Many will remember the British Leyland Motor Corporation, the nineteen seventies state owned purveyor of such automotive design masterpieces as the Morris Marina and Austin Allegro. A decade of industrial strife and dreadful quality ensured that BLMC’s dalliance with disaster was well publicised, but what many don’t know is that hi-fi had its very own equivalent, Strathearn Audio Limited…
Cast your mind back to 1973, a time of great growth for hi-fi manufacturing. Hoping to cash in on this, a government quango set up to stimulate Northern Ireland’s flagging economy decided that what Belfast needed was a hi-fi industry. Top civil service mandarins in Whitehall agreed, and faster than you could say ‘Yes, Minister’, the government earmarked £3 million from the public coffers to the infant company. With the help of the Northern Ireland Finance Committee, Strathearn commissioned Cambridge-based design centre, PA Technology and Science, to design a number of new hi-fi products. For their £350,000 fee PATS came up with all sorts of futuristic ideas, from a new type of parallel tracking tonearm and an electronic tracking force adjustment system to touch-sensitive switches and flat diaphragm loudspeaker transducers.
The most interesting thing to emerge was a new type of direct-drive motor which was particularly cheap to produce. This being 1973, the year that Technics’ swish direct-drives swept through Britain’s High Streets striking fear into every belt-propelled turntable on the market, Strathearn correctly identified that they were on to a winner. Gone would be the days of noisy Garrards and obsolete Thorens, for this was the brave new era of direct-drive and Strathearn had got themselves a licence to print money – or so the theory went. But as with every bright idea there was a problem. The direct drive system had actually been developed by PATS in conjunction with toy manufacturer Mettoy as a cheap, low powered device for use in childrens’ toys, and couldn’t quite stand the rigours of high torque use in turntables. When asked to provide enough grunt to keep records spinning at an accurate speed, the motor started to rumble.
Unfortunately, in a textbook example of nineteen seventies management incompetence, Strathearn didn’t realise this until it was too late. They’d sensibly decided that producing some of PATS’ other designs just wasn’t on – they were either too difficult to production engineer or the local, relatively unskilled Belfast work force weren’t able to make them. Instead, they’d opted to do simple direct-drive turntables and speakers. However, these ‘simple’ designs suddenly became very difficult to get right for mass production, because the government quango involved had only asked the PATS centre for design prototypes rather than complete finished products. As Strathearn soon discovered, getting a direct-drive turntable out of the laboratory into the shops was easier said than done.
Two turntables, the STM4 and SMA2, were launched. To look at they were very impressive, with clean, modern lines and, from a distance at least, a nice finish. The £80 STM4 was a budget direct-drive, designed to strike at Garrard’s more expensive mass-market designs, and certainly looked quite capable of relieving Plessey of a few customers. The £120 SMA2 was positively dashing, very futuristic with its touch controls, sleek low mass tonearm and ultra slim design.
Unfortunately though, they were about as well screwed together as an Austin Allegro on a rainy Friday afternoon. Both Strathearn turntables used a particularly weak motor originally designed for toys. Over stressed, they were unusually noisy, measuring far worse than Pioneer’s cheaper belt-drive rival, the PL112D. Both had no suspension, poor platter damping thanks to a ludicrously styled turntable mat, and were flimsily built, making them appallingly sensitive to vibration. Both used unusually small main bearings which further compromised their longevity, and both arms had poorly adjusted, high friction bearings, flimsy plastic headshells and inaccurate bias controls. All things considered, it was remarkable they worked at all.
Tales of Strathearn’s 1975 press launch are legendary. The turntables were said to be appallingly designed, so susceptible to acoustic feedback that if the amp was turned up past one on the dial an ear-piercing howl from the speakers would ensue. The tonearm’s automation was absurdly slow, only fast when dropping – sorry, cueing – the stylus. The planar speakers were reported to be so dreadful that the company engineers who set them up hadn’t even noticed they’d wired them out of phase. It was a good old fashioned boardroom farce, which would have been hilarious were it not for the fact that it was taxpayers’ money being squandered.
Naturally then, instead of doing anything about their sad excuses for hi-fi separates, the hapless company set about a PR charm offensive. Strathearn showed an arrogance born out of a complete misunderstanding of the problem in hand. To wit, various journalists who had been particularly hostile (i.e. objective) were approached to work on a ‘consultancy basis’. Asked to report on their findings, they gave the company a damning indictment of their lemon-like creations. On subsequently receiving review samples they found their suggestions had been ignored. Unhappily for the company, the journos duly reported the decks’ failings, giving them a serious drubbing in print.
Graham Bish was brought in from ITT as Strathearn’s supremo in February 1977. Unlike those before him, he was refreshingly candid with the members of the press, and when asked what he thought of the situation was reported to have said, “You can’t make it any worse”. Unfortunately, he was wrong. Like rats leaving a sinking ship the company’s top brass resigned, and Strathearn had to go begging to the government to have losses of £14 million written off.
