Dizzy Gillespie was a fan. Frank Sinatra purchased one for himself and gave them to his Rat Pack buddies. Hugh Hefner acquired one for the Playboy Mansion. Clairtone Sound Corp.’s Project G high-fidelity stereo system, which debuted in 1964 on the Nationwide Furnishings Present in Chicago, was squarely aimed toward trendsetters. The intent was to make the smooth, fashionable stereo an object of need.
By the point the Venture G was launched, the Toronto-based Clairtone was already nicely revered for its lovely, high-end stereos. “Everybody knew about Clairtone,” Peter Munk, president and cofounder of the corporate, boasted to a newspaper columnist. “The prime minister had one, and if the native truck driver didn’t have one, he wished one.” Alas, with a price ticket of CA $1,850—in regards to the value of a small automotive—it’s unlikely that the native truck driver would have really purchased a Venture G. However he may nonetheless dream.
The design of the Venture G appeared to come back from a dream.
“I need you to think about that you’re guests from Mars and that you’ve by no means seen a Canadian lounge, not to mention a hi-fi set,” is how designer Hugh Spencer challenged Clairtone’s engineers once they first began engaged on the Venture G. “What are the options that, no matter design issues, you want to see included in a brand new hi-fi set?”
The movie “I’ll Take Sweden” featured a Venture G, proven right here with co-star Tuesday Weld.Nina Munk/The Peter Munk Property
The consequence was a stereo system like no different. As an alternative of audio system, the Venture G had sound globes. As an alternative of the heavy cabinetry typical of 1960s entertainment consoles, it had smooth, angled rosewood panels balanced on an aluminum stand. At over 2 meters lengthy, it was too huge for the typical lounge however good for Hollywood films—Dean Martin had one in his swinging Malibu bachelor pad within the 1965 movie Marriage on the Rocks. Based on the 1964 press launch saying the Venture G, it was nothing lower than “a brand new sculptured illustration of recent sound.”
The primary-generation Venture G had a high-end Elac Miracord 10H turntable, whereas later fashions used a Garrard Lab Collection turntable. The transistorized chassis and management panel supplied AM, FM, and FM-stereo reception. There was house for storing LPs or for an non-obligatory Ampex 1250 reel-to-reel tape recorder.
The “G” in Venture G stood for “globe.” The hermetically sealed 46-centimeter-diameter sound globes have been product of spun aluminum and mounted on the ends of the cantilevered base; inside have been Wharfedale audio system. The sound globes rotated 340 levels to mission a cone of sound and could possibly be tuned to re-create the setting by which the music was initially recorded—a live performance corridor, cathedral, nightclub, or opera home.
Diane Landry, winner of the 1963 Miss Canada magnificence pageant, poses with a Venture G2. Nina Munk/The Peter Munk Property
Initially, Clairtone meant to supply solely a handful of the stereos. As one author later put it, it was extra like an idea automotive “meant to provide Clairtone an aura of futuristic cool.” Finally fewer than 500 have been made. However the Venture G nonetheless grew to become an icon of mod ’60s Canadian design, successful a silver medal on the thirteenth Milan Triennale, the worldwide design exhibition.
After which it was over; the dream had ended. Eleven years after its founding, Clairtone collapsed, and Munk and cofounder David Gilmour misplaced management of the corporate.
The delivery of Clairtone Sound Corp.
Clairtone’s Peter Munk lived a colourful life, with a nightmarish begin and lots of unbelievable and dreamlike elements too. He was born in 1927 in Budapest to a affluent Jewish household. Within the spring of 1944, Munk and 13 members of his household boarded a prepare with greater than 1,600 Jews certain for the Bergen-Belsen focus camp. They arrived, however after some weeks the prepare moved on, ultimately reaching impartial Switzerland. It later emerged that the Nazis had extorted massive sums of money and valuables from the occupants in change for letting the prepare proceed.
As an adolescent in Switzerland, Munk was a self-described get together animal. He loved dancing and courting and happening lengthy ski journeys with buddies. Schoolwork was not a prime precedence, and he didn’t have the grades to attend a Swiss college. His mom, an Auschwitz survivor, inspired him to check in Canada, the place he had an uncle.
Earlier than he may enroll, although, Munk blew his tuition cash entertaining a younger girl throughout a visit to New York. He then discovered work choosing tobacco, earned sufficient for tuition, and graduated from the College of Toronto in 1952 with a level in electrical engineering.
Clairtone cofounders Peter Munk [left] and David Gilmour envisioned the corporate as a luxurious model.Nina Munk/The Peter Munk Property
On the age of 30, Munk was making customized hi-fi units for rich shoppers when he and David Gilmour, who owned a small enterprise importing Scandinavian items, determined to hitch forces. Their concept was to create high-fidelity gear with a up to date Scandinavian design. Munk’s father-in-law, William Jay Gutterson, invested $3,000. Gilmour mortgaged his home. In 1958, Clairtone Sound Corp. was born.
