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December, 1957, will probably be remembered as the month of stereo announcements, since both Fairchild and Pickering held demonstrations of pickups and one record manufacturer announced the first commercially available stereo record.

Viewed with mixed reaction throughout the record and hi-fi industries, the "Audio Fidelity" (ein Hersteller / Label von Musik-Platten) announcement of this record came as a complete surprise.

Within a week practically everyone in the industry who has any stake in phonograph equipment had his copy of this disc - though relatively few could play it, at least publicly.

Unofficially, most pickup manufacturers are and have been working on new (stereo-) pickups, and undoubtedly most have arrived at a design which may need only some final polishing to be ready to put into production. However, with no decision from the record industry as to what system (es gab 2 konkurrierende Systeme) will be adopted, no one would be inclined to go into full-scale production.

At the studios of WQXR in New York, a demonstration of the potentialities of stereo - as a whole, not only disc records - was staged on December 13 1957 by Anton Schmitt and Jimmy Carroll of Harvey Radio Company and Chester Santon of WQXR's staff.

After discussion of equipment necessary and the playing of several new tape releases, the Fairchild Stereo Cartridge was shown and demonstrated. Fairchild had announced the $250 cartridge a week previous. It is a moving-coil unit designed for the Westrex system, and performance would be judged as commercially satisfactory.

On December 16. 1957, Pickering and Company released an announcement which stated, that the company had completed tests of the new "Stanton 45 x 45" stereo cartridge and was ready to put the new pickup into production as soon as the industry announced its intention to produce stereo discs.

On December 19. 1957, Pickering and Company held a press conference and demonstrated the new cartridge. Walter Stanton, Pickering president and inventor of the Fluxvalve pickup, stated that the recent activity in stereo discs could be construed by the public as an indication that stereo discs are here and can be purchased in the near future, but that "in this age of rapid communication such activity is always widely publicized and is not a definite indication that stereo discs are soon to be on the shelves in record shops".

Basically, therefore, although Pickering & Company has a stereo-pickup design completed, it does not intend to make the units commercially available until the records are ready for the purchaser.

For the greatest benefit to all in the industry - both record and hi-fi - it would have been far better if this entire development had been kept under wraps until it was a "fait accompli". But, to mix metaphors, the cat has got out of the bag and is now among the pigeons, so we have to make the best of it.

Automobile manufacturers learned - biggest lesson was in 1928 when the Model A Ford was introduced - that you do not show a new model until your distributors have warehouses full of them so they can take advantage of the immediacy of customer reaction. Better we should have kept quiet until we were ready to go.

However, we can't help but thank Boy Genius Sidney Frey, president of "Audio Fidelity", for making it possible for the experimenter to have a record to play with, even though this same experimenter may not be able to play it. Maybe he'll figure out a method. We did.

To the best of our knowledge, AUDIO was the first magazine in the high-fidelity industry to take open issue with the findings of some of the so-called consumer service organizations. And so, it is with understandable gratification that we acknowledge the efforts of another publication to erase the halo of infallibility which some of these groups claim for themselves.

At a recent press conference in New York attended by the editors of leading electronic periodicals (Wochenoder Monatszeitschriften) and by representatives of trade organizations, Albert J. Fornian, editor of Electronic Technician, announced the conclusion of a project which should capture the interest of every audio engineer and hobbyist.

Mr. Forman and his co-editors set out to double-check the findings of one of the aforementioned groups. In selecting equipment for test they chose items which ran the gamut from unacceptability to highest approval, according to you guess who.

Conducted in one of the country's best-equipped laboratories by a group of engineers with no commercial interest in the gear being analyzed, the tests reflected substantial disagreement with certain data published recently.

The entire report on the tests is far too lengthy for inclusion here. Suffice to say they were conducted with meticulous attention to sound engineering practice. The resultant conclusions indicate either a lack of technical competence, practical judgment, or both, on the part of the self-styled consumer service group.

In his report on the "Electronic Technician" tests, Mr. Forman states: "It is of interest to note that we asked (this organization) to show us their original lab report and testing facilities, since we wanted to duplicate their procedures and equipment. Our request was refused."

At the risk of being repetitions we are going to fall back on our original statement on this matter which appeared in the April issue of Audio: "We feel that the lack of responsibility shown by some of the so-called consumer service organizations should merit nothing but contempt for their findings."