Era Gold V at 21

The golden era of vinyl was being gradually supplanted by computational electronics, the Walkman, and the esoteric press. Sony-Philips brought about its demise in 1982, with their "no more crackles and pops" laser discs, otherwise known as CD.

Vinyl was hijacked by the non-pharmaceutical drugs industry. "e" became the shortest ever byword for "hip" as it fuelled the "techno" revolution. The Technics hi-fi turntable became repurposed for the abuse of vinyl records by the technique of wicky-wicky-wah-wah. And videos emerged of black American schoolgirls in gym kit, skipping, filmed from a low camera position.

Boom boxes became an official description of the World Trade Organisation for the new equipment of torture, and you show your contempt for your peace loving neighbours by bombarding them with loud boomy artificial bass, using any excuse for anti-social behaviour you like. This behaviour is now aided and abetted by lyrics websites and the Japanese martial art of karaoke.

A few attempted to carry on the vinyl era by tempting the esoteric press with expensive ornate turntables and "outboard" phono stages - some requiring a toroidal transformer larger than the amplifiers they were to serve, just to output a few milli-amps of signal current. Most of those never made a bean.

The remaining market was carved up by two or three "rich" companies who ruled their dealerships and distributors with a rod of iron.

It was against this backdrop that the Era Gold V phono stage emerged 21 years ago and made its first and lasting impression. The "Zimmerman" of the esoteric press (Michael Fremer), told the world that it was miraculous, and I can't argue with that, but some tried.

Its "magical ingredients" were banned by the EU and California to come into force four years after its introduction, and a Canadian distributor spread fear about its power supply safety. I worked my butt off on both aspects, finding solutions and the PSU1 safety was proven by IEC certified body Kema Quality BV.

Eventually I got a different op-amp to emulate the original using a little known technique discovered by chip designer Walt Jung (that's now disappeared from the Internet), so we no longer had to reject 50% of the op-amps.

And the Era Gold V is still in great demand.