KI ‘Have I really spent so long at Marantz?’ Ken Ishiwata celebrates his 30 years with Marantz at the Ivy………… by Martin Colloms Unless a company founder and in a position to self promote, a product design engineer is often an unsung hero. First at Pioneer, and for the last 30 years at Marantz, Ken Ishiwata has applied his love of music, of audio, and his engineering skills to guide and voice generally well priced products to higher sound quality standards. ‘KI Signature’ products have been the stars of the range for years, right from his first voicing of the original but unfashionable 14 bit oversampled CD player based on Philips technology, which while technically accomplished, did not carry the market necessary ‘16 bit’ label which had been captured by rival Japanese designs. When the management got to the point of dumping a couple of thousand of these unsaleable 14 bit players Ken stepped in claiming that he could modify them for £8 each to create a superior ‘voiced’ product which would win over reviewers. The rest is history, the consignment then sold out, and almost every ‘KI’ product since has scored a performance advantage with the critics. But we must go back to the beginning: The mono LP was announced to the world by CBS in 1947 and 10 years later Ken built his first mono valve amp, when just 10 years old. At this time the stereo LP was released. He has lived through the mono LP, the stereo LP, and then digital audio, including valves and solid state, as he says ‘the golden years of high quality audio engineering’. As a teenager he experienced a high end, US built Marantz based system and marvelled at the sound quality of genuine Hi Fi and in particular the musicality of the legendary Marantz 7C, a triple triode pre amp. Completely unaffordable, US high end such as this was only for Japanese millionaires at this time but he managed to borrow that 7C and traced out the circuit, noting as many details as possible. After months of labour, searching for the right parts or good alternatives his copy was finished. On turning it on there was no sound at all. He learned the hard way that this design was a feedback type where fine details of the circuit, the build, specific parts and the wiring had to be just right otherwise is would become unstable and oscillate (whistle strongly at inaudibly high frequencies). His version was oscillating. More work finally led to its

successful operation. But the sound still did not match what he had heard with the original design. Here was another lesson, that high quality sound at the hands of an experienced designer was the result of many aspects working together, grounding technique, wiring layout, structural integrity, critical selection of parts, type and tolerance, and finally the circuit design itself. This was a lesson in voicing which was to stand him in good stead. By the mid sixties stereo was beginning to blossom and Pioneer was exporting strongly, producing car audio and some Hi Fi. With Pioneer Ken found himself stationed in the UK, his work to include reporting back on the performance of products in the European market and suggesting improvements. A low cost turntable came out called the Pioneer PL11 and Ken set about improving its performance and sound. His first great success, the PL12 became a huge hit selling by the hundred thousand for years to come. When the Japan HQ took over the then independent UK distribution arm for a while Ken was out on a limb. Never a company jock, independent of spirit, Ken is something of a fashionista, a fashion photographer, and violinist.

Ken Ishiwata at the Ivy telling of his audio career, May 6, 2009 Headhunted by the Marantz Europe division he characteristically set out his own onerous terms

and conditions. They could not agree. But not long after Marantz HQ in Japan agreed to take responsibility, on his terms, and called him back to base for retraining. As was the Japanese custom, this now contaminated outsider from Pioneer, who worse still had been years away in Europe, was treated with suspicion and hostility. But Ken kept his head down and set about learning the new set of complex US originated and more advanced Marantz audio technologies. After some months he was ready to return to Marantz Europe, based in Belgium, near the French border. Together with extensive warehousing there was also a sizeable Marantz speaker production line delivering upwards of 200,000 pieces a year to the market. His first task was to find out why the QA team in Belgium were rejecting so many Japan made products, to the consternation of the Marantz Japan HQ. He QA’d the QA inspector’s methods and found them at fault, and in fact nearly all products were actually meeting factory spec. Marantz gained confidence in Ken’s abilities and he gradually achieved more control over the conception and performance of product. The lead-into-gold story for the early 14 bit player was just the beginning, and with Marantz now operating as a division of

Philips he was ideally placed to connect with the advanced CD research at Philips labs and help create numerous exceptional CD players, and mostly at moderate retail cost. He has worked in all product areas, monitoring and refining sound quality, but has been most influential in the stereo arena with CD, pre and power amps, both valve and transistor designs, some carrying major input from their conception, others identified by Ken as susceptible to his ‘KI’ touch, gaining refinement as a result of painstaking balancing of the optimum sound through careful control of the mix of electronic components. Regarding this 30th year celebratory event he stated firmly that this was not a retirement party but an expression of confidence in his past work and a foundation for the future projects he aims to undertake. For Marantz it was an opportunity to thank him for his enduring commitment and also to launch two special Ken Ishiwata originated audio components, a universal SACD player and powerful integrated amplifier. Ken explained that they express some of the beautiful sound qualities he first recognised as a teenager when hearing that Marantz 7C preamp in the early 1960s.

Ken Ishiwata’s KI Pearl 30th Anniversary Audio Components in a limited edition of 500 units each.