Is there a Northern and Southern California Sound

When I got into advanced hi-fi, planars were the only serious choice. David Fletcher (co-founder of SOTA, and designer of the Sumiko MDC-800, "The Arm") was selling the Canadian-made Dayton-Wright ESL’s in his Berkeley shop, Walter Davies (now LAST Record Care Products) was selling Magneplanar Tympani’s in Livermore, and Sound Systems in Palo Alto the Infinity Servo-Statics.

When I moved south, Brooks Berdan had the Eminent Technology LFT’s and Quads, and Martin Logans and Maggies were in a few stores. But as dynamic designs starting getting real good (Richard Vandersteen being a primary and hugely influential designer), planars started to fade. They require a lot of room, and the younger buyers with big incomes like speakers that "rock" more than do planars.

When dealers found out how much money they could make selling, oh, I don’t know, say Wilson speakers (;-), the writing was on the wall.

Brooks’ son Brian (who ran Brooks Berdan Ltd. as Brooks’ health declined) now has his own shop, Audio Elements, in nearby Pasadena. Audiogon contributor folkfreak (who has had me over at his place in Portland to hear his super-fine system) has been one of his clients for years, at both BBL and AE.

Brooks was my main man, starting way back in the mid-80’s. I started accompanying him to the Vegas CES in the late-90’s. His wife Sheila (who now runs BBL) had me put together a band to play at Brooks’ 50th birthday party, at which he got up on my drumset and played "Wipe Out" with the band. Happiest I ever saw him! His death was a huge loss to the SoCal audiophile community.