500 ISSUES AND COUNTING

STEREOPHILE REACHES A PUBLISHING MILESTONE.

- JONATHAN SCULL

We’re all involved with the world we live in. Friends from 20 years ago? Hey, nice to see ya, put on a little weight I see. Generally, you hang with your crew, although you might miss the bigger picture that way.

I wrote for Stereophile from 1993 through 2002, and I remember my experiences fondly, including the pure pleasure of listening to music on all that wonderful audio equipment. But I hung with my tribe and never fully appreciated the crucible in which Stereophile was formed. It’s a genuine saga; cue Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack to Once Upon a Time in the West.

It all began with J. Gordon Holt, of course. He wrote for and then became audio editor of High Fidelity. But he was disillusioned with the ads-guarantee-positive-reviews equation. He soured over the coddling of an advertiser’s component that blew up three times under test. He left in 1960—I imagine him leaving in something of a huff—and went to work with Paul Weathers, who’d made the first available frequency-modulation phono cartridge as well as a clearly superior ceramic model. But Gordon found the grass no greener on that side of the fence.

JGH said later, “Okay, if no one else will publish a magazine that calls the shots as it sees them, I’ll do it myself!” He added, “I must have been out of my mind.”

He was, he did, and the grand adventure began.