Tribalism is embedded in these oscillations – a distinct harmonic of life which one cannot necessarily tune or consciously adjust the pitch of – cues residing therein for others of the same vibration to engage, to collaborate… to befriend. Because, in my experience, making connections is more about what you like, not what you’re like.
So it was several months ago, when first learning Turnbull had partnered with Louis Vuitton menswear artistic director Virgil Abloh to bring DIY Altec-based loudspeaker kits to market, that I was taken by the gestalt of the project and reached out to him. The idea behind the kits was to introduce some creative light into lives dimmed by the extreme isolation measures brought about by the pandemic. My initial interview with Turnbull – which you can read HERE – focuses on the flat-pack speaker kits he produces in his Brooklyn, New York workshop and which are available online through Abloh's Canary Yellow e-commerce site. We also touched on his extensive design and fashion background.
Over time, I learned of Turnbull’s high-fidelity pilgrimages in Japan and France, life experiences, loudspeaker designs, amplifier-engineering chops, and caught glimpses into the music he likes to drop the needle on. This led to the discovery of his predilection for vintage Ortofon SPU-A and G variants, obsessive attention to detail in utilising heritage parts (or replicas) for Altec and Western Electric-infused hybrid speaker commissions, and how he sources rare cans for step-up transformers (SUT) of his own making… I knew I wanted to publish another interview with him.
Steeped not only in the human backstories inhabiting specific aspects of vintage high fidelity’s design and engineering history, which he sought out and found in the lesser-known alleys of Akihabara and Paris, Turnbull is also an avid consumer of technical minutiae gleaned from period blueprints or circuit schematics seen by few contemporaries. Blueprints and schematics gifted by veteran audio engineers befriended while in Japan and in the United States whom he continues to work with on several ongoing projects.
Simplicity is still best when it comes to many things, and with experience one finds this holds particularly true for high fidelity. Turnbull’s ethos of starting with older, less complicated signal paths (amplification circuits, transducer architecture) and then refining them because he feels they offer the best opportunity to achieve reproduction with startling presence, dynamics, texture and tone, should be considered a statement of intent from someone who, while currently an outlier in the industry, is becoming acknowledged as a gifted, up-and-coming hi-fi influencer.
“For a long time I kind of kept my life as a visual artist and my audio work as two separate identities. Now, I see that very differently. It’s just one creative vision that has guided me in everything I’ve ever done. It’s just me.”
–Devon Turnbull
Devon Turnbull Q&A
Rafe Arnott: We touched on your design background previously with your OJAS brand, your work with Louis Vuitton, and menswear line Nom de Guerre which you co-founded. You’re known primarily for global street-style fashion, but there’s a lesser-known passion for high-fidelity in your life. Tell us about when your interest in hi-fi and music started, and your engineering degree.
Devon Turnbull: “I’ve been passionate about music for as long as I can remember. My dad had a hi-fi that my parents said I would always crawl in front of and just sit and listen to music on. I started collecting records and DJing in the 8th grade, so LPs have been a constant for most of my life. In high school I had a Hafler power amp and some big three-way speakers from the ‘70s that I salvaged. I was always the guy with the system, but I’ve also always had a listening position set up in my room.
“As a high school student I was not encouraged to pursue visual design, so I never considered it something that had potential for me. Music and sound were my life, but I also knew that I was drawn to visual arts and fashion. I finished high school a year early (dropped out and took my GED – ha ha!) and enrolled in a two-year audio engineering program at the Art Institute of Seattle. After finishing that I moved to New York City to pursue a BA from the New School (Parsons). Still not considering myself a visual artist or designer, I started making some logos and clothing for myself as a DJ and graffiti writer and those caught the eye of some very influential people in the Downtown NYC art and fashion scenes. So my career in fashion took off early and less than a year from graduating, my academic advisor recommended I stop taking classes to pursue career opportunities that most college graduates aren’t lucky enough to have.
“When my career in the visual arts took off, I stopped DJing and recording. Spinning records on two turntables and recording music in the studio quickly turned into playing records on one turntable and listening to music at home. I had been turned-on to the world of the Japanese triode amp and high-efficiency speaker scene, and found some like-minded people in my peer group in NYC. I applied my knowledge from audio school to studying speaker and tube amp circuit design, pouring over every text I could find on the subjects. Reading Sound Practices was hugely influential for me, maybe even more culturally than technically.
