It was with great pleasure that I note that one of my favourite magazines Hi Fi World has been for some time using one of my favourite on all things journalists LJK Setright as a contributor. This writer has been appearing as a font of all wisdom in publications such as "Bike" "Car" and other such publications of my enthusiasms since I was a callow youth.


His description of riding a Honda 750 on "occasional forays to 120mph" at a time when my own personal steed was an 18hp BSA C15 were an inspiration to my oil soaked forbrain that there was life beyond 50mph...

In the October Hi Fi World (alas the latest issue to our Antipodean shores this November) article Setright uses his richly embellished narrative to describe the internal acoustic of a house belonging to a deceased industrialist in Kingston that was built with a custom installed high end system in the 1960s.

He vividly portrays the unusual acoustic of the listening area thus:
"So I stood in the middle of the listening area and snapped my fingers. Not often does the skinny Setright hand produce such a rich assortment of of frequencies. Everything imaginable was there from the root note of the palm to an aspen leaf shimmer that possibly comes from the whorls on the finger tips.This was a real proper full frequency range snap and it sounded amazingly full and rich. But it sounded only for the instant: there was no hangover no reflection, no slavish echo from the grand piano on the upper deck, no aftermath whatever."
Mr Setright has a beautiful turn of phrase.

Alas it is with great sadness that I have been told that he has now just passed this mortal coil so it may be that the article is one of his last rejoinders into my world.

I will greatly miss his slim bearded figure with cigarette holder in hand as a thumbnail to his articles. Hi obituary in the Telagraph can be found here:

Click here to view article from the daily telegraph

I can thouroghly recomend Hi Fi World and its contributors as one of the stalwarts of cred journalism in the UK Hi Fi industry.

Alas for Australia not having a magazine contibutor of such depth. Our best journalistic resources here for cred information remain the local newspaper writers such as my friend Peter Familari of the Herald Sun who are not beholden to advertisors and are genuine enthusiasts in the position of leading their publications editorial choices.

Increasingly people are of course using the internet for their information but there is no real substitute for the viewpoint of an industry professional whos not aligned with a particular brand or business.

Otherwise we'd all start believing the advertisements wouldnt we?