Paul Messenger remembers an inventive, resourceful gentleman who had more influence of the British hi-fi industry than many people realised.

John Wright was one of the more important figures on the post-war, British, specialist hi-fi scene. A gentleman through and through, he maintained a relatively low profile in recent years, so it’s all too easy to underestimate the contributions he has made to British hi-fi since the mid-1960s.

In a very real sense John was a ‘bridge’ between the first generation hi-fi companies founded in or before the 1950s, and the new wave that came into being during the 1970s. One of his strengths was an ability to combine the solid engineering traditions of the past with a more open-minded appreciation of the subjectivist approach.

The recent TDL Electronics chapter was just the final phase of a long career, in which John distinguished himself not only as a loudspeaker engineer of some repute, but also took on the roles of inventor, writer, reviewer and businessman - all with considerable success.

Both his parents were music teachers, and John himself was an accomplished pianist and organist, but he developed a parallel passion for the gramophone and the challenge of reproducing recorded music to the highest possible standards. While he started out as a teacher, his wide ranging part-time hi-fi activities gradually took over.

During the 1960s he was involved with transducers at the front end of the hi-fi chain. His Audio & Design operation developed a well regarded pickup arm with mercury contacts to avoid lead-out wire torque, as well as the original vacuum record cleaning machine that is still made today under the Keith Monks brand.

The real business breakthrough, however, came around 1970, and at the other end of the hi-fi chain, when John’s large transmission line loudspeaker designs first appeared. Made by TDL with ELAC drivers, and marketed under the IMF Electronics brand, these monitors took advantage of the availability of high power transistor amplifiers to set a new ‘high-end’ benchmark, which helped raise the status and profile of British hi-fi speakers around the world.

Although John will be best remembered for his transmission line loudspeakers, his personal enthusiasm for the whole hi-fi thing led to involvement across a much broader stage. He wrote seminal articles and reviews on loudspeakers for Hi-Fi News and Hi-Fi Sound magazines, reviewed classical music releases for Hi-Fi Answers, and covered phono cartridges and arms for The Gramophone.

In 1980 he left IMF to join the research programme that developed the Ambisonics surround sound system, alongside academics such as Michael Gerzon and Peter Fellgett. Although the consumer world wasn’t ready for yet another surround sound format, the Ambisonics principles and techniques of soundfield encoding are still highly regarded by the professional sector today.

John subsequently returned to the ELAC/TDL operation and, when Harman purchased ELAC in 1989, he organised a management buyout of the TDL brand. TDL Electronics stopped supplying drivers and systems to other manufcturers, and John introduced the Studio line, which updated the transmission line tradition with newly developed metal diaphragm drivers. He then produced the highly successful and more affordable RTL (Reflex Transmission Line) series, which cleverly anticipated the mid-1990s trend towards budget price floorstanders.

That anticipation was typical of John. Even though he viewed modern marketing methods with a certain detached cynicism, one had to admire his ability to keep one jump ahead. I would sometimes ask him a deliberately provocative question and usually received an even more challenging reply, invariably delivered with a twinkle in the eye.

Above all, I'll remember his open-mindedness and readiness-at least-to consider new ideas. Mention some tweak and the chances were he’d already tried it for himself - and he never dismissed even unlikely suggestions out of hand. One of his final acts was to sell TDL to the very experienced Gordon Provan, in February this year, to ensure the continuity of the brand, the company, and its workforce.

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