LKV's Chief Designer

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I grew up listening to live classical music played in our living room by my mother and her chamber music aficionado friends.  Really well reproduced violin or cello music still transports me back to the spot on the family’s living room rug where I lay to listen.  As a teenager, whenever I could scrape up three or four dollars, I went to the local record store to buy an acoustic folk recording.  I wore out every one of those records playing them again and again on an old record player that I now think must have had a chisel for a needle.

In electronics, I am basically self taught.  I started years ago, when my parents gave me a Heathkit radio for Christmas when I was 12.  I was disappointed because I wanted a basketball.  It was several months before my curiosity got the best of me, and I opened up the Heathkit box and built the thing, a transistor portable radio the size of a small lunch box.   I connected the battery, turned it on and …. Nothing.  It didn’t work.  After resisting my first urge to throw it against the wall and watch it smash, I got to work trying to figure out what was wrong.  Eventually, I got it working, and so began my education in electronics.

My day job was as a lawyer litigating cases mostly in Federal Court.  But much of my spare time for many, many years has been taken up with studying electronics, and designing, building, listening to, testing, modifying and troubleshooting amps, preamps and speakers.  I held a Ham radio license for a number of years, and in that period I worked on radio gear as well. 

Whenever something I built didn’t work the way I expected, I analyzed the device to understand its basic operating principles, read everything I could about it, and put the thing right, sometimes after long periods of frustrating efforts.  In the process I got a pretty good education.


- Bill Hutchins

 

 

 

News and Developments
New products, Upcoming events, Design breakthroughs and major developments at LKV.

26 Apr 2016
Stereophile Review: Michael Fremer says the LKV Veros One phono preamplifier is a "Class A performer" from which "utterly natural" music emerged. Read more.

26 Apr 2016
LKV Research will be demonstrating its Veros One phono stages and preamplifiers in Room 321 at Capital Audiofest July 8-10, 2016. Please join us at the Hilton Hotel at Twinbrook Metro, 1750 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20852.

7 July 2015
LKV Research will be demonstrating its Veros One phono stage and its Line One preamplifier in Room 321 at Capital Audiofest on August 28-30, 2015. Full Press Release.

2 Jan 2015
LKV Research announces upgrades to the Phono 2-SB. Full Press Release.

Jan 2015
Enjoy the Music honors the Line One as one of the 20 best of 2014. Full Press Release.

31 Dec 2014
Positive Feedback honors the Veros One as one the best that they’ve reviewed during the course of the year. Full Press Release.

Nov/Dec 2014
Pete Davey of Positive Feedback reviews the Veros One, and concludes, "So, there you have it. The LKV Veros One is now the holy grail of phonostages, in my opinion, and I implore you to try one if you haven't already, there is definitely something you are missing from your system if you haven't." Full Press Release.

Oct 2014
Tom Lyle of Enjoy the Music reviews the Line One, saying that "the Line One sounds more like music than a piece of audio equipment. There is no higher praise." Full Press Release.