"Steve"
Recently, I found a great old amplifier. It was made in Britain and
imported into the US by British Radio Electronics, Ltd. Here are
pictures of it and ads about it.
http://public.fotki.com/farleybob/williamson/
It has two chassis and when I first saw them from a distance, I
thought they were a pair of QUAD II's. Then I thought they just
knocked off the QUAD look, but the amp was released in Sept. 1952,
which I think predates the QUAD.
** Only just.
The ads claim that the amp was
actually planned and authorized by DTN Williamson.
Does anyone else pot transformers in this fashion, except QUAD? I
know that Williamson was had just authored a paper with Peter Walker
on the QUAD II circuit in response to the Ultralinear circuit, and
that they were working together on the ESL. Is it possible that
Acoustical mfg. did a run of amps under a different for Williamson?
The preamp shipped with the amp was a rebranded QC II. Again, I'd say
it's strictly a copy of QUAD's trade dress, except that it appears
that this amp was introduced first.
** As you say, the pre-amp is simply a badge engineered Quad QC2.
The pics of the two chassis and their internals indicate they were produced
by Acoustical, under some contract arrangement with Mr Williamson.
Find another one - you can have stereo !
....... Phil