Whatever Happened To Lowe Electronics

What happy memories you bring back of those periods of hysterical anarchy which represented the average working day at Lowe Electronics.

I greet you as a pale (but fat) shadow of my former self as illustrated in the photographs on this web site, laughing (as we always did) at the latest draft of The Listeners' Guide or hunched over a TS-520 in the Lowe car park in the shadow of a shipping container full of unsaleable computers.

My word - how close came we to disaster when we transferred our attention from radio to computing and Bill Lowe was overheard (by my wife) saying "Computers are the future and we can get rid of John's merry men". That's when I decided that it was time to get serious and build our own receivers. I think that John's merry men made the point quite well considering we sold something like ten thousand HF-150 receivers in addition to the thousands of HF-125, HF-225 and so on. Where are the computers now? Come to that, where is Lowe Electronics now?

But - I still own a mint BC-348 and several working examples of the Zenith Transoceanic, all topped out by an AR-7030 which is still one of the best performing HF receivers the world has known, and a product of the sheer genius of John Thorpe coupled to the wisdom of AOR in taking up John's designs.

I do miss the sound of Speedbird Concorde calling in from the edge of space as it began descent into New York but these days it would probably be blotted out by the ever-increasing tide of electronic garbage thrown around by PLT (Power Line Telecommunications) and/or DSL (Digital Line Signalling) whereby the Democratic Peoples' Post Office attempt to stuff high speed data down a Victorian pair of copper wires with the inevitable result that the copper acts (no surprise) as a giant end-fed long wire and radiates for literally miles in all directions. Nuff moaning!

Keep up the writing; you bring laughter into the hearts of many people world wide, and I shall continue to remember the good times we all had as members of that happy band known (apparently) as John's merry men. Merry we certainly were, and no more so than at 5pm on a Saturday afternoon when we forced the showroom doors closed against the barbarian hordes and settled down in the back office with a bottle (or two) of good wine, a handful of salted peanuts, and reviewed the past week as we slid ever closer to total hysterical oblivion.

John Wilson - G3PCY