Micro Seiki

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Micro Seiki Co., Ltd.

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founding 1961
Seat Tokyo , JapanJapanJapan 
Branch Consumer electronics

The Micro Seiki Co., Ltd. was a Japanese record player manufacturer who had been making mid-range and high-end devices since the 1970s. The company marketed its devices under its own name, but was primarily an original equipment manufacturer for many other manufacturers, some of whom did not manufacture their own turntables. In addition, Micro Seiki produced, mostly in optically slightly different form, equipment for trademarks . Other products were tonearms , pickup systems and headphones . The company's logo , two vertical lines with an oval point between them, symbolized an elliptical needle sliding through the record groove . The company's stated goal was to produce turntables that could reproduce sound true to the original.

history

Micro Seiki BL-91
Mechanics of the MA 505 S tonearm
OEM product Universum F2002, derived from the Micro Seiki DQ – 44

Micro Seiki was founded in 1961 as a precision engineering company. The company's first record player produced was the MR-711 direct drive model . Three kits were developed from which the various devices were put together. On the one hand, there were turntables with a wooden frame and direct drive, then fully automatic machines with separate motors for drive and tonearm, and the entry-level devices with belt drives .

Micro Seiki developed and produced all of the Luxman brand turntables , and it also produced OEM products for ADC, Denon , Sharp , Toshiba , Hitachi , Sanyo , Sansui , Kenwood , Telefunken , SABA and HH Scott . There were also devices built for the trademarks of the German mail order companies Quelle and Neckermann . Usually these were devices that technically differed only slightly from their counterparts sold under the name Micro Seiki . Record players were also manufactured for the American company RadioShack .

The flagship of the devices sold under its own name was the SZ 1T record player produced in 1984. The drive was built into a metal frame, the platter made of steel weighed over 20 kg and was stored on an air cushion. The pump unit required to generate this weighed 8.5 kg; the total weight of the record player was 88 kg. The device had a 8-phase hysteresis - synchronous motor , which was housed in an external motor drive state and the turntable via a belt. The device was offered for 19,950 D-Mark in the year of publication , which today (2020) corresponds to approximately 19,235 euros adjusted for inflation .

In Germany, Micro-Seiki devices were initially sold by the company Hans Schäfer from Hanover , later by all-akustik (also from Hanover). Due to the strong depreciation of the D-Mark against the Japanese yen , the already high-priced record players from Micro Seiki became even more expensive around 1985, so that all-akustik gave up selling the brand. In 1986 the SX 555 FVW turntable was declared the reference model in the specialist magazine Stereoplay. At that time the distribution in Germany was done by the Hesse company PIA, which gave up the business again in 1988.

In the late 1980s, the company faced bankruptcy several times. In 1986 the Sailor Pen company bought the property on which Micro Seiki's headquarters were located. The company also acquired a large part of the production facilities. Micro Seiki moved to the outskirts of Tokyo. It is not known when the company finally stopped production. However, there is still a Japanese price list from 1991.

reception

Micro Seiki devices have repeatedly received positive reviews in contemporary publications. For example, in the July 1975 issue of Playboy magazine recommended the MR 711 record player as a suitable device for the most expensive hi-fi stereo system in the world, Fono Forum wrote in its 9.1976 issue, “the Micro DD-40 with its MA tonearm -505 belongs to the top class, ”Audio wrote about the RX 5000 in May 1980, that it was“ so trimmed for longevity in all mechanical properties that it could outlast some of its owners - to the delight of the heirs ”. In HiFi Stereophonie Karl Breh wrote about the DDX 1000 that the Japanese company unfolded "an admirable potential of imagination" when it came to enriching the HiFi component "turntable" with "new technical and aesthetic gags". The DDX-1000 is "a direct drive turntable, which due to its conception and design" exudes a lot of "hi-fi glamor" and, more importantly, offers drive properties "that are at the limit of the measurable". The tonearm Micro MA-505 should be counted as "one of the highest quality tonearms that are suitable for equipping pure drives". The data measured on the drive speak for themselves. The rumble and synchronization values ​​would be "at the limit of what can still be measured with the existing measuring plates".

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Micro Solid-5 Operating Manual (PDF) ( en )?. Retrieved March 25, 2020.
  2. ↑ a b Micro Seiki OEM List , accessed March 25, 2020
  3. ↑ a b SZ 1T at my-micro.de , accessed on March 25, 2020
  4. ↑ Inflation calculator
  5. ↑ a b c d What happened to MICRO SEIKI? , accessed on March 25, 2020
  6. ↑ Price list at Vinylengine.com
  7. ↑ a b The philosophy of perfection - catalog from all-akustik (PDF), pages 2 and 3
  8. ↑ Fono Forum, 09.1976, page 105
  9. ↑ Fono Forum, Issue 11.1977, page 1147