4 June 1999
The death has been announced of John Wright, an audio-industry figure and stalwart of some 35 years and founder of TDL. This he later established as one of the few remaining British loudspeaker companies with an international pedigree still to be in private ownership at the end of the century.
John Stuart Wright was born in London on the 11th May 1939, the son of a highly academic musical family (both his parents were music teachers - his father a headmaster). Not surprisingly, young John soon developed a keen interest in music, later to be overtaken by an early enthusiasm for audio engineering which came to fruition in the 1960s when John became a joint owner of a business importing and distributing microphones and tape recorder mechanisms. A particular interest in transducers led to the design of gramophone pick-ups and record cleaning machines under the name Audio & Design. By the 1970s, having been engaged by Goldring working on cartridge and turntable technologies, John had set up business himself producing high quality loudspeakers pioneering the transmission line principle. This was achieved as a result of a joint venture with IMF Electronics Ltd and a major drive unit supplier, ELAC. The joint venture was to be named TDL.
Having helped set up TDL John sold his interest in the business in 1979 to join an academic research project in surround sound. Concurrent with this John worked variously as a free-lance audio journalist for many leading magazines and as a consultant to the National Research Development Corporation (British Technology Group). He rejoined TDL (then part of ELAC) in 1984 and in 1991 organised a management buy-out to restore TDL as an independent hi-fi operation. Under the name TDL Electronics the company concentrated on the design of affordable floor-standing loudspeakers employing a ‘reflex’ version of the transmission line principle. These, together with smaller bookshelf and dedicated home cinema loudspeakers, provided TDL with a complete range of competitive products.
Towards the end of the 1990s John Wright began to suffer ill-health (he had developed cancer) and this, combined with the financial failure of TDL’s main supplier, made it necessary for the company to be restructured with John selling his commercial interest in the business but continuing as a consultant, providing valuable technical support.
John Wright died on 1st June 1999. A qualified science teacher and a Member of the Audio Engineering Society, he will be remembered as a charming, deeply knowledgeable (but profoundly unassuming and modest) man of the ‘old-school’ of the British audio industry. Few who met him could fail to like him.
His wife and three children survive him.
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