By November Bish had also gone, and the new chief sensibly went incommunicado – journalists were asked to direct their questions to the Department of Commerce! Momentarily the company concentrated on export markets and considered a change of name, but it was not to be. By 1978 Strathearn STM4 turntables were falling off backs of lorries for less than fifty pounds, while the Comet warehouse chain bought a large consignment and struggled to shift them for £39.95. With poor press write-ups and streams of embittered letters to magazines from the unfortunates who bought the decks, Strathearn had become a national joke. Stories even appeared about the motors going backwards – they were Irish after all, observed one wag…
By 1979 Britain’s one and only ‘nationalised’ hi-fi manufacturer was dead. It wasn’t the workers’ fault, it was simply because people who didn’t know anything about hi-fi were running a hi-fi company, stupidly believing they could just buy engineering know-how in ‘off the shelf’. It is reckoned that they spent over £20 million pounds by the end, and that the initial laudable aim of creating 1,500 jobs for Ulster people had been pie-in-the-sky – the best they ever achieved was closer to 300. Strathearn Audio Ltd – may they rest in peace, never to rumble again. And if on reading this obituary, they do turn in their corporate grave, may it not be backwards!
zStereo 
I have a collection of Strathearn turntables and speakers, I’m using a pair of the 21000 speakers made up from parts obtained from the final sales, ( lecson Ac1, Quad 303 ) as well as a stacked double pair of the ordinary ones driven by a Denon Amp/pre amp, and I will never part with them. They are and always have been very good. My SM 2000 turntable when properly set up, is tracking a Shure V15 with no problems, and a spare arm tube has a Deccan London Gold which also sounds wonderful when properly mounted on the Strathearn arm. Have to say I do have a factory decoupled counterweight and correctly set up arm bearings. Not many people were bothered to try to set up Strathearns decks properly, hence the bad press. The workers at the factory were more used to Dansettes! And as to the feed back problem….I never heard of this. We tested an SM2000 alongside the much acclaimed linn/ sme arm, …there was no contest. The Strathearn was light years ahead on the feed back. While the linn jumped about all over the place the Sm2000 tracked happily. What could you expect from a chipboard and hardboard plinth, a rubber band and an electric clock motor. The only problem I’ve had has been the turntable feet have failed. The Strathearn stuff was way ahead of its time. It just needed more time to get right. Something the government couldn’t grasp. They wanted an overnight success story.
An interesting riposte – thanks for that. It reminds me of British Leyland cars of that time; many were intrinsically very fine designs, just appallingly badly made by management who didn’t know what they were doing and workers who didn’t care. This seemed to sum up British nationalised industry in the nineteen seventies, tragically.
Just dug out my SMA2 turntable for its first outing since the late 80s and it works perfectly!
Not embarrassed to admit….. I have two STM4’s which I bought new in about 1979-80. No doubt Arthur Negus would have been interested in a matching pair though I doubt they will now attain full antique value with the provenance of the above write-up.
On is still in the original box, and yes, they do have that rubber feet problem.
If keen, I might sell due to needing to make space in the house.
I’ve never seen one on e-bay.
Plenty conducted sound from the plinth when closing the lid was my memory of them.
Ortofon 15E cartridge was perhaps its saving grace as a vast improvement over the previous ceramic cartridge I’d been exposed to about 10 years previously.
My brother had an STM4 for about a day. It was s**t. Went straight back and he got a Pioneer PL112D and some change. Later went for a Rega Planar 2.
Not famous for your tact and diplomacy, I take it, Adrian! You’re quite right to say that the STM4 wasn’t the equal of the Pioneer PL-112D. It was still an interesting design though, and if they’d set it up properly and finessed the design a bit it could have been better.
I have a sma2 on gumtree northern ireland for sale, unused and in box on gumtree northern ireland if any serious buyers are interested!!!
I had an STM4 and indeed it would sometimes run backwards of it’s own accord! A good party trick.
At the Strathearn factory clearance I found some interesting items that may have been part of a nascent experimental movement at Strathearn. Out of the heap of leftover parts I purchased two 10″ Bolivar 64 woofers and two Son Audax tweeters. I also bought two driverless Strathearn speaker cabinets with crossovers. With a little carpentry I put all these parts together and the result, driven by Grado, Thorens and Harman Kardon, was an amazing sound. Maybe there was someone at Strathearn who started to make sense but was just too late to save the elephant.
I had an STM4 for many years as my primary deck, although it became a bit of a home-brew. All of the mechanicals and electronics were original, but I added a self-adhesive vinyl floor mat on the bottom to dampen vibrations on the plinth, I added rubber grommets on the screws between the metal top surface and the plinth, and filled in all of the gaps with cut polystyrene tiles. This made the plinth pretty acoustically dead. The ludicrous sculpted rubber mat was replaced with a solid rubber one (OM10 – can’t remember the manufacturer – something Japanese).
