Birmingham Sound Reproducers

Birmingham Sound Reproducers was a British manufacturer of record player turntables, and, for a time, housewares.

Daniel McLean McDonald (1905 – 1991) founded Birmingham Sound Reproducers as a private company in 1932 in the West Midlands of England. By 1947, the company chiefly manufactured communications sets (intercoms), laboratory test equipment, and sound recording and reproducing instruments, including phonographs.

In the early 1950s, Samuel Margolin began buying auto-changing turntables from BSR, using them as the basis of his Dansette record player.[1] Over the next twenty years, Margolin manufactured more than a million of these players, and "Dansette" became a household word in Britain.

In 1957, BSR, also known by the name BSR McDonald, became a public company which by 1961 had grown to employ 2,600 workers. BSR McDonald supplied turntables and autochangers to most of the world’s record player manufacturers, eventually gaining 87% of the market. By 1977, BSR’s various factories produced over 250,000 units a week.[2] The company also manufactured their own brand of player, the Monarch Automatic Record Changer. This could select and play 7", 10" and 12" records at 33​1⁄3, 45 or 78 rpm, changing automatically between the various disc sizes, although the speed had to be changed manually.[2]

BSR also made tape recorder mechanisms.[3] Bang & Olufsen used BSR's TD2 tape deck in their Beocord Belcanto from 1962.[4]

During 1975, with the help of Pico Electronics, BSR started the manufacture of a new upmarket turntable called the ADC Accutrac 4000 at its Garratts Lane factory in Cradley Heath. This turntable had individual track selection capabilities, allowing the user to play specified individual tracks, or play the LP in any order desired. It had a direct drive turntable motor, and a high quality ADC LMA1 cartridge and stylus. This was further developed into a turntable called the Accutrac 3500, which in addition to track selection handled a stack of up to six singles or LPs. Both turntables were equipped with an ultrasonic (not infrared) remote control.

Changing times and technology hit BSR in the early 1980s. Although BSR McDonald produced tape decks in addition to their widely used turntables and changers, consumers had begun to expect portability from their music players, and BSR faced competition from eight-track and cassette tape players including the groundbreaking Walkman from Japan. In the first five years of the 1980s, BSR closed several factories and made thousands of workers redundant.

During the 1980s, BSR manufactured the Rotronics Wafadrive for the ZX Spectrum range of computers.

After producing their last turntable in 1985, BSR McDonald closed all divisions except for Astec Power Supply, as well as keeping investments in various entities including dbx and X10 (another partnership with Pico Electronics). dbx is now owned by Harman International Industries. BSR then moved its head office to Hong Kong, as Astec (BSR) plc, and continued there until 1998, when Astec (BSR) plc was 100% acquired by Emerson Electric Company of the United States.

See also

References
  1. "Dansette record players from our collection". Dansettes.co.uk. 18 April 2000. Retrieved 21 February 2012.
  2. "Busy scenes at the BSR works". Black Country Bugle. 31 January 2008. Archived from the original on 22 April 2013. Retrieved 21 February 2012.
  3. "Tape Deck TD2 R-Player BSR Monarch; Great Britain, build 196". radiomuseum.org. Retrieved 18 May 2020.
  4. "Beocord Belcanto". Beocentral. Retrieved 18 May 2020.
  5. "The Swan Brand Heritage". Swan Products. Archived from the original on 24 November 2011. Retrieved 26 April 2020.
  6. Keane, Conor (24 October 1997). "US brothers put Goblin business on the market". The Irish Times. Retrieved 26 April 2020.
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