time the Canadian operation was started a turnover of more than 30 million USD (massive for an accessories marketer) it was almost completely unknown outside the USA and expanding into other markets and countries probably the only option left for the company as far as sizeable future growth was concerned. Hereto the company had also used the Recoton brand almost exclusively even though it technically owned the rights to a number of others, but from 1988 that changed dramatically when Recoton started buying up companies and brands to an unprecedented degree in the CE accessories business. It started in 1989 by taking over Calibron which supplied budget headphones and similar products and later that year it bought antenna marketer All Channel Products and with it the Rembrandt trademark, the Calibron acquisition was in particular important for the company, not only due to the business that came with the purchase which was mostly OEM and not the direct to retailer that the company was used to but also due to Calibron's large land holdings at Lake Mary in Florida, but not long after the company moved their headquarters over there even though the company continued to be listed in New York.

In 1991 Recoton took over the product lines, some assets and trademarks of 2 defunct companies, the antenna manufacturer Parsec along with the Discwasher company, strengthened it's standing in the video accessories market by acquiring Ambico in 1992 and that same year made their Canadian subsidiary a wholly owned one. The company entered the mobile phone accessories market in 1993 and bought the assets of Infrared Research Laboratories in 1994 along with the SoleControl brand and the company marketed all their universal remote controls under that name thereafter (note that the SoleControl brand name has been seen used both as one word and two, even in Recoton literature), later that same year it also bought the assets of the Sound Quest Inc. company. In 1995 the company expanded into the computer game accessory business when it acquired STD Holding Limited of Hong Kong but that company marketed it's products under the InterAct brand, STD's USA based distribution was rolled off into a new company named InterAct Accessories, Inc., this also lead to expansion into the Asian market for the first time since STD had good distribution there, later that year the company acquired the Ampersand division from Ampco, but that paved the way for Recotons entry into the car audio installation market, the company also strengthened it's position in the low end of the car audio market by creating the and Road Gear brand.

By this time the company was doing between 200 and 300 million USD in sales pr. year, which is not to be sniffed at and this made it one of the largest accessories companies in the world, however the rise of the supermarket on one hand and the discount electronics retailer on the other as the main outlets for this market sector was causing problems, while those 2 types of operations typically have a tremendous trading volume and are in some countries responsible for more than 75% of CE accessories sales the problem is that they will only carry a limited number of brands and product lines, important factor for a company like Recoton which had 3500+ products at the time and the close to monopoly position that the biggest chains have, there are only 3 to 4 really large ones in each market which has a tendency to drive down the margins of manufacturers and wholesalers and drives up the margins of the retailer leaving us with wildly profitable retailers but wholesalers that are heavily exposed to market, supply and logistical fluctuations. In Recotons case we can read a lot into the carefully worded report that the company gave to the USA Securities and Exchange in 1997 but it states that sales to the Wal-Mart company in the USA counted for a whopping 11 percent of their world-wide business by dollar value, this is after their take-over of Jensen with their large German subsidiary NB, but there is a complete lack of info into the sales volume however which leads me to believe that sales to Wal-Mart were much higher by volume and thus only a tiny part of their profit, this meant that a deteriorating relationship with just that one supplier would leave the company with a large amount of stocks that were not readily disposable of through other channels, in other words the smaller specialised dealers were simply a much more profitable option for the company than they might appear to be in trading volume alone. The company's entry into the computer game accessories business with the purchase of STD and with their own Game Shark brand also coincided with an increased competition in that sector along with a lowering of margins, Recoton's board decided to try to move into more specialised, high margin areas of the business and set their sights on the high-performance loudspeaker market, but in the USA in particular the loudspeaker market is in may way's more similar to the accessories market that it is to the market for hi-fi separates, with loudspeakers being replaced more often than the electronic part of systems, has a higher profit margin and a longer shelf life of products. In preparation for this move the company founded a new subsidiary corp. called Christie Design Corporation in 1995 that started to design hi-fi loudspeaker products, later that year however the troubled International Jensen company was put up for sale and as since their consumer division was in many way's an ideal fit for Recotons intentions and in August 1996 the company took over the consumer division of Jensen including all trademarks and reached an agreement with the former IJ CEO to dispose of the OEM side of that company seperatly.

