Dizzy Gillespie was a fan. Frank Sinatra purchased one for himself and gave them to his Rat Pack mates. Hugh Hefner acquired one for the Playboy Mansion. Clairtone Sound Corp.’s Project G high-fidelity stereo system, which debuted in 1964 on the Nationwide Furnishings Present in Chicago, was squarely aimed toward trendsetters. The intent was to make the modern, trendy stereo an object of want.
By the point the Venture G was launched, the Toronto-based Clairtone was already nicely revered for its stunning, high-end stereos. “Everybody knew about Clairtone,” Peter Munk, president and cofounder of the corporate, boasted to a newspaper columnist. “The prime minister had one, and if the native truck driver didn’t have one, he needed one.” Alas, with a price ticket of CA $1,850—concerning the worth of a small automobile—it’s unlikely that the native truck driver would have really purchased a Venture G. However he might nonetheless dream.
The design of the Venture G appeared to return from a dream.
“I need you to think about that you’re guests from Mars and that you’ve by no means seen a Canadian front room, not to mention a hi-fi set,” is how designer Hugh Spencer challenged Clairtone’s engineers once they first began engaged on the Venture G. “What are the options that, no matter design issues, you want to see included in a brand new hi-fi set?”
The movie “I’ll Take Sweden” featured a Venture G, proven right here with co-star Tuesday Weld.Nina Munk/The Peter Munk Property
The outcome was a stereo system like no different. As a substitute of audio system, the Venture G had sound globes. As a substitute of the heavy cabinetry typical of 1960s entertainment consoles, it had modern, angled rosewood panels balanced on an aluminum stand. At over 2 meters lengthy, it was too huge for the typical front room however excellent for Hollywood films—Dean Martin had one in his swinging Malibu bachelor pad within the 1965 movie Marriage on the Rocks. In response to the 1964 press launch saying the Venture G, it was nothing lower than “a brand new sculptured illustration of contemporary sound.”
The primary-generation Venture G had a high-end Elac Miracord 10H turntable, whereas later fashions used a Garrard Lab Collection turntable. The transistorized chassis and management panel offered AM, FM, and FM-stereo reception. There was house for storing LPs or for an non-compulsory Ampex 1250 reel-to-reel tape recorder.
The “G” in Venture G stood for “globe.” The hermetically sealed 46-centimeter-diameter sound globes have been manufactured from spun aluminum and mounted on the ends of the cantilevered base; inside have been Wharfedale audio system. The sound globes rotated 340 levels to challenge a cone of sound and might be tuned to re-create the atmosphere wherein the music was initially recorded—a live performance corridor, cathedral, nightclub, or opera home.
Diane Landry, winner of the 1963 Miss Canada magnificence pageant, poses with a Venture G2. Nina Munk/The Peter Munk Property
Initially, Clairtone supposed to provide solely a handful of the stereos. As one author later put it, it was extra like an idea automobile “supposed to provide Clairtone an aura of futuristic cool.” Ultimately fewer than 500 have been made. However the Venture G nonetheless grew to become an icon of mod ’60s Canadian design, profitable a silver medal on the thirteenth Milan Triennale, the worldwide design exhibition.
After which it was over; the dream had ended. Eleven years after its founding, Clairtone collapsed, and Munk and cofounder David Gilmour misplaced management of the corporate.
The start of Clairtone Sound Corp.
Clairtone’s Peter Munk lived a colourful life, with a nightmarish begin and plenty of implausible and dreamlike components too. He was born in 1927 in Budapest to a affluent Jewish household. Within the spring of 1944, Munk and 13 members of his household boarded a practice with greater than 1,600 Jews sure for the Bergen-Belsen focus camp. They arrived, however after some weeks the practice moved on, ultimately reaching impartial Switzerland. It later emerged that the Nazis had extorted giant sums of money and valuables from the occupants in change for letting the practice proceed.
As an adolescent in Switzerland, Munk was a self-described occasion animal. He loved dancing and courting and happening lengthy ski journeys with mates. Schoolwork was not a high precedence, and he didn’t have the grades to attend a Swiss college. His mom, an Auschwitz survivor, inspired him to check in Canada, the place he had an uncle.
Earlier than he might enroll, although, Munk blew his tuition cash entertaining a younger girl throughout a visit to New York. He then discovered work choosing tobacco, earned sufficient for tuition, and graduated from the College of Toronto in 1952 with a level in electrical engineering.
Clairtone cofounders Peter Munk [left] and David Gilmour envisioned the corporate as a luxurious model.Nina Munk/The Peter Munk Property
On the age of 30, Munk was making customized hi-fi units for rich shoppers when he and David Gilmour, who owned a small enterprise importing Scandinavian items, determined to affix forces. Their concept was to create high-fidelity gear with a recent Scandinavian design. Munk’s father-in-law, William Jay Gutterson, invested $3,000. Gilmour mortgaged his home. In 1958, Clairtone Sound Corp. was born.