With all this extra weight, the rubber feet eventually gave in. so I think I mounted it on blocks of synthetic rubber.
I also set the geometry of the arm more accurately using an alignment protractor, although in reality, the arm was too short, and the pivot too close to the spindle. I had to move the arm out of it’s clamp by about 5mm to get anything like the correct geometry. This upset the weight adjustment, so I had to set that with a stylus scale. Jenerally, I thought that the bearings were quite good, even though they were just needle bearings (I did tighten them up a bit, though).
The stylus of the Ortofon FF15E was replaced with a full F15E stylus, which made quite a difference, but I eventually bought a VMS20E mkII, which I would expect most people would say was wasted on this deck. I replaced the plastic spacers and mounting screws between the head and the cartridge with metal screws and nuts as spacers, to try to make it stiffer.
With this set-up, tracking at 1.5gm, it could just track the high amplitude tracks on the HiFi Sounds test disc, and the heavier mat evened out the flutter that the turntable used to suffer from. Rumble was a problem that I never really solved.
I eventually replaced this with a Project Debut II, and transplanted the cartridge and mat, but found that it suffered from rumble worse than the Strathern! Eventually I fitted the Henley Audio noise reduction kit (highly recommended for older Project turntables) which completely solved that problem.
It was only after switching to the Project that I realised that something in the Strathern really messed up the stereo soundstage. On reflection, it was probably the crappy arm and joke of a headshell.
I wish I had kept it as a keepsake, but I eventually ditched it because I could not afford the space.
The rest of my set-up is pretty retro as well!
Project Debut II, Ortofon VMS20E mk2, NAD 7020 (1st generation), Marantz CD67 with Cambridge Audio DAC Magic II, JVC KD720 tape deck (very rarely used), Keesonic Kub and Mission 760 speakers.
Thanks for this great story, Peter. The Strathearns were striking to look at and a great concept but – as was so often back at that time – poorly executed. Seems like they responded well to heavy tweaking but in the end they’re better as historical curios, not for serious listening. The Japanese were doing far better products at the price.
I loved my SMA02
Just dug my old STM4 (bought 1978!) out of retirement, and it seems to still be fine! However, I’ve lost the plastic gizmo for setting it up, AND the instructions! Anyone know where I might find either?
I inherited a silver STM4 (I think judging from pics), from my father and never had problems with it. I think it was a later produced one, the cassette deck was a Pioneer CT4 from 81/82 and the amp was a Rotel RX-303, if that helps date it. Maybe some issues were solved later in production by the end of the 70s.
After spending a reasonable amount of time setting it up it played just fine, although I had little to compare it to in my teens (some decades ago). Wish I still had now of course.
I was surprised to read this page and hear how awful they were thought to be, ours was certainly no worse than turntables I’ve had since like the belt driven T4p headed 80s offerings with so-called “factory set” tracking and arm weighting. Although there may be an element of nostalgia affecting my memory of the Strathearn! I do remember the drop-arm lever should have been labelled “destroy record”. It went down hard.
I bought one of these from Comet in the 1970’s. It oscillates at start up but has never run backwards. I am still using it although now fitted with a Shure M95 ED cartridge as at one point that was cheaper than a new stylus for the Ortofon. I still use it frequently. The plastic balancing gizmo is long gone (just as Jimb’s has) but it merely gives 1gram of stylus weight upon removal. Hence I balance it without and then just add weight as per the instructions starting from a value of zero instead of one. All 4 rubber feet are intact. The cueing damper failed years ago, but what is wrong with lowering the lever gently? I still love it and the sound when played through my 1960’s Leak Stereo30plus and 1970’s Rotel RL200X speakers.
I have two of them. 1 is still boxed in original packaging. The other is missing the counterbalance weight. The two have different plastic covers, as in different darkness, and even slight difference in shape. I think one has a “negative” of the S-symbol on the silkscreening. No idea what they would make on e-bay but they still sound fresh even though there is a fair bit of thump if you tap the deck with your fingers. The Ortofon 15E was my first encounter with a magnetic cartridge and the experience was such an audio transformation from old BSR ceramics. Must get them out again and compare with the TD124.
I bught my SMA2 at a closing sale in Lisburn. I used it for a while and then it was consigned to the attic complete with broken cover.
I retrieved it just before last Christmas when my sons declared the division of my vinyl collection to be legal. It still works fine (including the quirky hesitation / oscillation at start up).
I’d love to have a manual so I can set it up properly and also a circuit diagram for when the inevitable happens. Can anyone oblige with either of these?
Brian
PS a new lid and hinges would be nice also!
I had a pair of the well crafted early speakers – i.e. the ones with bass and ribbon tweeter in the same cab – I loved them until the glue holding magnets in the ribbon tweeter/mid unit failed rendering them useless. Shame as they really looked the part too.