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Death of Jim Bongiorno

I was informed yesterday that Jim Bongiorno, long time influential audio engineer, has passed from this life. It looks like he had problems from his liver disease that took him. From what I can gather, he died on January 10th, 2013. I did a search on Audiogon and saw no mention of it.

James was a legend having a hand in engineering products from Hadley Laboratories, Marantz, Dynaco, Scientific Audio Electronics (SAE), Great American Sound (GAS), Sumo, and Spread Spectrum Technologies.

For me, it was the GAS equipment that was my first introduction into high end audio. How could you forget the names: Ampzilla, Thaedra, Charlie The Tuner? (Charlie had a name change to just "Charlie" due to the conflict with Starkist Tuna and their marketing campaign in the '60's and '70's with "Charlie, The Tuna".)

I still have my Son of Ampzilla and matching Thoebe preamp.

Thanks, James, and all who were with him during his career.
jwmazur

Showing 1 response by jedinite24

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jedinite24
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I can't believe this was never mentioned on the Audiogon Hub. This is major news. Thanks for posting this. May Jim RIP.

One of my family members who is into audio played some music for me on his system that comprised of a SUMO Nine and a SUMO Athena preamp. It was very nice sounding to me and got me hooked. Years later my uncle still has the SUMO Nine amongst his other collection of amps and listens to it periodically and still enjoys it.

For myself I acquired a Sumo Nine a couple of years back and had it rebuilt by Mike Bettinger. This amp is awesome sounding. I've now paired it with a pair of B&W Matrix 805 speakers and the sound is wonderful.

I love the SUMO Nine and will keep it for as long as I can. To me it is an amp to me that is still great sounding today.

Again may Jim RIP.
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