Hi Axel,
I had the privilege of meeting John and Brian Garrott on several occasions at their various residences in and around Sydney in the early 1980s.
They took the English A&R P77 cartridge (a good performer in its own right), and hand tweaked it to new levels calling it the Garrott P77 which rightly led to their fame.
Eccentric and passionate, the two reclusive brothers married 2 Phillipino sisters and all four lived together in their various houses with the sisters baking biscuits and fussing over the boys whilst everyone called each other Luvvey. As I recall, John was the voluble protagonist to all who would ring or call by, whilst Brian sat quietly at the workbench, magnifying glass in left eye, painstakingly winding coils and preparing and gluing styli.
They passionately despised the MC cartridges then making their early claims for audiophile prominence and I vividly recall them sitting me down in front of their extraordinary Hi-Fi system (which consisted of stacked Quads and multiple sub-woofers), and playing a record with the then famous Supex MC cartridge and detaching the headshell to shift in their Garrott P77. Of course the P77 sounded better with none of the irritating and unnatural high frequency exaggeration common to moving coils at that time.
I had them re-tip my P77 at least 3 times during the '80s and, as no cartridge had ever sounded so sweet to me, I bought 2 of them.
I doubt that Brian and John were worried about the CD revolution as they never mentioned it to me, but the discovery that one of them had developed cancer saw the four of them commit ritual suicide in a pact that seemed consistent with their mutual inter-dependence although no note was ever found.
Regards
Halcro
I had the privilege of meeting John and Brian Garrott on several occasions at their various residences in and around Sydney in the early 1980s.
They took the English A&R P77 cartridge (a good performer in its own right), and hand tweaked it to new levels calling it the Garrott P77 which rightly led to their fame.
Eccentric and passionate, the two reclusive brothers married 2 Phillipino sisters and all four lived together in their various houses with the sisters baking biscuits and fussing over the boys whilst everyone called each other Luvvey. As I recall, John was the voluble protagonist to all who would ring or call by, whilst Brian sat quietly at the workbench, magnifying glass in left eye, painstakingly winding coils and preparing and gluing styli.
They passionately despised the MC cartridges then making their early claims for audiophile prominence and I vividly recall them sitting me down in front of their extraordinary Hi-Fi system (which consisted of stacked Quads and multiple sub-woofers), and playing a record with the then famous Supex MC cartridge and detaching the headshell to shift in their Garrott P77. Of course the P77 sounded better with none of the irritating and unnatural high frequency exaggeration common to moving coils at that time.
I had them re-tip my P77 at least 3 times during the '80s and, as no cartridge had ever sounded so sweet to me, I bought 2 of them.
I doubt that Brian and John were worried about the CD revolution as they never mentioned it to me, but the discovery that one of them had developed cancer saw the four of them commit ritual suicide in a pact that seemed consistent with their mutual inter-dependence although no note was ever found.
Regards
Halcro