Quad

Manufacturing the first electrostatic loudspeakers and offering such memorable descriptions as ‘the closest approach to the original sound’ and building a power amplifier that is ‘a wire with gain’, Quad have always been a little bit special.

Even the acronym that forms their name, Quality Unit Amplifier Domestic, is just a little bit old school cool. Certainly for me, a teenager in the late sixties, this was an aspirational brand and my first ‘big’ hifi purchase in the early eighties was a Quad system purchased from Eastern Audio in Ipswich.

Now owned by IAG, they are maintaining their intriguing mixture of quality, quirkiness and value for money.