West of Scotland Hi-Fi Club

2009-2010 season

James Kerr Logo Our final trip of the year was to visit the new location of James Kerr Hi-fi, a very old and long established Hi-Fi shop in Glasgow. It has now moved to a basement location in Bath Street where demo rooms are set up for any type of listening and viewing. We had an appointment with Stuart at 3:00 p.m. which was promised not to be missed.

We all met up initially at Lauder's Bar in Sauchiehall Street, a stones throw away from James Kerr and some of us arrived early to enjoy some live music from the resident band Lauder's Resident Band . Unfortunately due to the high level of the music, conversation was at a minimum. The two Alistair's arrived first, followed by Bill Goldie who was on his lunch hour (poor thing). George McCall and Gordon Stewart arrived later along with one of our newest members Gary Welsh just in time to buy a round of drinks. After a couple of drinks we made our way to Bath Street to hear some more (recorded music), this time at a lower level.

Happy members buying drinks When we entered the shop, we were immediately greeted by a member of staff who introduced us to Stuart for our demonstration.

He first of all let us hear the top of the range £4000 pounds worth system incorporating Cyrus amp, Cd player and Ruark Equi Stuart nox speakers (£2000). These speakers do get a 5 star rating in "What Hi-fi?" June 1996 and should sound superb. Asked if anyone had brought a CD, Gordon, unfortunately brought out this remastered distorted pop CD from the '70's and it certainly sounded that way. These speakers really had a faithful sound! Ruark Equinox Speaker When a clean classical CD was played however, they sounded better, but not as good as a pair of cheaper speakers which we heard later in the same room, but as you can see in the picture placed out from the wall. These speakers were only about £500 and sounded pretty good.

After much listening to many tracks, Stuart took us on a tour of the other demo rooms, showing off the DVD player and 5.1 audio. These we knew about from Alan James , but I felt the picture quality was superb, apart from being anamorphous which was down to the Cinemascope print. Stuart demonstrating DVD

After we toured the shop on our own we discovered a great find - BOSE mini speakers with Bass sub-woofer. they were stunning and apart from a lack of some mid-range we thought they could have been the best buy yet! Ideal for a small flat or complaining neighbours.

Bose mini-speakers The visit almost ends here, but I would like to thank the staff at James Kerr who are perhaps reading this to thank them for their patience and understanding from such a bunch of pernickety fusspots like ourselves.