Column

Every once in a while, we come across a hi-fi guru who doesn’t have his head stuck up his arse.  It’s rare, and for this one, we had to travel (by email) to the mystical land of England to find him in his cottage workshop.  Seriously.
Graham Slee and his small team of engineers hand-build hi-fi gear.  Is it expensive?  Yes.  Is it worth it?  Without question.  Slee is a qualified engineer, having worked for the BBC and having acquired many years’ experience hand-building circuit boards for audio applications.  It’s the equivalent of having a professional pole-vaulter build you a really nice pole… by hand.
Let the man speak for himself; here’s the interview in its entirety.

DF: Give me the condensed version of your life.  Include at least one interesting fact that only a few people know about you.

GS: I was born in 1955 into a mining community in the South Yorkshire coalfields. My interest in technology and electronics started at the age of 10. I left school and trained as an engineering craftsman, after which I found a job in A-V. In my spare time during the latter half of the 70s, I was a DJ at a local hotel, as well as being the sound system maintenance man by default. My first audio venture into business was part-time around the year 1979, and I was also writing, contributing "a one article wonder" to UK electronics magazine Everyday Electronics. Having difficulty getting printed circuit boards for my audio kits, I turned my hand to making my own. I was more successful making money out of the PCBs and ended up running my own printed circuit design and manufacturing business until 1989. I'd been making boards for the local radio station's engineering department, and ended up there as a senior engineer. We did a lot of work for the BBC, and I guess I did around half the design work. After years of Thatcher's monetary and dog-eat-dog policies, I found myself redundant after a hostile company takeover. I did anything I could, including freelancing for a couple of audio firms. I set up Graham Slee Projects in 1998 with no particular direction in mind, but with a new mouth to feed (my son Ryan). I decided we should live dangerously and spent the weeks housekeeping money on our first design - the Gram Amp 1 phono preamp. A positive review in Gramophone magazine (Jan, 2000) followed, and we've been in the phono stage business ever since.

DF: When did you know you wanted to build audio gear?

GS: When I was DJing in the 70's, I realized just how bad vinyl sound reproduction was, and I reckoned I could do better. It was around that time I started building audio gear and developing my own circuits. I sold a few pieces of equipment I'd built and people liked them. I guess it must have been then.

DF: What do you have against the digital medium for music as opposed to vinyl?  What would you recommend for those who need portability?

GS: Done properly, digital isn't all that bad, but CD was never done properly.  It was badly thought out in a rush to make money, and I simply didn't like the way they set out to destroy vinyl for that singular purpose - frightening people by saying their records would disintegrate and all that. But let's face it, 1980's politics encouraged such behavior. Having heard some of the MP3 format recordings I'm quite impressed, and that's compared to run-of-the-mill CD. MP3 seems to somehow keep the musicality if done properly. I remember we used to day dream about albums on a chip in the 70's, never thinking it would actually happen.

DF: Would you say your products alter the music to make it sound “good,” or more simply reveal it for what it really is?

GS: Why would you want to alter the musicians work? I guess if you're a frustrated musician making hi-fi, you could get a kick out of doing that? No, I want to hear what the musician is saying to me in his/her words and music. Pull back that curtain and reveal it all! Everything! In fact, that applies to the world, not just music. I hate lies!

DF: What are the top three points of differentiation between you and your competitors?  What do you have that nobody else has?

GS: Nerve!

The differences? I may be an Aries, but I'm no sheep. To make a successful hi-fi product it has to follow the principles set out in the religion known as hi-fi - rubbish! 1] Case size and appearance doesn't make music, it's the electronics that do that. Rather than researching embellishments, I spend 99.9% of my time researching the musicality of the circuits. 2] Big power supplies - it's got to be a "he man" to sound good? That's true for big power amps, but 100 watt power supplies for a half watt preamp? If you have to do that you need an education! 3] Because of 1 and 2 we can price great sounding gear that real people can actually afford to buy instead of wasting their lives dreaming about it.

DF: Why hand-built?  Do you think this will change in the future?

GS: The easy answer is it's always been like that, and why change a successful method?

DF: What do you think are the limitations of building by hand?  How often does a product get returned for repair?

GS: Hand building obviously takes longer and you don't make anywhere near the big profits of the mass producers because you have to pay for good people, or do it yourself. As for reliability, as each piece is built by fully experienced people, a product should easily outlast the mass produced equivalent. There's already more refuse than we can handle. When I was younger most things were hand built and much of it is still serviceable today.

DF: What are your annual sales and what is your top-selling item?

