Classic 1930s audio brand Leak rewired
A British heritage brand plugs a gap in the audio market
Perhaps it’s the humdrum name that’s kept Leak from recognition today as a pioneering British hi-fi brand. But for a while that’s what it was. Founded in the 1930s as H J Leak & Co of London, it initially focused on making amplifiers for public address systems and theatres. During WWII, it began developing amps that used a clever “negative feedback” design to achieve its superior sound, a technique patented by Harold Black of Alexander Graham Bell’s Bell Telephone Laboratories in the 1930s.
After its Shepherd’s Bush workshop was bombed out in the war, Harold Joseph Leak moved his small staff of engineers to the nearby Brunel Road. Named after Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the art deco factory estate’s design influenced Leak’s flourishing line of amplifiers, loudspeakers and turntables. One amp from the 1960s, the Leak Sandwich — for real, its cone was sandwiched between two sheets of foil — is regarded as an exemplar of the “Golden Age” of British audio. Sadly, competition from Japan did for the Brits by the late 1970s. Now, 41 years after last launching a product, Leak is back.
“In an age dominated by digital, there has been a resurgence for older, more tactile technologies — the vinyl revival is a case in point,” says Jamie O’Callaghan, global head of sales and marketing at the International Audio Group, which has resurrected the Leak brand. (IAG earlier successfully revived the Wharfedale audio company.) “These are classic designs from the 1960s and ’70s, reengineered with modern techniques and technologies,” he says. “This desire for an authentic presence, coupled with a nostalgia for British engineering, convinced us that now is the time to bring back Leak.”
First off the line is the Stereo 130 amplifier, which broke ground as the first all-transistor design in 1963. The original art deco-inspired look is replicated on the outside, the insides are cuttingedge 2020 electronics (supporting streaming, for one). There’s also a matching CD player. “Like the appeal of mechanical watches, there’s a joy in high-quality engineering devised to perform a specific role at a very high level,” says O’Callaghan. The name could still use some work, though. ○