Article: Town House for Sherman Fairchild

[architel]

Gil,

On reflection you may be right that Fairchild could have built more than one K-Horn. From the December 27, 1941 New Yorker profile by Geoffrey T. Hellman we have this: "being fond of music, Fairchild has furnished his Long Island house [note, this is the Lloyd Neck house, distinct from the Manhattan town house] with a radio equipped with a loudspeaker intended for a twelve-hundred-seat-theatre..." Also, in reference to the date of completion of the town house,...from the same profile we have this: "Fairchild gave up his triplex apartment a year or so ago and moved to a modernistic house he had built on East Sixty-Fifth Street." This would seem to date the completion of the town house slightly earlier than I thought.

As to the drivers in the unit I saw, I believe I was told they were Western Electric drivers and at least one of the motors (I think it was the woofer) was energized by a field coil instead of a permanent magnet.

Like other forum members I've been interested in Klipschorns and Fairchild for many years. However, I am no expert. I hope that a forum member who knows more of the particulars of this speaker or of Fairchild will be willing to step forward and give us some more information. Unfortunately Dick Long (who had the unit in his possession)has been dead for a number of years.

In 1995 in an attempt to get additional information I contacted Robert Damora who was still alive and had taken the pictures for the Archtectural Forum piece. I wanted to know if there were additional unpublished pictures that he would be willing to sell. Damora, who had become a noted architect in his own right, remembered Fairchild, the town house and the assignment. He did not remember if there were any unpublished photos. At that time he was in his eighties and said he thought he still had the negatives, but if he had them they were in storage, and he had no easy means of finding them. He was very friendly, seemed like a great guy, and I could not bring myself to press him any further for the pictures. I have since seen that the Yale school of Architecture had an exhibition of Damora's work. So perhaps there is a curator out there with additional photos of the Fairchild K-Horn.

Thanks for posting the article.

Peter

[SiliconTi]

Not to resurrect a zombie thread, but thanks for posting this. I am a fan of architecture, but had not seen this article before. An amazing design.

 

Too bad it was butchered in subsequent years. It is just ugly and wrong now.

[EMRR]

Nice find!

 

Fairchild as an audio company, to my understanding, did not design much of anything, with most of their products being either licensed/purchased designs or re-brands such as stock Langevin amplifiers with different tags.   Possibly an early adopter of that approach.  

[dtel's wife]

I wonder if @JRH could shed any light on the subject material in this thread. It certainly would be of interest to the Klipsch Museuem of Audio History. 

 

 

[SiliconTi]

There is another thread that continues the investigation into the Khorn in the original article:

 

 

[Sam Cogley]

On 1/28/2017 at 9:35 AM, EMRR said:

Nice find!

 

Fairchild as an audio company, to my understanding, did not design much of anything, with most of their products being either licensed/purchased designs or re-brands such as stock Langevin amplifiers with different tags.   Possibly an early adopter of that approach.  

 

I would be interested in your source for that information.  It contradicts everything I've found.

[EMRR]

Hi Sam,

 

I may be wrong, quoting sources from memory that I can't dig up at the moment.  I'll keep digging.  

 

Here's a few things:

 

The Langevin 116A / 117A amps were rebranded as Fairchild products with their own model numbers, a simple Fairchild decal overlay.

 

The 660/670 limiters were designed and licensed by Rein Narma who came on board afterwards, I believe somewhere in an interview he stated that at the time Fairchild Recording was more of a licensing house than a design/manufacture house.  That may be a reference to earlier eras, and not representative of later eras, as Fairchild existed for many decades.  

 

Memory (possibly faulty) says one of the 50's consumer mono block amps was a rebrand, I can't recall the originating company.  

 

We have George Alexandrovich Sr who tells us he worked for Fairchild over 20 years and designed a lot of equipment, so that may indicate a turning point in the mission of the company.  

 

[LarryC]

None of the pics that come up by Googling Langevin amps looks at all like the 255, including the physical or tube layout and selection (no El-34's for example).  I know nichts about such things, but simple rebranding looks to be out of the question.

[EMRR]

There's an enormous amount of stuff that can't be found with Google.  Fairchild 621 is a Langevin 116A with a Fairchild sticker on it.  Simple as it gets.  

 

an ad:

 

Langevin 116A / Fairchild 621 shown

 

 

[LarryC]

That's nice, but it ain't close to a 255A.  Where are the EL-34s?

 

You may be generalizing from a single, possibly atypical, example

[EMRR]

Never said close to a 255A.  Not sure where you get that.

 

They rebranded that entire line of Langevin pro audio preamps and power amps.  The 660/670 limiter info, also pro audio, comes from the guy who designed it, brought it into Fairchild after the fact, then went on the be an exec at Ampex.  

 

Anyway, I got us really off topic here.  I'll bring more evidence as I find it.  It may be more within the pro audio realm, which is what I pay most attention to.