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Michell Engineering

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We are a small family-held enterprise situated in the northern area of London, and we have been active in audio for almost 40 years now. In the early sixties founder John Michell created J.A.Michell Engineering as a precision engineering company doing work for the nearby film industry (e.g. spacecraft models in Kubrick's "2001 - A Space Odyssey"), motorcar and aircraft builders and, indeed, audio component manufacturers. While thus having been involved in turntable design before, Michell Engineering got officially launched in hi-fi when we took over the manufacturing of the Hydraulic Reference model (seen in "A Clockwork Orange") from then-neighbouring company Transcriptors.

The Hydraulic Reference record player was followed by similar other models and tonearms like the Prisma and Focus One, to be superseded in 1981 by the GyroDec, a groundbreaking floating-chassis turntable with balanced armboards and a stabilised suspension.

In the late eighties the product range was augmented with amplification components designed by Tom Evans and Graham Fowler. The Iso phonostage was somewhat of a first in the genre, showing that excellent sound could be had from a modestly-priced preamp using opamp ICs. Other models such as the Delphini phonostage, Argo and Orca linestages and Alecto mono block power amplifiers followed.
In 2001 the production of electronics was moved over again to Graham Fowler's Trichord Research, leaving Michell Engineering to concentrate on turntables and accessories.

Our philosophy is to combine good-sounding and good-looking materials with precision engineering, to create highly-performant products that can easily be maintained and that economically can be upgraded, to deliver year after year of satisfaction.