Musical Surroundings' Garth Leerer's High Fidelity Odyssey Is a 40+ Year Fun Ride

what a long strange trip it's been!

The top photo was taken back in 2005, at the Stereophile Home Entertainment Show, New York Hilton Hotel, where Garth Leerer raffled off this swell Clearaudio turntable and I hosted the giveaway.

Beginning in the late 70s/early 80s, Musical Surroundings' Garth Leerer has been an eye witness to and participant in the growth of high performance audio. I've known Garth for more than thirty years but mostly we're like two ships passing in the day and night at hi-fi show or I'm calling him about reviewing a piece of gear he's importing or representing.

On the eve of Clearaudio's 45th anniversary party in Nuremberg, Germany in May of 2023 we had time for a longer talk and some of his experiences and the people he met and whose lives he influenced were pretty mind blowing so during our drive to Munich I asked if I could conduct a rolling interview and he kindly said "yes".

Garth was a college friend of DJ and producer Arthur Baker, best known for his work with hip hop artists like Afrika Bambaataa and Planet Patrol, as well as British group New Order and together they started a mobil disco business. Baker went to bigger things as a record producer while Garth found his way into the audio business. Early on he answered a newspaper ad and went to work for Noel Lee as he was starting Monster Cable. He worked for The Mod Squad—Steve McCormack and Joyce Fleming— the originators of "TipToes". Garth ended up managing the store.

He made his way back to to the Bay area where he encountered Allen Perkins who at the time was at SOTA and later founded Immedia and designed the RPM turntable line and later Spiral Groove and still later the Mobile Fidelity turntable line.

He began importing Benz Micro cartridges at one point Harbeth speakers. He talks about where that name and Spendor originated. The list of people and brands he has been involved with and/or helped develop and the people he's worked for and hired and brought into the industry should fascinate anyone who loves this hobby and is interested in its background and origins—especially on the west coast.

Garth distributed Graham tonearms early on and Jim White's Aesthetix electronics line. He met Michael Yee and for many years has distributed his line of phono preamplifiers under the Musical Surroundings brand. He gave setup specialist Stirling Trayle his start as well as that of Norbert Schmeid who now works for Mobile Fidelity distribution

The names and brands fly by, some familiar like John Curl and some not, as the miles add up on the way to Munich. Leerer talks about his association with Clearaudio and Peter and Robert Suchy and more recently with DS Audio's Tetsuaki Aoyagi the young optical cartridge designer and manufacturer and Excel Corporation that once was exclusively an OEM builder for others but more recently launched the Hana line with Garth's help and participation.

It's a fascinating story that combines being in the right place at the right time and gutsy chance taking along with taking charge when opportunities present themselves. There's plenty to see other than Garth's profile as I dug up and added visuals to complement the storyline.

By the time we reach Munich the history of much of west coast high performance audio from 1980 forward will come into focus and especially if you're too young to have been there, you'll come away with a better appreciation of where it's been, where it might go and if you're young enough and want to get involved, how you might grab a piece of it for yourself.