From the start, Munk and Gilmour sought a high-end clientele. They positioned Clairtone as a luxurious model, a part of a chic way of life. In case you have been the kind of girl who listened to music whereas sporting pearls and a strapless robe and lounging on a shag rug, your music could be taking part in on a Clairtone. In case you have been a person who dressed neatly and owned an Arne Jacobsen Egg chair, you’ll even be listening on a Clairtone. That was the trendy way of life captured within the firm’s commercials.
In 1958, Clairtone produced its first prototype: the monophonic 100-M, which had an extended, low cupboard made out of oiled teak, with a Twin 1004 turntable, a Granco tube chassis, and a pair of Coral audio system. It by no means went into manufacturing, however the subsequent mannequin, the stereophonic 100-S, received a Design Award from Canada’s Nationwide Industrial Design Council in 1959. By 1963, Clairtone was promoting 25,000 models a 12 months.
Peter Munk visits the Venture G meeting line in 1965. Nina Munk/The Peter Munk Property
Design was all the time entrance and middle at Clairtone, not only for the merchandise but in addition for the typography, commercials, and even the annual stories. But nothing within the early designs signaled the dramatic flip it might take with the Venture G. That happened due to Hugh Spencer.
Spencer was not an engineer, nor did he have expertise designing client electronics. His day job was designing units for the Canadian Broadcast Corp. He consulted frequently with Clairtone on the corporate’s graphics and signage. The one stereo he ever designed for Clairtone was the Venture G, which he first modeled as a wood field with tennis balls caught to the edges.
From each design and high quality views, Clairtone was profitable. However the firm was nearly all the time hemorrhaging money. In 1966, with nice fanfare and enormous authorities incentives, the corporate opened a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Nova Scotia. It was a mismatch. The native workforce didn’t have the mandatory expertise, and the encircling infrastructure couldn’t deal with the manufacturing. On 27 August 1967, Munk and Gilmour have been pressured out of Clairtone, which grew to become the property of the federal government of Nova Scotia.
Regardless of the demise of their first firm (and the federal government inquiry that adopted), Munk and Gilmour remained mates and went on to grow to be serial entrepreneurs. Their subsequent enterprise? A resort in Fiji, which grew to become half of a big lodge chain in that nation, Australia, and New Zealand. (Gilmour later based Fiji Water.) Then Munk and Gilmour purchased a gold mine and cofounded Barrick Gold (now Barrick Mining Corp., one of many largest gold mining operations on this planet). Their companies all had ups and downs, however each males grew to become extraordinarily rich and famous philanthropists.
Preserving Canadian design
For example of iconic design, the Venture G looks like an excellent specimen for museum collections. And in 1991, Frank Davies, one of many designers who labored for Clairtone, donated a Venture G to the not too long ago launched Design Change in Toronto. It will be the primary object within the DX’s everlasting assortment, which sought to protect examples of Canadian design. The museum shortly grew to become Canada’s middle for the promotion of design, internet hosting greater than 50 packages every year to show folks about how design influences each side of our lives.
In 2008, the museum opened The Artwork of Clairtone: The Making of a Design Icon, 1958–1971, an exhibition showcasing the corporate’s distinctive graphic design, industrial design, engineering, and pictures.
David Gilmour’s spouse, Anna Gilmour, was the corporate’s first in-house mannequin.Nina Munk/The Peter Munk Property
However what occurred to the DX itself is a reminder that any museum, nonetheless worthy, shouldn’t be taken with no consideration. In 2019, the DX abruptly closed its everlasting assortment, and curators have been charged with deaccessioning its objects. Thankfully, the Royal Ontario Museum, Carleton and York Universities, and the Archives of Ontario, amongst others, have been capable of settle for the artifacts and companion archives. (The Project G pictured at high is now on the Royal Ontario Museum.)
Researchers at York and Carleton have been working to digitize and just about reconstitute the DX assortment, by the xDX Project. They’re utilizing the Linked Infrastructure for Networked Cultural Scholarship (LINCS) to show interlinked and contextualized information concerning the assortment right into a searchable database. It’s a worthy aim, even when it’s not fairly the identical as having the entire artifacts and supporting papers bodily collectively in a single place. I admit to feeling each happy about this digital workaround, and likewise a bit of unhappy {that a} unified assortment that when spoke to the historic significance of Canadian design not exists.
A part of a continuing series taking a look at historic artifacts that embrace the boundless potential of know-how.
An abridged model of this text seems within the February 2026 print subject as “The Venture G Stereo Outlined Sixties Cool.”
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