Dizzy Gillespie was a fan. Frank Sinatra bought one for himself and gave them to his Rat Pack friends. Hugh Hefner acquired one for the Playboy Mansion. Clairtone Sound Corp.’s Project G high-fidelity stereo system, which debuted in 1964 at the national Furniture Show in Chicago, was squarely aimed at trendsetters. The intent was to make the sleek, modern stereo an object of desire.
By the time the Project G was introduced, the Toronto-based Clairtone was already well respected for its beautiful, high-end stereos.”Everyone knew about Clairtone,” Peter Munk, president and cofounder of the company, boasted to a newspaper columnist.”the prime minister had one,and if the local truck driver didn’t have one,he wanted one.” Alas, with a price tag of CA $1,850-about the price of a small car-it’s unlikely that the local truck driver would have actually bought a Project G. But he could still dream.
the design of the Project G seemed to come from a dream.
“I want you to imagine that you are visitors from Mars and that you have never seen a Canadian living room, let alone a hi-fi set,” is how designer Hugh spencer challenged Clairtone’s engineers when they first started working on the Project G.”What are the features that, regardless of design considerations, you would like to see incorporated in a new hi-fi set?”
The film “I’ll Take Sweden” featured a Project G, shown here with co-star Tuesday Weld.Nina Munk/The Peter Munk Estate
The result was a stereo system like no other. Instead of speakers, the Project G had sound globes. Instead of the heavy cabinetry typical of 1960s entertainment consoles, it had sleek, angled rosewood panels balanced on an aluminum stand. At over 2 meters long, it was too big for the average living room but perfect for Hollywood movies-Dean Martin had one in his swinging Malibu bachelor pad in the 1965 film Marriage on the Rocks. According to the 1964 press release announcing the Project G,it was nothing less than “a new sculptured portrayal of modern sound.”
The first-generation Project G had a high-end Elac Miracord 10H turntable, while later models used a Garrard Lab Series turntable.The transistorized chassis and control panel provided AM, FM, and FM-stereo reception. There was space for storing LPs or for an optional Ampex 1250 reel-to-reel tape recorder.
The “G” in Project G stood for “globe.” The hermetically sealed 46-centimeter-diameter sound globes were made of spun aluminum and mounted at the ends of the cantilevered base; inside were Wharfedale speakers. The sound globes rotated 340 degrees to project a cone of sound and could be tuned to re-create the environment in which the music was originally recorded-a concert hall, cathedral, nightclub, or opera house.
Arne Jacobsen Egg chair, you would also be listening on a Clairtone. That was the modern lifestyle captured in the company’s advertisements.
In 1958,Clairtone produced its first prototype: the monophonic 100-M,which had a long,low cabinet made from oiled teak,with a Dual 1004 turntable,a Granco tube chassis,and a pair of Coral speakers. It never went into production, but the next model, the stereophonic 100-S, won a Design Award from Canada’s National Industrial Design Council in 1959. By 1963, Clairtone was selling 25,000 units a year.
Peter Munk visits the Project G assembly line in 1965. Nina munk/the Peter Munk Estate
Design was always front and center at Clairtone, not just for the products but also for the typography, advertisements, and even the annual reports. Yet nothing in the early designs signaled the dramatic turn it would take with the Project G. That came about as of Hugh Spencer.
Spencer was not an engineer, nor did he have experience designing consumer electronics. his day job was designing sets for the Canadian Broadcast Corp. He consulted regularly with Clairtone on the company’s graphics and signage. the only stereo he ever designed for Clairtone was the Project G, which he first modeled as a wooden box with tennis balls stuck to the sides.
From both design and quality perspectives, Clairtone was successful. But the company was almost always hemorrhaging cash. In 1966, with great fanfare and large government incentives, the company opened a state-of-the-art production facility in Nova Scotia. It was a mismatch. The local workforce didn’t have the necessary skills, and the surrounding infrastructure couldn’t handle the production.On 27 August 1967, Munk and Gilmour were forced out of Clairtone, which became the property of the government of Nova Scotia.
Despite the demise of their first company (and the government inquiry that followed), Munk and Gilmour remained friends and went on to become serial entrepreneurs. Their next venture? A resort in Fiji,which became part of a large hotel chain in that country,Australia,and New Zealand. (Gilmour later founded Fiji Water.) Then Munk and Gilmour bought a gold mine and cofounded Barrick Gold (now barrick Mining Corp., one of the largest gold mining operations in the world). Their businesses all had ups and downs, but both men became extremely wealthy and noted philanthropists.
