| Ivor Sigmund Tiefenbrun | |
|---|---|
| Born | March, 1946 Glasgow, Scotland |
| Occupation | Chairman, Linn Products |
| Website | |
| http://www.linn.co.uk | |
Ivor Sigmund Tiefenbrun MBE (born March 1946) is the founder and Chairman of Linn Products Ltd, Glasgow, Scotland-based manufacturers of Hi-fi and home entertainment equipment. He was a very influential figure in the manufacture and retail of British audio in the 1970s and 1980s, and was appointed MBE by HM Queen Elizabeth II in 1992.
Contents |
Tiefenbrun was born in Glasgow, Scotland, the oldest of three children, to Jan (also known as Jack) Tiefenbrun, who was born in Krakow and arrived in Glasgow as a refugee from Austria in 1939.
Tiefenbrun dropped out of a Mechanical Engineering degree from Glasgow's Strathclyde University, and developed his engineering and business skills in his late father's company, Castle Precision Engineering, now run by his younger brother Marcus. He married Evelyn Stella Balarsky in 1969, and has three children - Natan (born 1970), Gilad (1972) and Sara (1978).
Linn Products Limited was started by Tiefenbrun in the city's Castlemilk district near Linn Park in 1972 in order to manufacture a hi-fi turntable, developed from his personal interest in music reproduction. His approach was to try getting more information off the long-play gramophone record (otherwise known as the LP), and making the turntable immune to audio feedback – very different from the prevalent view in the hi-fi industry at that time. The end product was the Linn Sondek LP12, which remained an industry benchmark for at least two decades.
In the early years, Tiefenbrun hawked the turntable around shops in a crusade against the received wisdom that all turntables sounded the same. Those few dealers who wanted to listen to it did, and heard a difference. By the end of the 1970s, this view had gained significant ground, large numbers of dealers and audiophiles had by then accepted this as the norm in the United Kingdom and around the world.
| “ | Ivor is outspoken, irreverent, highly opinionated, a brilliant and original thinker, and one of the most fascinating conversationalists either of us has met. | ” |
|
—John Atkinson & Robert Harley[1] |
||
In May 2006, it was announced that Ivor Tiefenbrun had stepped aside as Linn's Managing Director, but would assume the role of Executive Chairman.
He is founder member of the Entrepreneurial Exchange.
In October 2010, Tiefenbrun resigned as a Conservative candidate for the 2011 Holyrood elections after it was reported that he had called Scots who believed Margaret Thatcher was an evil force "thick". [2]