For the Golden Ear

In a small shop near Manhattan's Co lumbus Circle last week, a few dozen workmen labored overtime, winding coils and wiring circuits for hand-built radio-phonographs.

Business had never been so good; they were twelve weeks behind orders. The Fisher radio-phonograph had sold mostly by word-of-mouth advertising. The New York Times has repeatedly turned down a Fisher ad which called it the "world's best" machine; last month, surveying the field, FORTUNE said it for Fisher.

Said FORTUNE: "The Fisher sells for less than the big-name 'quality' sets and, by ordinary standards, it is worth a good deal more. It reproduces the soft, small tones that give depth and texture to music with a clarity and realism that are startling to owners of average instruments. It is, in fact, perhaps the only set on the market that would completely satisfy a golden ear."* The FORTUNE survey passed over lower-priced, lower frequency sets like Crosley, Philco and RCA-Victor, discussed chiefly such visually satisfying high-priced machines ($495 and up) as Scott (with its "impressive assortment of tubes, wires and gadgets on a chromium-plated base"), Capehart (which "holds 20 discs and turns them over automatically") and the Meissner ("offers high fidelity. . . . Except for its cabinets, which are elegant, it claims no special features"). FORTUNE did not mention the newly imported London phonograph, which has the same record changer (Garrard) as the Fisher and lightweight pickup, but costs much more ($1,495 and $2,500) than the Fisher ($992 up).

The Fisher phonograph has a range so wide (20 to 12,000 cycles) that it can reproduce almost all sounds within the span of human hearing. The narrower ranges of most other machines (50 to 7,000) do not reproduce the full resonance of a symphony orchestra, fail to catch the high overtones of a flute. The popular-priced

Zenith's "Cobra Arm" pickup almost eliminates surface scratches, says FORTUNE, but in order to do so also cuts out frequencies higher than 5,000 cycles.

Tall, greying Avery Fisher, 40, is an amateur violinist who built his first high fidelity phonograph in 1935 because he wanted a machine that would reproduce recorded music exactly as it was played. His set so impressed his friends that two years later he gave up an advertising job to build phonographs. Despite his present rush in business, Avery Fisher plans little expansion. Says he: "A really good machine can't be made on an assembly line."

* Described by FORTUNE as a purist who wants music undistorted and full, from treble to bass.

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