General Asylum: Audio Note of Japan (KONDO) by ANJ

HISTORY OF AUDIO NOTE TRADENAME

The nomenclature for the AUDIO NOTE came from MY AUDIO NOTE BOOK wherein I record every dream and idea of audio products. Also the word NOTE means music note and sound. I drew an underline below each word AUDIO and NOTE to stress, and started using the logo when I founded my company Audio Note Co., Ltd., Tokyo in 1976. The American magazine Audio Horizons issued in 1978 introduced our AN-S4.

I merged YL Acoustic Lab with Audio Note Co. in 1981 to succeed to production of historical and reputed horn speakers ever made by YL, which came from Yoshimura Laboratory. Note that the logo of YL is comprised of letters Y and L. to symbolize a horn.

In 1990, Audio Note Co. added a new brandmark to commemorate the completion of silver wire wounded output transformers. This new logo was designed by a professional designer who worked for Taiyo Electric Co. run by Mr. Yasuhiro Oishi, one of the shareholders of Audio Note Co. Recently we heard that Mr. Peter Qvortrup of Audio Note (UK) Ltd. registered Audio Note name in certain countries (IT ALY ,UK,USA) without having any authorization and approval from me. This behavior of his is a barbarous piracy of our intellectual proprietary right. We Audio Note Co. have been annoyed by his ex-modern conception. Only a fact was that I ever licensed him to use the name on contract basis to agree that he would assume production of good audio products of certain price range. He acted like "LA GAllA LADRA " composed by Rossini. I have now returned to the starting point with a new logo in order that I will continuously present pure KONDO products to the world. I wish everyone a success with new products from KONDO.

Hiroyasu Kondo Dec. 24, 1999