“For a long time I kind of kept my life as a visual artist and my audio work as two separate identities. Now, I see that very differently. It’s just one creative vision that has guided me in everything I’ve ever done. It’s just me.”
RA: Your time working in Japan designing for Nom de Guerre exposed you to peak fetish with its vintage hi-fi scene. Can you discuss what that looked like?
DT: “When I started going to Akihabara looking for hi-fi it was a very different place than it is now (it’s basically only video games and Manga now). Back then you could just wander around and find random shops with dozens of Garrard 301’s in stock, vintage Altec, JBL, Tannoy, Marantz, etc. Then there were places like Hino Audio that specialized in DIY. Sun Audio, which may still be there, was somehow related to MJ Magazine and the distributor of Tamura transformers. And all of these places were more than happy to welcome a person off the street, sit them down and play them records until they tapped out. This was where I was exposed to all of the fundamental philosophies that I base my work on now.
“Sometime in the early 2000s I started buying parts from Koji Wakabayashi at EIFL. He moved to Fukushima to build an audio museum, which is really more of a temple of audio technology and music in a massive commercial building overlooking a beautiful volcanic crater lake. Wakabayashi has pretty much anything you could ever want to listen to at his disposal, including a very complete Western Electric Mirrophonic system and a pair of 16a horns you can also listen to in stereo. But it is pretty remote and takes the better part of a full day to get there from Tokyo. I went for a few days to kind of sit at his feet in 2008. This was an extremely influential trip for me and began something like a lifelong apprenticeship – or partnership if you will – with Wakabayashi. Years later he came to an event in Kobe where my speakers were debuting and offered to work on an amp together. That evolved into the OJAS 2A3 SET amp I build with him now.”
RA: You work with vintage/replica Altec drivers/horns, cabinet specs, single-ended triode (SET) amp designs, ‘50s broadcast turntables, tonearms and cartridges, etc. The average audiophile likes cutting-edge digital technology and shiny faceplates. Explain your attraction to this type of sound.
DT: “There’s so much! I should probably clarify that I’m not a purist vintage head. My cabinet designs are all tweaked to meet my needs and my customers needs. I also often supplement with subwoofers and super tweeters. When set up right, these systems can sound absolutely state-of-the-art, but more importantly, they offer an experience that’s totally unlike what you hear in typical high-end audio showrooms. The full frequency spectrum is there and balanced, but the dynamics and sheer size of the sound stage makes an immediate impression on anyone hearing it for the first time.
“Some people use the word presence to describe this ‘in the room’ sound, but I sometimes explain ‘it’s like being in the room, as opposed to looking into the room. It’s definitely not what you imagine vintage to sound like. If you’re one of these people who has heard a bunch of high-end gear and thought it all pretty much sounded the same, but on a spectrum, this kind of system is not on that spectrum. It’s distinctively different. Many people refer to this sound as being very musical. I think another way of verbalizing it is to say that it’s not overly analytical, detailed or sparkly. I think a good comparison is an 8k HDTV versus a beautiful 35mm film projector.”
RA: You made several hi-fi pilgrimages to places in Japan and Europe to get religion on the vintage sound experience. Where exactly did you go, what did you see and hear and who was it that you met and influenced you on these trips?
DT: “Wakabayashi has to be the most significant. I would say a life changing experience. The first true SET amp experience I had was at William Walther’s Maison de L'Audiophile in Paris. Mr. Walther is an important figure in the world of Ultra-Fi, Triode amp/high efficiency speaker, DIY or whatever you want to call this global underground of audio maniacs. Paris is also one of the most concentrated and important hi-fi scenes outside of Asia.
“I was in Paris… I can’t even remember why, but I typically visit Paris once or twice a year because it’s part of the fashion circuit. I had read about Maison de L’Audiophile and Mr. Walther’s WE91A inspired 300B SET amps. I think I tried having a friend call but had no idea if I would actually find the place or if it would be open. Maison de L’Audiophile was in the outskirts of the 11th Arrondissement, an area that I had never been to, and haven’t been to since. This was in the days before Google Maps, or at least before inexpensive international cell roaming. I remember just getting on the Metro with a paper map unsure if I would even find it. When I found the store front, and it was clearly open, I was so excited."
