Robin Marshall speakers

K

Kowalski

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Hi,

I've enjoyed a fair few pairs of speakers designed by Robin Marshall over the years, but I'm not one to read magazines or mingle with the in-crowd so I've no idea what (if anything) he's up to these days, anyone care to fill me in?

Thanks
 
Robin was, and still is, a resident of Amsterdam and I used to see him quite often at the Alto Jazz Cafe in the city. He was never very interested in talking to me about audio, but was always very animated when discussions turned to music. I moved away from Amsterdam a few years ago and lost contact with him.

He worked for Harman ten years ago and possibly still does. I know from associates in the audio and the music business that his interests are mostly in pro-audio nowadays. That is the extent of my information. Perhaps it helps.
 
On a similar note, anyone add any of his other speakers to a list for me to keep an eye out for?
 
Monitor Audio MA852 was also his and effectively gave birth to the ES14.
 
RobHolt said:
Monitor Audio MA852 was also his and effectively gave birth to the ES14.
Click to expand...

Monitor audio was started by Mo Iqbal who was a dodgy commodity dealer, mostly in the sugar market. Buying and selling futures and sugar in transit etc. Basically he was making too much money and needed tax loss. He pretended he knew what he was talking about like most Hi-Fi company owners, but just employed outside design either freelance a la Martin Collums or in house as with Robin until they all got pissed off with being paid late and all the other games he played. He eventually went bust and I think had fraud case brought by HM Revenue and Customs.

As far as I know it is now run by Dean Hartley who used to run a company called Keswick Audio Reseach who made good speakers in the 90's.

EDIT actually I think (from the deep remnant of my memory) it was started by Martin Collums in the 70's and financed by Mo, but being the way he was (ahhmm!) he managed to acquire it.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
RobHolt said:
Monitor Audio MA852 was also his and effectively gave birth to the ES14.
Click to expand...

The R852 came after the ES14. The hifi store where I worked did not sell Monitor Audio because we already had too many speakers, but I heard it several times in other places. I think it was a good speaker, but not so good as the ES14. The R252 and R352, which came before Epos was formed, were really excellent products and rank among my favorite Marshall designs.

I visited the Epos factory in 1986 or 87, along with some other Dutch dealers, and I saw that Robin was working on several Monitor Audio products. Most of the activity at Epos was consultant design work for other people, some of it in consumer hifi, some in more specialised audio applications. I had the impression that Robin and Mo Iqbal were friends for a long time and I did not have any feeling that there was something sour in the relationship.

A high point of my visit to the factory was seeing a batch of 12inch aluminium cone bass guitar drivers being assembled. Epos made these in small numbers without making any publicity for them. They looked robust enough to survive a nuclear attack! We had a short demonstration of the drivers in Robin's own 4 x 12 stack driven by a 100watt Marshall tube head. An open low B on his 5-string bass gave me a good indication of what it must be like to be hit in the stomach by a cannon ball.
 

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