We (then Jensens Stereo Shop) were an authorized Dyna Dealer when we went into business in 1967. Our claim to fame was that we offered Dyna units custom assembled for the the list unassembled Kit price. That way we made 33 percent on each one sold, enough to cover our build time and a bit more (we worked good and cheap and fast). Paul Jensen built very inexpensive two way speakers for us (the Sonic Eights) that we sold for $55 a pair unfinished. The speakers, a Dyna electronics system (tuner, preamp and amp) a Dual turntable and Grado cartridge, and we could put out a VERY good complete system for less than $600.00. We got tons of local college student business and offered a lot better value that the local hi-fi stores.
Because we built so many Dyna units, we noticed that there were many unannounced running changes in the products, some of which resulted in sometimes better, and sometimes worse musical performance. After figuring out which combinations of changes usually resulted in "better" we started tweaking the units we built to get better results every time. A young electrical engineer joined me in a few years, and did a complete circuit analysis of each of the units, located most of the design weaknesses (some because of cost cutting to keep the Dyna prices low, some because of design errors and oversights). We fixed these issues and came out with much better sounding products than the original Dyna units, and were able to sell these at higher than stock prices.
Some of these came to the attention of people in the audio industry like Ralph Hodges, Leonard Feldman, and Harry Pearson, and we received some really good write ups and rapidly increased sales.
Years later when Dynaco went out of business we were forced to design our own complete chassis instead of using Dyna mechanical bits, and have been building our own equipment ever since. I never wanted to have the biggest company around, just big enough to earn a decent living and to enjoy. We have managed that quite well.
The name change to Audio by Van Alstine happened because I got tired of getting phone calls in the middle of the night demanding repairs of their Jensen Car Radios under warranty while they waited. The stupidity levels finally got to me.
Although by far the main part of our business has been our own equipment for many years now, I still support most of the original Dynaco equipment that was designed to be kit built, with big open layouts and relatively easy to access internal parts. They are not really big money makers for us, but there is still demand and we keep our Dyna upgrades available. There would be no point on working on expensive or limited production units, the end prices would be too high and/or not enough possible candidates to justify the retooling costs.
That is pretty much it, in a nutshell. I will keep at it until they carry me out of here and I have excellent people trained to take over when that happens.
Best regards,
Frank Van Alstine
