On Wed, 24 Sep 2003 03:52:15 -0700, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:

Is that all you can say? Untrue? How profound. How insightful.

Well, you didn't say much more, now did you?

In 1973, few people in the US had heard of Denon (Nippon Columbia). Their
products were just starting to be sold. I was working at Stansbury's at the
Reisterstown Road Plaza just outside Baltimore.

A rep came in to get us to carry Denon products. They were crappy little compact
systems. I verbally trashed him and sent him packing.

And how do you know that they were the only Denon's being offered?
They may have been simply what the rep thought Stansbury's was fit to
sell. I believe, at that time, they also had what most people
considered decent turntables. They had already sold the first PCM
digital recorder to pro studios and had been selling one of the most
renowned cartridges for years, the DL103, which I think is *still*
being marketed today. I have no idea what their product mix was in
1973, but I would be surprised if it didn't include the same sort of
mix (although probably downsized) than it did later on.

BTW, just to show that I'm not totally biased, I'll note that my Denon
receiver is having some switching problems at the moment as well as
seemingly being unable to activate the subwoofer. Seems like the more
"computerized" our receivers (and reliant on digital technology as
well it seems), the more service problems we have to suffer with.

After all, the first Denon products in this country were
mass-market garbage

Untrue.