The take-over of Jensen was a watershed in Recoton history, first and foremost it bought with it a number of well known USA brands including Advent, AR, Jensen, NHT and Phase Linear, secondly the Jensen company had the manufacturing facilities ready for high end loudspeaker production and thirdly they had very well established marketing channels, not only in the USA but also in Europe, in particular in Italy and Germany were Jensen owned the MacAudio and Magnat companies. Recoton took most of the manufacturing assets it acquired with the Jensen take-over and integrated them into a separate company called Recoton Audio Corp but the German operations were consolidated into the Recoton German Holdings company which expanded further later that year by taking over the bankrupt Heco loudspeaker manufacturer including their East German manufacturing plant and by introducing a new line of high end car audio products under the Phase Linear brand that had not been used for a few years under Jensens ownership. The company also bought much of the assets of Capa Industries in late 1996 in Feb. 1997 it took over Tambalan Ltd. in the UK which traded under the Ross name and with it gained for the first time European and Asian distribution channels for their core audio accessories products, AAMP of Florida was taken over in November of that same year and with it the Stinger and Peripheral brands. In 1998 the company licensed the Rolling Stone and Sprint brands for use on their accessories products and the NMB brand in 1999 for use on AV loudspeaker products, and licensed the NHT trademark to Vergence Technology. Recoton was by now a full line producer or marketer in the CE accessories, car audio and loudspeaker markets and sales peaked in 1999 at just over 710 million USD, although it was operating at a small loss due to some expensive financing arrangements it had entered into due to the large number of take-overs it had performed in the years prior. To counteract this the company signed a new credit facility in 2000 which enabled them to pay off older and smaller loans and this shrunk their interest payments significantly, however this coincided with a small fall in sales in both 2000 and 2001 which forced the company to do minor reorganisation in their USA and Asian operations. In 2002 however sales tumbled, the operating loss for the year was over 134 million USD and despite a serious reorganisation in late 2002 and early 2003 including a sale of a large amount of assets including the sale of Now Hear This (NHT) to Rockford, AAMP of America, Stinger and Pheripheral brands and product lines to an unknown investor and the GameShark brand to Mad Catz Interactive, the company was forced into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in April 2003 and into full bankruptcy proceedings just a few day's later. The car and home audio side of the business was auctioned off to Audiovox for 40 million USD including brand names such as Road Gear and Phase Linear and the profitable Recoton DE group which includes Heco, Magnat and Mac Audio along with the Phase Evoluton brand. The accessories side of the business however went to Thomson for 60 million, that included the full rights to the Ambico, SpikeMaster and Dishwasher brands. The rights to the Advent, Jensen and Acoustic Research brands and products lines were split between Thomson who got the rights to use them on accessories and Audiovox who has the rights to use them on loudspeakers and electronic products.

Rembrant See --> All Channel Products (Pre-1989) or Recoton (1989 - 2003)

Revere Camera Company

Founded in 1920 in Chicago, Illinois, USA as the Excel Radiator Company by Ukrainian immigrant Samuel Briskin to manufacture car radiators, but started manufacturing some coarse household products later in the deacade. Started making budget 8mm movie cameras in 1939 through a subsidiary run by Briskin's sons but that company was later merged into Excel Radiator Co. which then changed it's name to Revere Camera Co. (The Revere name BTW is taken from the Revere Copper Co. which provided financial backing for Excel during the depression). In the 50's the company was the second largest manufacturer of small movie cameras in the USA and in order to grow that business further the company took over their primary lens and shutter supplier in the form of the New Jersey based Wollensak Optical Co. both to secure their supply of parts but also to gain a more upmarket brandname, although Wollensak was primarily know as an OEM supplier of parts they has a small range of upmarket still cameras. The Revere brandname had become synonymous with budget cameras and soon after the take-over Wollensak models appeared that were mechanically mostly identical to the standard Revere models but had much better lenses, more stylish casing and sold for a premium price. The company started manufacturing tape recorders in the early 1950's and while moderatly successful and at the time were considered to be amongst the better quality consumer recorders available in the USA, that side of the business never became an important part of the company's output. Samuel Briskin was diagnosed with inoperable cancer in 1960 and rather than leave the company to his family he decided to sell the company and later that year sold out to 3M for 17 million USD.

RFT
East German state run sales organisation, normally the products of Neumann East Germany (now Microtech Gefell), Ziphona and others were sold with the RFT label rather than using the individual companies trademarks although in the 80's it became more common to see the individual trademarks on the product as well as the RFT brand. Also this method of centralised distribution was only used for consumer products, professional products were distributed and branded by the individual companies.

Road Gear See --> Recoton

Roadstar See --> Sunrise House

Rolling Stone See --> Recoton (Accessories only, 1998 to 2003)

Ross See --> Tambalan Ltd. (1970's to 1997) or Recoton (1997 to 2003)

Russco Electronics Mfg.
A California, USA based manufacturer of broadcast electronics run by and named after Russel Friend, initially best know for their turntable products although by the 80's it was better known for innovative niche products such as it's Telemate remote controlled mixers. The company appears to have started in the 50's and it technically still around but Mr. Friend is retired from manufacturing but still does a bit of support for his older products.

Next Page : Defunct Audio Companies - S

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The site was last updated on Tue Sep 27 2005 at 3:50:43am