GS: It's not reached half a million dollars yet (quarter of a million pounds) but it isn't too far off. A lot of legislation has brought down the glass ceiling over the last three years. I guess if it hadn't been for that, we'd have really taken off by now.

The Solo 2007 headphone amplifier has taken a slight lead over the last 12 months. Before that it was the Era Gold V phono stage.

DF: Is it just you, Diane and John, or do you have other employees to assemble the products and handle your business?

GS: It started out with just me. I used to work with John in broadcast audio, and we'd lost touch, but he turned up out of the blue nearly three years ago, and that made two of us. Diane has always helped me sort myself out as well as being a fulltime homemaker and dealing with the kids, so when we became a Limited Company she was the ideal choice for company secretary. John's wife also helps out, and we recently appointed Daryl on assembly and testing duties, plus we have ex-navy radar technician Tony helping part-time. At last, I've been released to do more R&D, marketing work and general catching up on business matters.

DF: What kind of facility is your company in?  (i.e. a 5,000 square-foot warehouse or your parents’ basement?)

GS: Parents? Unfortunately they passed away. No, I'm on my own these days. The PCB business used to have 3,000 square feet, and that's why we don't have anything near that today. We take the nonconformist attitude of if we don't need the space, why pay for it? Just for the prestige? Our carbon footprint is very small because we're established in our own backyards. Although we work from home these days, we're still set out as professionally as most manufacturers, but we're essentially a "cottage industry.”

DF: What kind of quality tests do your products go through?

GS: Exactly the same as the products we used to make for the BBC and similar organizations when we worked in the radio engineering department. We test every single one - not one in ten - and they get a full specification test, or they don't ship. We also inspect for fit and finish.

DF: How do you assess the need for new products in the audio industry and then decide which ones to research and develop?

GS: We have a reputation for listening to our customers. They know what they want and if it isn't out there, or they're dissatisfied with what is, they ask us. I then prioritize those that get asked for more. Provided it's analogue audio, we're able to make it.

DF: What’s your ideal equipment setup?

GS: Like many family men, it's hard to have a listening room as well as domestic bliss, so it's headphones for my relaxation. That makes it very easy because all I need is a turntable, phono stage, headphone amp and a pair of headphones, and we make the Reflex and Solo which I usually use. I prefer high output phono cartridges and like the Music Maker 3 by The Cartridge Man, although the Stanton 890 DJ cartridge is particularly good and so is the Ortofon Salsa which is the moving coil exception. I use a Rega Planar 3, Old beat-up Thorens TD125, or Technics SL1210 depending on mood. My favorite cans are Sennheisers HD250 which suit vinyl better than the 600/650 for my tastes.

DF: What is your “pride and joy” product?

GS: Difficult question. They're all our pride and joy one way or another.

DF: The lava is coming.  You have five minutes to get out of your shop.  What would you grab?

GS: There wouldn't be enough time...

DF: What are your top four music groups, composers or musicians?

GS: I have to choose just four? OK, they'll be biased toward psychedelic and progressive rock in that case: 1] Pink Floyd 2] Genesis 3] David Bowie 4] Led Zeppelin, Joes Walsh, Yes, Emerson Lake and Palmer, etc... how can I choose?

DF: How do you feel about modern genres, like rap and modern pop?  As the production techniques change, how do you intend to meet the hard-edged music with your technology?

GS: What do you mean, how? Music is music. I listen to as many genres as I can, and OK at 52, some of the modern stuff is beyond me, but I go as far forward as The Pet Shop Boys, Blondie (remember Rapture?), and the late Ian Drury, to name but three.

DF: What is the Graham Slee dream, goal and ambition?

GS: Just give me a small holding in the Peak District and enough money for a peaceful life to last the rest of our days.

DF: Is corporate affiliation ever up for consideration?

GS: If it buys me a farm as well, yes!

DF: Is there an heir to your throne?

GS: Well Ryan wants to be a Palaeontologist, so I guess my boy doesn't want to follow his dad? John, being younger than me, may want to keep the company alive if the unthinkable happened.

DF: What’s on the horizon?  What products are on the drafting table?

GS: The Voyager portable "shirt-pocket" headphone amplifier is about to be launched. On the drawing board is a mid-priced headphone amp and a line preamp. Plus, there's a "green" power conditioner that'll run any of the existing products on 1 Watt from a tiny switched mode supply. I'm hoping that will be a bit of a novelty as it's very difficult to tell the difference between it and our linear PSU1 power supply. Hopefully the energy conscious will be interested in that?

DF: Anything that we missed that you want to talk about?

GS: To quote Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon, "I can't think of anything to say right now...”