Designer Hall of Fame


There are many great designers out there, and especially in the lore from the golden age, but I'm not to familiar with them. I thought it might be interesting to discuss some of the great designers for engineering skill and knowledge, business integrity, and ultimatley quality of their products. My short list a "hall of fame" if you will of designers working today are:

Nelson Pass, Pass Labs
Charles Hansen, Ayre
Roger Modjeski, Music Reference
Ken Stevens, Convergent Audio Technolgy (CAT)
Kevin Hayes, VAC

and how could I leave Jeff Rowland off? Well it is a short list. Who would you nominate?
pubul57
Bruce Moore and Scott Frankland MFA
Roy Gandy
Jim Winey

I have limited personal experience with most of the great names in audio because I rarely change components. I've loved my MFA Luminescence preamp for well over 20 years. The Lumi has been upgraded twice by Scott. I also have a pair of MFA M120B mono amps- upgraded once by Scott. All pieces are keepers.

Roy Gandy-Rega P5- A heck of a lot of turntable for not a lot of money, although I wish I had not sold my Linn and VPI. :)

Jim Winey- My first high-end speakers were MG1's and I recently restored a pair of MMG's and am, at long last, happily back in the Magnepan fold.
Surprised, that only 2 mentions, of Stewart Hegeman appeared. He truly pioneered many things, such as wide bandwidth in amplifiers, minimal negative feedback in amplifiers, and, many speaker designs, just to name a few. He was brilliant, with both tube, and solid state, designs. Many, many years ago, I met him at an audio fair, in New Jersey. He was very soft spoken, and, seemed to shy away from all of the marketing hype that was going on.
I agree with the recommendation of Nelson Pass and Kevin Hayes, though objectively my other 3 Hall of Famers would be Arnie Nudell, Richard Vandersteen & Dan D'Agostino, though so many others deserve to be recognized such as Franco Serblin, Andy Payor (whose Sirius turntable is still considered amongst the best ever made), Alon Wolf, Hans Ole Vitus, Flemming E. Rasmussen & Holger Fromme.