Geloso Gemme Audio See --> 6440436 Canada Inc. Generalvertrieb d. C. Sevecke Fabrikate The firm had the good luck to have obtained a license for radio technologies from Telefunken but that company was a combine created by Siemens and AEG in 1903 to pool radio patents by those 2 companies after the realisation that a radio sender and receiver could not be built without utilising technologies developed and patented by those 2 companies. Plans were afoot in Germany as early as 1907 to start public radio broadcasting with support from the state and the authorities encouraged Telefunken to license its technology to as many companies as possible to encourage R&D and get its use as widespread as possible, and Sevecke was one of those that managed to obtain a license. When Radio broadcasting started for real in Germany in 1923 things had changed however, the Weimar Republic with its hyperinflation and other economic ills represented a much smaller market for consumer radio products than had originally been envisaged and neighbouring counties had in the meantime imposed high import duties on industrial products and implemented other hindrances modelled on the USA import regulatory systems that were supposed to encourage local industries, so export markets were no longer available either. In addition to that some countries simply forbade importation of radio equipment altogether for security reasons. Telefunken was thus disinclined to issue any new licences in the 20's and early 30's so as to minimise competition which meant that only companies that already had licenses could enter the radio market. The company started manufacturing radios in 1924 and was known for their quality products although they remained a fairly small and local player in the German market with the bulk of their products sold through the then well-known radio store of Julius Jessel that was based in neighbouring Frankfurt auf Main and who also operated as a radio catalogue retailer in the 1920's. The market did not grow as fast as many had expected, but in Germany as here in the UK it was illegal to operate a radio receiver without having applied for and purchased a license from the Postmaster General. To begin with all of Sevecke's radio products were made in house, but in 1925 another Frankfurt auf Main based company called Braun started supplying them with ready built detectors (the tuning circuit on early radios), and a year later when Braun started manufacturing connectors, plastic parts and a little later their own thermionic valves, Sevecke started buying parts and even whole sub-assemblies from them. And little by little the design and manufacture of Sevecke radios was moved into the Braun factory and by 1929 some of the Sevecke radios were fully built there. In the early 30's products actually designed by Braun were sold under the Sevecke name including the famous Cosmophon. Braun was keen to get into the market for consumer radio products itself and entered the market in 1933 with a couple of desktop radio products they had to be sold under the auspices of Sevecke due to licensing issues although they were designed and made by Braun. By 1933 Germany was already showing signs of coming out of the great depression quicker than the neighbouring countries and sales of radios picking up and later that year the German government introduced the Volksempfänger concept which was to make sales of radios sky-rocket in the next few years. In the end Braun saw no other solution to their licensing problems but to purchase Sevecke and did so in 1935 and integrated what little remained of Sevecke's manufacturing capacity into their own organisation. Genesis Physics Corporation Genesis Technologies Gennett See --> Starr Piano Co. George O’Connell Gesellschaft für drahtlose Telegraphie mbH See --> Telefunken G. F. C. Hadcock Ltd./George F. C. Hadcock (1930 – 2007) In 1982 Mr. Hadcock officially retired from the engineering business and moved to Ashbourne in Derbyshire, but continued the manufacture of arms and formed a new company around the operation called G. F. C. Hadcock Ltd.. For a while things appear to be Ok but with diminishing sales due to the introduction of the CD etc., by the latter half of the 80’s the company’s products were starting to get bad reviews in the English press where sub-par performance of the arms was blamed directly on shoddy construction, by the turn of the decade the business had all but dried up and the company went out of business in 1994. Mr. Hadcock however re-started the manufacture of arms in 1997, this time as a sole trader, by this time interest in their unipivot tonearms had grown again since there only a few arms were left on the market that mated reasonably well with moving iron and moving magnet pickups, in particular The Cartridgeman spurred him on but his products mated very well with the Hadcock arms. Mr. Hadcock found it increasingly difficult to work on the products after 2003 due to age related problems and illness and by 2005 his son Chales Hadcock had for all intents and purposes overtaken the actual manufacture of the arms. Sadly Mr. Hadcock passed away in 2007 but his son has taken over the business and now runs it as Hadcock. We have some info on older Hadcock tonearms. Next Page : Defunct Audio Companies - Gl to G9 -- Previous Page : Defunct Audio Companies - Fa to Fk |
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