“The shop was kind of one-third record store, one-third vintage hi-fi shop and one-third very unique listening room. Walther had a lot of Western Electric gear; a pair of original 91A amps and a pair of 825 cabinets with early 1505 horns. His turntable was perhaps the most talked about gear in the shop. He had a very DIY looking Platine Verdier-type set up with SME 3012 that used a Lenco L75 about 3 feet away as the motor. I was already into Moving Coil phono cartridges and I think I was running a Shelter 901 and a Denon 103 at the time on my SME 3012. So I was very excited to see what he was running. To my surprise it was a Shure M92E. I think he could see the look of shock on my face because he just pointed at it and said, “very good.” I absolutely love when I see stuff like this. It’s so honest when someone just finds something unpretentious that works really well in their system.
“I speak NO French and Walther spoke almost no English that day, but he was an incredible host. He sat me down and I immediately knew this was my sound. By comparison, my home system, which was more conventional high-end at the time, sounded so uptight. I was used to this really focused sound that I thought of as having accurate imaging, but this was psychedelic by comparison.
“There are also a lot of very influential figures for me in the scene right here in NYC. My first system of the Walther kind was very NYC influenced. I had a Rek-O-Kut turntable that I built, largely inspired by the work of Joseph Esmilla of JE Labs, a pair of Fi 2A3 SET amps that a friend bought from Don Garber and Altec speakers that I built after being inspired by articles in Joe Roberts’ legendary NYC-based Sound Practices Magazine.
“The last really important, and more recent trip, was to Oklahoma City to visit Bill Hanuschak of Great Plains Audio. For anyone who doesn’t know, Hanuschak and GPA are the modern day incarnation of the real Altec. I’ve known him for a long time, originally as a DIY customer and then as an OEM partner. I always knew that he was an engineer at Altec and had all of the knowledge and tooling necessary to continue production of all of the components that are irreplaceable in these kinds of speaker systems. What I didn’t realize before visiting in person is the extent to which he inherited ALL of the equipment and intellectual property that was Altec Professional, and subsequently the most important lineage of audio engineering in the world. It’s honestly overwhelming to stand in his shop and just look in any direction, seeing all of the documentation and equipment. Before the pandemic shut down travel I was planning on going back for a longer time as a personal pilgrimage with the idea of building myself a full set of drivers with my own hands – something that I think would be impossible at most factories. But, Hanuschak is truly making this gear by hand. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t appreciate what he does for the global audio community.”
RA: The 2A3 valve amplifier you currently have on offer was designed in collaboration with your friend and mentor Koji Wakabayashi. What did that process look like? What was the timeline on the amp’s development?
DT: “The project started in 2014, in Kobe, Japan, when Saturdays NYC had an event at their store to celebrate the sound system I built for the store and a small collection of collaborative products we released. They invested in a pair of large three-way speakers I built for them, but the speakers were fed by a fairly conventional system and we wanted to step things up for the event. We did that by going on a pretty epic record shopping trip in Tokyo with my friend Yasu, AKA Roger Yamaha, and then Koji-san came all the way from Yokohama (roughly a 10-hour trip) with a Garrard 301/Ortofon SPU deck, a Marantz 7 and a 300B SET amp that he made. This was the first opportunity to pair one of his amps with my speakers and… it made us all very happy. At the time I had built some tube gear myself for the Ace Hotel NYC and the David Yurman men’s showroom, but had kind of decided that wasn’t what I wanted to do in my studio – for clients at least (I love building tube gear for myself). But, I think it was Wakabayashi who first said, “You make good speakers. I make good amps.” It took us several prototypes to end up with the tube compliments that we have been making for the last few years. It was purely a process of try/listen/adjust – on my side at least. In the end, we landed on a three stage design: 75 or 6SF5, 76, 2A3.”
RA: What makes SET-based amplifiers unique in your opinion?
DT: “Purity and simplicity. These circuits do as little as possible to the music between the pickup and the speaker. This manifests in tonality and texture that can get lost in the pursuit of specifications over beautiful music.”
RA: You have a deep appreciation for many types of music, be it electronic or jazz. Can you touch on some of your favourite LPs and what it is that makes them special to you?
DT: “This could get really long, so I’ll try to just quickly name a few that are in constant rotation these days.
