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Contributing to American Manufacturing and Business
Contributing to American Manufacturing and Business
We listen to and test every unit before it leaves here; we won’t ship a unit until it sounds right and meets or exceeds our published specs. Each product comes to you with a report detailing the performance of your particular amp or preamp on a battery of demanding tests.
One of our goals at LKV is to contribute, in at least a small way, to restoring manufacturing in the United States. Our products are designed and assembled in North Conway, NH. We use as many parts manufactured in the United States as feasible, including all enclosures and transformers, most resistors, switches and connectors, and the low noise JFETs used in gain circuits. The following American companies have been particularly helpful in supplying parts and services:
- Hi-Tech Fabricators of Milford, NH (www.hitechfabricators.com). Mike Bailey, Hi-Tech’s Chief Operating Officer has been incredibly helpful, designing and manufacturing excellent enclosures for our products at very reasonable prices.
- Toroid Corporation of Maryland. (www.toroid.com) designed and manufactured our excellent power transformers.
- Linear Integrated Systems, Inc. of Fremont California (www.linearsystems.com) manufactures the low noise JFETs that are critical to the excellence of our phono preamp. They manufacture the wafers for these devices in the U.S., but subcontract some of the packaging of these components to overseas subcontractors.
- NAC Semi (www.nacsemi.com) a Linear Systems distributor, has been helpful to us in arranging for reliable supplies of these JFETs.
- Demers, Negrete & Associates, Inc. of Milford, NH. (www.demers-negrete.com) designed our LKV Logo, and developed this web site. Demers-Negrete also provides our website's continuing maintenance, hosting and email services.
On Bill Hutchins
On Bill Hutchins
While incorporated in 2012, the story of LKV begins in the childhood of Bill Hutchins. He was raised in an exacting musical & technology environment, where he started building his own electronics with a Heathkit amplifier before he entered middle school. While his life has many highlights, the one that stands out for LKV Research are the three hours Bill shared with Harry Pearson in Harry's home during the initial review process of the Phono 2-SB. Mr. Pearson raved about how incredible it was and underpriced - a marvelous day!
Bill's mother Carleen Hutchins not only founded the Hutchins Consort, also but revolutionized violin-making with her Violin Octet.
The focus on physics, detail and perseverance in making instruments, not just the enjoyment of music, dominated Bill's upbringing. Today's listeners benefit from decades of Mr. Hutchin's talent, learning, attention and sweat.
Bill's study of electrical engineering and electronics, includes their history. When was feedback developed? Why? What are the limitations and strengths of different materials and designs? He doesn't rely on names or tired reputations. For example, when an electrolytic capacitor is needed in a power supply, he chooses the best one available: he doesn't just say Munsdorf. Bill's deployment of variations of the minimalist AZF circuit is due to its inherent noise reduction and distortion-resistance. First principles must be obeyed in the pursuit of the absolute sound.
In Bill's Words
In Bill's Words
I grew up listening to live classical music played in our living room by my mother and her chamber music aficionado friends. Really well reproduced violin or cello music still transports me back to the spot on the family’s living room rug where I lay to listen. As a teenager, whenever I could scrape up three or four dollars, I went to the local record store to buy an acoustic folk recording. I wore out every one of those records playing them again and again on an old record player that I now think must have had a chisel for a needle.
In electronics, I am basically self taught. I started years ago, when my parents gave me a Heathkit radio for Christmas when I was 12. I was disappointed because I wanted a basketball. It was several months before my curiosity got the best of me, and I opened up the Heathkit box and built the thing, a transistor portable radio the size of a small lunch box. I connected the battery, turned it on and …. Nothing. It didn’t work. After resisting my first urge to throw it against the wall and watch it smash, I got to work trying to figure out what was wrong. Eventually, I got it working, and so began my education in electronics.
My day job was as a lawyer litigating cases mostly in Federal Court. But much of my spare time for many, many years has been taken up with studying electronics, and designing, building, listening to, testing, modifying and troubleshooting amps, preamps and speakers. I held a Ham radio license for a number of years, and in that period I worked on radio gear as well.
Whenever something I built didn’t work the way I expected, I analyzed the device to understand its basic operating principles, read everything I could about it, and put the thing right, sometimes after long periods of frustrating efforts. In the process I got a pretty good education.
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