Equity Sound Investments - the early years pre-1996 history

Equity Sound Investments

Equity Sound Investments was founded in Toronto Canada in the 1980s as a corporate identity to offer two proprietary loudspeaker product lines along with Canadian distribution of the Intersonics ServoDrive subwoofer line. As Equity Sound ramped up, founder Steve Hutt had help from Tom Melzer & Marcel Didier, and two talented Candaian lads, Paul Gonsalves and Rob Robbins who each invested much more than they ever received (thanks guys). In April 1996 Steve moved on to Harman International's automotive division and his good friend audio systems master, Roger Robinson briefly stewarded GANE Loudspeakers. The Equity Sound identity was pretty much on hiatus until 2006 when Steve left Harman to be an independent insultant and resurrected his old 'corporate' identity. The GANE Loudspeakers and BOND Electro-Acoustics brands are not currently active, though a re-emergence is under consideration..... ah.... maybe..... doubt it.

The concepts for the Equity Sound loudspeaker designs were forged during literally more than a thousand live sound reinforcement engagements starting in the mid-1970s when Steve worked an average of 200 dates per year. Right up until he joined Harman in 1996 Steve provided live sound and mixing services for mostly acoustic music, folk, jazz and some rock provided a unique opportunity to explore and ultimately define various loudspeaker designs and prototypes.

GANE Loudspeakers (Fluid-Cooled) were a low price M.I. series of P.A. loudspeakers aimed at musicians, DJ's and clubs etc. but interestingly, with our ability to do customization they found their way into some unique installations. We didn't publish much literature and curiously, export sales outpaced domestic sales. We think this was just based on reasonable performance at good value and respect for North American made products. All woofers utilized ferro-fluid cooled voice-coils which allowed the use of amplifiers with high headroom to dramatically increase dynamic range. The G118, an 18" woofer in modest size enclosure (~1.7M³) rated at 600 watts was particularly popular.

One of the things that made the GANE systems work so well was careful attention to the woofer design and especially driver assembly. Great care was taken to develop and control processes that defined the bandwidth: Specifically the type of adhesive and how it was applied to the cone at the voice-coil attachment was critical for correct voice-coil decoupling as the frequency increased above the cross-over to high frequency horns. This design and manufacturing process provided the woofers with a perfect 2nd order low pass filter, in effect moving much of the system "voicing" technique out of the crossover and into the transducer for true minimum phase alignments.

Most of the Gane product line was typical MI 2-way systems with fuzzy carpet. But after receiving interest for installation finishes to emulate the competition the TL line was developed. (T = trapezoid, L = Lacquer)

Key installations utilizing GANE Loudspeakers:
New York Skyride in the Empire State Building.
Canadian Department of Defence R & D Lab, Downsview, ON.
Laurentian University Pub

BOND Electro-Acoustics

The BOND loudspeakers were "Pro" audio systems designed for maximum output from a minimum size.
- These systems used an active cooling system to all but eliminate thermal power limits & compression.
- The power cooling concept for moving voice-coil loudspeakers was licensed from Intersonics Inc. based on Tom Danley's patent US4757547.

For a thorough technical explanation of the BOND Power Cooling look at Steve's AES Preprint 3191:
Power Compression Elimination in Moving-Coil Loudspeakers by the Use of Fan-Actuated Forced-Air Cooling
Go to the "White Papers & Patents" page to download.

The BOND DF-12 and DF-12M played stupid loud when run at full throttle.
- Sonic quality was pristine, even at ridiculous loudness.
- Output of the DF-12M (12" woofer / 3"Ti HF Driver) co-ax floor monitor bi-amped 800w/channel, measured after >30 minutes at 1m achieved ~133dB peak with recorded music. That's not a calculated result, it is a B&K sound level meter peak-hold measurement with the tester wearing hearing protection!
- next generation of BOND Electro-Acoustics loudspeakers are 'under consideration'.

Below are scanned copies of the original BOND Electro-Acoustics brochure (front and rear) c1991, design and layout by Dominique Whelan. I still have one of the solid granite enclosures. The granite enclosure is pretty cool but we never sold any.

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