"Songs for Drella by Lou Reed and John Cale, 1990, particularly the song “Style it Takes.” This album is a beautiful tribute to Andy Warhol. The story goes something like this: Reed and Cale had a pretty tumultuous relationship during and after the Velvet Underground, who of course were famously managed by Warhol. Although Reed and Cale did a fair amount of public trash talking about each other in the 20-plus years between Cale leaving the band and this album, they both remained close with Warhol and it was at his funeral that they decided to come together one last time to honour him. The resulting album is a beautiful, sparse and intimate outing that chronicles Warhol’s life. It’s packed with references to him and the culture he created in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s in downtown NYC that directly influenced my generation of creatives in the downtown NYC of the ‘90s-‘00s. Only the two musicians appear on the album on vocals, guitar, piano and viola. I love small simple ensembles in general and it’s on this record that you can feel immersed in the nuances of every aspect of the performance by these two masters. There’s also a great video recording of a performance they did at BAM in 1990, which is right down the street from my house. I have an unopened (for now) VHS copy, but it’s available on YouTube and you should go watch it.
“Art Ensemble of Chicago, Urban Bushmen, 1982 on ECM. AEC is another one of my absolute favourite bands. The synergy of their improvisations, the instrumentation and the energy/spirit of their music is everything. I don’t remember where or when I bought this copy, but it’s a Japanese pressing by Trio-Kenwood. Speaking of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (which birthed AEC), a new release that has been one of my favourites of 2020 is by the Chairman of AACM, Kahil El’Zabar. Spirit Groove, 2020 on Spiritmuse Records. If you buy one new jazz record in 2020 this should be it.
“Steve Reich, Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ, 1974, 3xLP box set on Deutsche Grammofon. I’ve been a Reich fan since I discovered him through my dad when I was in high school in the ‘90s. There are few composers more visionary than him. I’ve been lucky enough to see a number of amazing performances of his works, but I found this DGG box set at the WFMU record fair sometime in the late ‘00s. Absolutely beautiful box set in every way. This is one of my most treasured records.”
RA: I believe your current personal sound system is almost entirely designed and hand built by you. Can you walk me through your setup from source to loudspeaker, including all the carts, SUTs, preamps and cables your using?
DT: “The speakers I’ve been spending the most time listening to are what I call the Petit OJAS W. It’s a six cubic-foot cabinet I designed for two Altec 414 type woofers. I call it the Petit OJAS W as it’s my mini version of the famous Onken W. It sounds great with small or large format Altec horns, as well as an original Bi-radial horn I’m making out of aluminum (soon to be announced). There’s also the JAS 816 3.5 Way: My version of the Altec 816 with slightly more volume and wider dispersion when used vertically. I build two different subs that pair well and stack with these cabinets. I usually run small format Altec 802 type compression drivers above them and a JBL 2405 as a super tweeter. Finally, there’s the OJAS Bookshelf Speaker featuring an eight-inch coaxial driver. Over the last 10-15 years I’ve been really dedicated to the Ortofon SPU and their matching tonearms. Below is a list of some of the gear that I currently have in my listening room."
Turntables: Garrard 301 (my go-to), Rek O Kut (several), Lenco L75 super custom with a PTP5 and a custom 16-inch platter.
Tonearms: Ortofon RF297 (my go-to), Ortofon RMG309, SME 3012R, Gray 108.
Cartridges: Ortofon SPUs, 1966-1988, several A and G type, current favourites are a Fonofilm-type Mono and a special (to me) SPU A/E from 1988, Denon 103, Denon 102, others I have honestly not used in a long time include a Shelter 901, GE VR, GE RPX, etc.
MC Step Up Transformers: Altec 4722 (my go-to), Altec 15095, Triad HS1, Siemens T 41/15 C, Harman Kardon XT3.
Phono/Line Stages: Marantz 7 (modified), Altec 1567A (modified), RCA Tube Manual circuit.
Power Amplifiers: OJAS Single Ended 2A3 (my go-to), Arthur Loesch / EIFL Single Ended Western Electric 248A / 211 (very special one of a kind amp), Many Class D units that are also extremely useful.
Thanks to Devon Turnbull and Isa Saalabi for their time and efforts in making this story possible for Resistor Mag.
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