Listening - Shindo Redux

As with the older Monbrison and Masseto alike, the line stage of the new Monbrison is based on a stereo pair of triode-pentode tubes—in this case, the Telefunken ECL 94S, used in the previous Monbrison.

- Art Dudley

In January of 2014, some of us wondered if the sudden death of designer Ken Shindo would spell the end of the company he founded in 1977: It was hard to imagine Shindo Laboratory being led by anyone but its founder, a former Matsushita engineer who made it his life’s work to study not only the designs of audio’s golden age, but to learn the sound of every vacuum tube, every passive part, every circuit variation that he might reasonably press into service. Ken Shindo wasn’t just a builder—he was one part engineer, one part curator, and one part master chef, and his work stood, so far as I know, as the sole commercial testament to the idea that the sound of music at the moment of its creation is so massively complex that various different—and ostensibly different sounding—playback amplifiers can honor its myriad truths. Fans of the brand were thrilled to hear how each new Shindo Laboratory power amp or preamp would express those truths—like sonnets on the topic of beauty, how could there be just one?—and we were disappointed to think we had heard the last.

In the months following Shindo-san’s passing, Shindo Laboratory was kept alive by his wife, Harumi, and his sons, Yoshinobu and Takashi. The burden of commerce was especially heavy for Takashi, who already had years of experience building the amps and preamps his father designed. In 2014, if anything, demand for those products increased, forcing Takashi to spend countless long days at his workbench, building Vosne-Romanee preamplifiers, Montille amplifiers, and all the other staples of the Shindo line.