I think that ship sailed 55 years ago. American audio companies have to compete with foreign audio companies if they want to survive which means having their products assembled overseas in the same huge factories as the foreign companies. AVA can make it here because I think every unit is hand built one-at-a-time, that is hard to do when your business model is based on selling 10,000 units a month.
The top audio companies in 1960 were:
McIntosh
Marantz
Fisher
Harman Kardon
H.H. Scott
Pioneer
JBL
Klipsch
Altec Lansing
Dynaco
Ten years later in the 1970's the market was dominated by foreign manufacturers:
Pioneer
Marantz
Sansui
Technics
JBL
Advent
Kenwood
Sony
Yamaha
Bowers & Wilkins
The lineup remained the same into the 2000's:
Sony
Pioneer
Panasonic
JBL
Bose
Kenwood
Marantz
Denon
Klipsch
Bowers & Wilkins
Some new names appear on the list around 2010 including:
Aperion Audio
Vandersteen Audio
Magnepan
KEF
Focal
Krell
Cambridge Audio
Of course if a person wanted to buy American there were always plenty of boutique audio companies but their prices were always more than I could comfortably afford which is why my preamp and amps are made by AVA.
I’m a bit late to this thread, but I think a couple of companies need to be included in the 1960’s. Acoustic Research had nearly a third of the speakers being sold by the mid 60’s. And the AR turntable, while not in the numbers of Dual or Garrard, was a good selling unit. KLH was also an important player with everything from outstanding FM radios, suitcase-style all-in-one stereos, to the exotic full range Model 9 electrostatic speaker.
Advent was most definitely an American company in the 1970s with manufacturing in Cambridge, MA. Some of their electronics, such as the Modell 300 receiver were assembled in Mexico. Advent went bankrupt in the early 1980’s. Ironically, the best selling Large speaker model was priced too low and Advent was losing money on each sale. Henry Kloss was associated with all three companies.
JBL designed and manufactured their speakers in Southern California through the early 2000’s when production went to Mexico and China. But all of the various speaker drivers and cabinets were done in-house for most of JBL’s history.
Magnepan and Vanderseen date back to the 1970s and remain American companies. Magnepan builds all of their speakers totally in-house. Vandersteen, like 98% of speakers companies, outsource their drivers from overseas.
