Early days of Mekasonic Loudspeaker

Hi friends,

I am Aloke Mukherjee.

I started making Loudspeaker in Kolkata, India in the year 1973.

The brand name of my product was mekasonic

In those days there were not many manufacturers of loudspeakers in India.

Most of the speakers available were famous international brands like 

Philips, Goodman's, Wharfedale, Celestion, Altec,Tanoy etc.

 A Philips 12 inch woofer (made in Belgium)

  

A Goodman's Speaker of 60's and Tweeter with Volume Control

A Harman Speaker of Delhi    

Known Indian brands were Bolton, Philips, Harman, and some other Manufacturers around Delhi. 

I had some interest in High Fidelity sound system. I used to install and repair Hi Fi sets of my friends and relatives. 

I found a book about Loudspeaker written by G.A.Briggs, founder of Wharfedale (U.K) speaker and got inspired to make speakers. 

I had no idea about how to proceed. However, incidentally l came in contact with Mr.A.B.Sarkar, a pioneer and renowned expert on loudspeaker technology who was owner of SIVA paper cones factory at Ghaziabad, U.P.

He used to manufacture a wide range of paper cones in collaboration with Dr.Kurt Muller KG of Germany.

After I got in touch with Mr. Sarkar, he was very much kind to assist me in all technical matters and to find out the source of raw materials for speaker manufacturing. 

Most of the speaker component manufacturers were Delhi based.

As my home town was Kolkata, l tried to develop the mechanical parts like pole plate, basket, coils, connectors etc locally.

Two main items of a loudspeaker is paper cone set and Magnet. At that time, speaker magnets were mainly available in Alnico. Ferrite magnets were available in smaller sizes. I used to buy Alnico ring magnets from IGE, who had office at Kolkata and some ferrite magnets available from Permanent Magnets Ltd. A big problem I faced was that, the magnets used to come in demagnetised condition. There was no readily available magnet charging machine. I consulted some Electrical engineers who quoted a fancy price. Delhi based speaker companies were using local magnet chargers which were ok for small magnets but not suitable for large powerful magnets. 

That could be a reason why small manufacturers were not making big speakers.

However, after many thoughts and worries, and studying available journals and articles, l went for an experiment to make my own magnet charger and fortunately it worked fine in first trial.

All the efforts described above wasn’t a cakewalk – you can well understand. 

Moreover, I had no background for doing business. Also I did not have much financial support to progress quickly. It took quite some time to develop cast aluminium basket, soft iron pole plates, matching coils and other tit bits. 

I had to make many trial and error to finalise the shape, size and other specifications.

At that time there was no other speaker manufacturer in this region so I had to do everything from scratch and imagination. 

Finally, after making all arrangements which took about a year or so, I was nearly ready to go for a working prototype. During the process, I was always in touch with Mr.A.B.Sarkar to get his valuable advice and suggestions. Communication was not so easy those days. Neither e mail, nor WhatsApp. Inter state telephone talk was costly and not smooth enough. Mostly l had to write long letters to describe the matters.

The first 10 " Mekasonic speaker (original paper cone was with rubber surround)

So after long hassles I was able to make the first prototype of  mekasonic speaker a 10” rubber surround woofer, 40 watt capacity which delivered a clear and good low frequency response. I used a SIVA 230 HFR model paper cone received as a sample from Mr. Sarkar.

The name mekasonic was chosen because it was a combination of mechanical accuracy to achieve a good sonic effect.After being satisfied with initial trial, I went to Delhi for most valuable opinion from the Big boss. He was extremely happy to see my first baby and after testing in his test room, he approved the quality of sound.

An early Mekasonic 12" speaker Model No. M 12 with Alnico ring magnet

This was how mekasonic Loudspeaker was born. This is a true story. It was a long path finding effort. There was no other speaker manufacturer in eastern India that time. After the first speaker was made, series of developments took place year after year. My earlier activities were as usual in a tiny set up with very limited resources. 

In spite of many hurdles I went on developing different models from 6” to 15” speakers. That time the demand for large speakers was not very significant. Performance of the speakers were acceptable to the users.

In the next posts, I shall try to remember about the memories of subsequent phases.

#mekasonicloudspeaker