I am an engineer in the automotive industry in connection with the manufacturing of rubber parts and their specifications, principally in the areas of continuous improvement of products and processes, quality control and project management. I live in Clermont-Ferrand, in the middle of France.

I am passionate by the restoration of rare high-end speakers from the great age of audio, with a particular appeal for "Sound Oddities". The restoration of exceptional products allows me to acquire competences to someday create my own loudspeakers. This website aims to show my projects, but also to asses the existence of an interested audience potentially in need of such restoration services.

I discovered HiFi at a very young age with my uncle. He had a pair of Bose 901s and Sony SS-8150 [↗], very uncommon and extremely rare speakers I spent hours contemplating. A McGiver at heart, he started one day the repair of his 901s, for which no parts were available. I participated with a great focus to his creative project for the search of a solution for the manufacturing of home-made surrounds. I never stopped to question since then the design of loudspeakers and existing technologies - and those to come.

Later on, I have been interested in DIY and full-range speakers. Full-range loudspeakers are fascinating because they aim for the impossible : to do everything with a single driver. Who has never been seduced by listening voices over a full-range system ? However, I quickly realized there was room for a lot of optimization as systematically my disappointment hit back when I was looking to retrieve the energy of live music at home ! Undefined and sluggish lows, undynamic snare drums, distant and shy cymbals. Is it really necessary to take a bank-loan to buy a high-end system… or to invest more time in DIY ?

At the beginning of the vintage movement, with the arrival of TheVintageKnob [↗], amazing internet museum, I was able to read with wonder the only existing article about my uncle’s Sony speakers since then being far away, for which I even did not know the reference of.

In a daily frenzy research of my childhood, I have been very lucky to find these SS-8150. While I was thinking I was only saving some outdated speakers for the sake of nostalgia, it was a revelation : amazing low register, very much defined with a lot of energy, details over the entire sound spectrum and a realistic balance and soundstage. It was the beginning of a crazy adventure in the discovering of vintage high-end equipment built "without compromises". I have been interested in the incredible Sony V-Fet amplifiers and then discovered the APM series, unknown so far, and which TVK was introducing as fantastic speakers.

I managed to acquire my first pair of Sony APM-8 [↗] in 2009 and they became my first major project with the design and the development of molds for surrounds and the manufacturing of custom surrounds for the woofer and the low-mid drivers. In order to preserve the precious APM-8 and to repair them only when a satisfying solution was found, all the tuning regarding the surrounds and the molding process having been done over APM-33W woofers. Since then I managed to acquire a few interesting speakers, my last project being the incredible Pioneer S-F1 Custom.

When one works on such rare and technical items, one has to have a great respect for the designers and for the product, along with the desire to preserve the audio heritage. It is absolutely out of question to quickly tinker in order to retrieve the functional side to the detriment of all visual and technical concerns. The repairs have to be second to none in quality and it is in this approach that I have been finding satisfaction over the past years. From the trials to understand the basics, to the research of a solution by iterations and analyses, with precise measurements of parameters : it is the question of finding the appropriate solution, by any means necessary.