Introduction

The Story of the Dual Reference Website

Why Was This Site Created?

This is a very interesting subject! First of all, during the 1964-1990 time frame in the

United States, anybody who had a halfway decent stereo setup probably had a DUAL

turntable! Dual positioned their products in the upper "mid-fi" niche. They were not

as expensive as the Thorens or Linn's of the time, but were a heck of a lot better than the

Pioneer's or Sansui's back then! And they were built to last!

Additionally, most of them used a 1/2" phono cartridge format so customers had a

large selection of cartridges from which to choose. Then came the ULM cartridge

which had a special Ortofon mount. This cartridge/tonearm setup took advantage

of Dual's low mass tonearm design. But This made it more difficult for the average user

to upgrade to any other cartridge than an Ortofon. Fortunately, there are adapters

readily available so that you may mount a standard 1/2" cartridge on these units.

The amazing thing is that so many DUAL turntables were made and at the time there

was almost no information about DUAL on the Internet!. It is almost as if the company

never existed! How many of these DUAL's are left? Just look at an auction site like

www.ebay.com, they average 35-40 DUAL's for sale at any given time and I have seen

as many as 60 offered for bid at once! The last new DUAL product sold in the United

States was in 1992. DUAL (Germany) no longer exits today, Until the parent

company (Schneider, AG) declared bankruptcy (May 2002) they even had a website. This

website is no longer available, somebody took it over as a search site and is trying to sell

the domain name. In 1993, the manufacture of Dual turntables was taken over by

the Fehrenbacker Comany of St. Georgen, Germany, in the black forest of Germany.

Today the Fehrenbacker Company is still making high quality Dual turntables for

sale today. These are available through several vendors on the internet.

What Will This Site Accomplish?

Through the magic of friends in the audio world, I have a list of many of the models

of audio equipment made by DUAL and the years of manufacture. Additionally, I have

the prices of some of the equipment when it was new and the features of each model.

I also have troubleshooting tips and links to sources that are willing to assist you with your

DUAL equipment. This site will act as a reference guide for owners or potential

owners of DUAL audio equipment. If you have any information about DUAL audio and

you would like to contribute it to this website, please leave feedback as outlined below.

We even take questions too! Even though we have links to sites that can help you with

parts and such, we do not sell turntables or anything at all on this site! Some of the

the pictures you see here are of turntables that are actually in use by their owners and

most do not want to sell them! Other pictures I admit I have shamelessly lifted off of

Ebay. If your turntable appears here and you want it removed, please let me know.

What products did DUAL make?

While here in the U.S. we had DUAL turntables, they also manufactured stereo

receivers, tuners, cassette decks, speakers and integrated pre-amps and amps. Here

is an interesting note: In Germany, DUAL is pronounced DUA-L! Ich habe einen DUAL

Plattenspieler!

When will this site be completed?

This website has been up since about May 25, 1999. It has come a long way since.

There is a steady stream of information coming in from DUAL owners worldwide!

The DUAL history has been translated from German and is available here on this website..

The specification data comes either from the owners manual or the DUAL service manuals

in order to maintain accuracy. If the spec wasn't "Official DUAL" it isn't used. Since

some of the DUAL equipment is rare, it will take time to come across someone who

has the rare DUAL product and is willing to share their information. I want to say that

I have been very happy with the response this website has generated!

Through this website, I have encountered lots of experts in this field to whom I can

ask questions. So if you have any, please send them to me and I will try my best to

get the correct answer for you. This website is really a work in progress!

On March 3, 2005 after being on the Internet for 6 years, we decided it was time for

a change. We finally acquired a domain name, and released a new site navigation

theme, we like to call "Living Color". This is a tribute to 50 years of Color Television

Broadcasting. What does television have to do with turntables? It's all technology!

There's more new ideas on the drawing board, just stay tuned!

Would You Like To Help This Site?

When viewing these pages, if you come across any DUAL equipment that you have

and can provide the specifications, or even a picture just click on the "I HAVE ONE!"

or the "SEND US E-MAIL" icon.

The specifications of your unit are located in the Users Manual or the Service Guide.

Any pictures sent to me for inclusion on this site will be returned. Without all of the help

I have received from the visitors to this site, all this information would not be available.

Thank you for the contributions!

Special Thanks:

I would like to give a special thank you to:

Robert Tracy of All In One Electronics of Toronto, Canada for all the assistance he has

offered to us in answering technical questionsl Unfortuantely, All In One Electronics

closed it's doors in September 2011.

Bill Neumann of Fix My Dual, Des Moines, IA for assistance with answering all the

questions I get asked about DUAL equipment.

Alfons Deringer of Graz, Austria for keeping me on my toes concerning the

look and feel of this site and keeping the German proper.

Thank you for visiting this site! If you wish to send us feedback, just click on the DUAL logo.