From the start, Munk and Gilmour sought a high-end clientele. They positioned Clairtone as a luxurious model, a part of a chic life-style. If you happen to have been the kind of girl who listened to music whereas sporting pearls and a strapless robe and lounging on a shag rug, your music could be taking part in on a Clairtone. If you happen to have been a person who dressed well and owned an Arne Jacobsen Egg chair, you’ll even be listening on a Clairtone. That was the trendy life-style captured within the firm’s commercials.
In 1958, Clairtone produced its first prototype: the monophonic 100-M, which had an extended, low cupboard made out of oiled teak, with a Twin 1004 turntable, a Granco tube chassis, and a pair of Coral audio system. It by no means went into manufacturing, however the subsequent mannequin, the stereophonic 100-S, gained a Design Award from Canada’s Nationwide Industrial Design Council in 1959. By 1963, Clairtone was promoting 25,000 models a 12 months.
Peter Munk visits the Venture G meeting line in 1965. Nina Munk/The Peter Munk Property
Design was at all times entrance and middle at Clairtone, not only for the merchandise but in addition for the typography, commercials, and even the annual reviews. But nothing within the early designs signaled the dramatic flip it could take with the Venture G. That took place due to Hugh Spencer.
Spencer was not an engineer, nor did he have expertise designing shopper electronics. His day job was designing units for the Canadian Broadcast Corp. He consulted frequently with Clairtone on the corporate’s graphics and signage. The one stereo he ever designed for Clairtone was the Venture G, which he first modeled as a picket field with tennis balls caught to the perimeters.
From each design and high quality views, Clairtone was profitable. However the firm was nearly at all times hemorrhaging money. In 1966, with nice fanfare and enormous authorities incentives, the corporate opened a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Nova Scotia. It was a mismatch. The native workforce didn’t have the required expertise, and the encircling infrastructure couldn’t deal with the manufacturing. On 27 August 1967, Munk and Gilmour have been pressured out of Clairtone, which grew to become the property of the federal government of Nova Scotia.
Regardless of the demise of their first firm (and the federal government inquiry that adopted), Munk and Gilmour remained buddies and went on to turn into serial entrepreneurs. Their subsequent enterprise? A resort in Fiji, which grew to become half of a big lodge chain in that nation, Australia, and New Zealand. (Gilmour later based Fiji Water.) Then Munk and Gilmour purchased a gold mine and cofounded Barrick Gold (now Barrick Mining Corp., one of many largest gold mining operations on the earth). Their companies all had ups and downs, however each males grew to become extraordinarily rich and famous philanthropists.
Preserving Canadian design
For instance of iconic design, the Venture G looks like an excellent specimen for museum collections. And in 1991, Frank Davies, one of many designers who labored for Clairtone, donated a Venture G to the not too long ago launched Design Change in Toronto. It could be the primary object within the DX’s everlasting assortment, which sought to protect examples of Canadian design. The museum shortly grew to become Canada’s middle for the promotion of design, internet hosting greater than 50 packages every year to show folks about how design influences each facet of our lives.
In 2008, the museum opened The Artwork of Clairtone: The Making of a Design Icon, 1958–1971, an exhibition showcasing the corporate’s distinctive graphic design, industrial design, engineering, and pictures.
David Gilmour’s spouse, Anna Gilmour, was the corporate’s first in-house mannequin.Nina Munk/The Peter Munk Property
However what occurred to the DX itself is a reminder that any museum, nonetheless worthy, shouldn’t be taken as a right. In 2019, the DX abruptly closed its everlasting assortment, and curators have been charged with deaccessioning its objects. Thankfully, the Royal Ontario Museum, Carleton and York Universities, and the Archives of Ontario, amongst others, have been in a position to settle for the artifacts and companion archives. (The Project G pictured at prime is now on the Royal Ontario Museum.)
Researchers at York and Carleton have been working to digitize and just about reconstitute the DX assortment, by way of the xDX Project. They’re utilizing the Linked Infrastructure for Networked Cultural Scholarship (LINCS) to show interlinked and contextualized knowledge in regards to the assortment right into a searchable database. It’s a worthy purpose, even when it’s not fairly the identical as having all the artifacts and supporting papers bodily collectively in a single place. I admit to feeling each happy about this digital workaround, and in addition somewhat unhappy {that a} unified assortment that after spoke to the historic significance of Canadian design now not exists.
A part of a continuing series historic artifacts that embrace the boundless potential of expertise.
An abridged model of this text seems within the February 2026 print concern as “The Venture G Stereo Outlined Sixties Cool.”
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