Defunct Audio Manufacturers - Ge & Gf

Geloso
Founded in 1931 as S. A. John Geloso in Milano, Italy to manufacture radio receiving and broadcasting equipment and quickly became the leading Italian manufacturer in the field. After WWII it moved more into the field of consumer electronics and with it further into the manufacture of electronic components by necessity, but since most of the European electronics industry was in ruins after the war, trade restrictions hindered British exporters and the US dollar was so expensive that importing from the Americas was just not economically possible. Primarily a manufacturer of broadcast and communications equipment but is probably best known in the English speaking world for their tape recorders and ham radio equipment that were very popular in the USA and UK in the late 50's since the devalued Lira meant that they were sold at prices that local manufacturers could hardly match. The company also made guitar and bass amplifiers and cabines in the 50's and 60's that had a reputation for reliability at a time when such amps were notoriusly flaky, but we have never seen those for sale outside southern Europe. Went bankrupt in 1973 and was split into 9 sub companies that were sold separately, the audio division became PASO Sound.

Gemme Audio See --> 6440436 Canada Inc.

Generalvertrieb d. C. Sevecke Fabrikate
Pioneering German radio manufacturer based in Höchst am Main (then an independent town, now a district in Frankfurt am Main), in the state of Hesse, and founded by and named after Carl Sevecke sometime around 1900 as Elektrotechnische Werke Carl Sevecke, was by 1904 already a well-known manufacturer of electrical products locally. Although the company changed its name at the least once during its lifetime their products nameplates always had just the Carl Sevecke name on them and in daily usage the company was just referred to as Sevecke, it is also believed that the company had a brand name and a logo for their Radios but we have not been successful in digging that up.

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
Loudspeaker manufacturer originally founded in Newington, New Hampshire, USA in 1975, but later stationed in Portsmouth in the same state. Went into Chapter 11 in 1986 and was finally liquidated in late 1987, the Human Speakers company bought the tooling etc. needed to keep producing drivers and you should contact them for service or upgrades.

Genesis Technologies

High end loudspeaker manufacturer based in Gypsum in the Vail Vallye of Colorado, USA, that was founded in 1991 by Arnie Nudell (Infinity founder) and Paul McGowan. Entered the electronics business in 1997 with the introduction of the Genesis Technologies Digital Lens and shortly thereafter with the introduction of specialised subwoofer amplifiers but the electronic side of the business remained a minor part of their output. Mark Schifter came in as a shareholder in the mid 90's and served as the company's executive vice president, in late 2000 however both him and Paul McGowan left to found their own companies in the form of Perpetual Technologies and PS Audio and the Genesis Technologies company itself went into liquidation in late 2001. Note that Mr. Nudell appears has founded a new company called Genesis Advanced Technologies that manufactures loudspeakers similar to what Genesis Technologies was making, also note that Genesis Technologies was not related to Genesis Physics (above) in any way.

Gennett See --> Starr Piano Co.

George O’Connell
USA based gentleman that started making loudspeakers under the Chicago Acoustic brand from his home in Chicago, Illinois in 1974. No real info has been found on the history of either the gent nor the brand, but he did manufacture very well regarded speakers in the mid-seventies and was best known for making small quality speakers that went against the grain at the time but the trend in the USA then was for huge monsters. Appears to be still with us around 1978 but had completely disappeared by 1982.

Gesellschaft für drahtlose Telegraphie mbH See --> Telefunken

G. F. C. Hadcock Ltd./George F. C. Hadcock (1930 – 2007)

An aeronautical engineering company/sole trader based in Doveridge in Derbyshire, England that started to manufacture high end arm lifts called Uni-Lifts in the 1960’s as a side-line that survived into the early 80’s by then in a MkIV version. Introduced its first pickup-arm in the latter half of the same decade in the form of the Hadcock Unipoise which received only lukewarm reviews but sold fairly well, the company gained something of a reputation for the varying build quality of their products but also for frequent upgrades, the Hadcock Super Unipoise was introduced in late 1975 and with that arm the products of the company start getting better reviews and the time from ca. 1978 to 1982 is considered something of an golden age for the company, their products such as the Hadcock GH 228 got in general very favourable reviews and the complaints about the build quality that had slighted the reputation of the company in the preceding decade all but disappeared, it does appears that the building of arms had become the mainstay of the operation.

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

© 1993 - 2013 Ólafur Gunnlaugsson, all rights reserved.


The site was last compiled on Sun Nov 10 2013 at 9:15:00am