A recording engineer and a condenser microphone.

Stax was founded in Tokyo in 1938 by Naotake Hayashi (林尚武, 1906–2000), according to the company’s own 80th-anniversary history — a date and founder the Robb Report also gave in 2018. Its first name was Showa Koon Kogyo (昭和光音工業), and it began in Kudan, in Chiyoda ward, providing recording services — cutting wax masters for 78 rpm records, making metal masters and recording soundtracks for talking pictures — and developing related equipment.

The company’s history says Hayashi had studied shortwave radio at Waseda University in the mid-1920s and around 1931 went to Shanghai as chief engineer of a Chinese record company, where, it says, he devised an ultra-light magnetic pickup so that soft wax masters could be played back without damage. We give that as the company’s account. In 1944 Showa Koon moved to Zoshigaya, in Toshima ward, into a wooden missionary house built in 1907, which served as its head office until 1982; the company says the building was then designated a cultural property by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and passed to Toshima ward.

The Stax name came from a product. The company says it first used “Stax” in 1950 for a radio-frequency condenser microphone, and later adopted it for the business itself, which became Stax Kogyo in the early 1960s — the company’s history says 1963, while its company profile and Japanese Wikipedia say 1964, and the Robb Report gave 1952. Through the 1950s it also made electrostatic phono cartridges, tonearms and a condenser tweeter, its product chronology shows.

The earspeaker.

Stax’s claim to fame is the electrostatic headphone. Its product chronology lists the SR-1 of 1960, priced at ¥6,000, as the world’s first condenser-type headphone, sold with dedicated amplifiers; English Wikipedia and the Robb Report give the same date. Stax calls these headphones “earspeakers.” They work like an electrostatic loudspeaker in miniature: a very thin charged diaphragm is driven by the voltage on fixed electrodes either side of it, so they need a dedicated amplifier, which Stax calls a “driver unit,” rather than an ordinary headphone socket.

Landmark models followed. The chronology lists the SR-Σ (Sigma) “panoramic sound” earspeaker of 1977, the SR-Λ (Lambda) and the SRM-1 driver unit of 1979, and the SR-Ω (Omega) of 1993, with a 90 mm diaphragm and mesh electrodes. English Wikipedia describes two bias standards — “Normal” bias at 230 volts and the later “Pro” bias at 580 volts — and says all current earspeakers use Pro bias. The Lambda shape lives on in the SR-L series, and the Omega line led to the SR-007 and the SR-009; the SR-X9000 flagship was introduced in December 2022, English Wikipedia says.

Stax was not only a headphone maker. Its chronology also lists full-range electrostatic loudspeakers from 1964, Class A power amplifiers, carbon-fibre tonearms and, from 1986, CD players and later digital-to-analogue converters. In 1980 it set up a subsidiary in Los Angeles, and in 1982 it moved its head office and factory to Miyoshi in Saitama; the company says that in this period more than 70 percent of sales went abroad, mainly to Europe — the brand’s peak, in its own words.

Design and documentation.

Japan’s hi-fi industry grew out of the postwar years. Onkyo was founded in Osaka in 1946, Sansui in Tokyo in 1947, Nakamichi in 1948 and Foster Electric in 1949, and the first of the companies that became TEAC dates from 1953. Foster made the speaker for Sony’s TR-55 transistor radio, its history notes; today it describes itself as an OEM and ODM maker with factories across Asia, the Americas and Europe.

The big electronics groups ran audio brands of their own. Matsushita, now Panasonic, introduced Technics in 1965, dropped the name for most products in 2010 and revived it in 2014.

Many independent names did not last. Sansui’s company was declared bankrupt in 2014; its name has since been licensed out, and in Japan Doshisha, which had used it, switched to its own Orion brand in 2021. Nakamichi left the Japanese market in 2008, and who owns its name today is reported inconsistently. Onkyo sold its home audio business to Sharp and Voxx in 2021, and in May 2022 the Osaka District Court opened bankruptcy proceedings against it, AV Watch reported.

The seven makers in this guide now sit in very different places. TEAC is listed in Tokyo and based in Tama, where it absorbed its Esoteric subsidiary in April 2024; Gibson, which bought a majority of TEAC in 2013, sold it in 2020. Technics belongs to Panasonic. Stax, in Fujimi, Saitama, has been owned by China’s Edifier since 2011. Fostex is a division of Foster Electric in Akishima, Tokyo.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Revived by its workers, owned by Edifier.

The peak did not last. In 1988 Hayashi handed the presidency to his son Takeshi; the company says the audio boom had ended and the rising yen made its high export ratio a burden. In November 1995 Stax Kogyo ceased trading — the company cites the strong yen, while the Robb Report blamed costly amplifier development. In January 1996 a new company, Stax Limited, was set up with the creditors’ approval to carry on the brand; the company says ten former employees restarted production in the same building, paying rent to the creditors. Its first president, Hikoya Takahashi, died in 1998 and was succeeded by Yozo Meguro, whom Japanese Wikipedia describes as a former Sansui employee recruited to rebuild the company.

In December 2011 the Shenzhen audio maker Edifier agreed to buy 100 percent of Stax for ¥120 million, about 9.77 million yuan, Chinese press reported at the time; Stax’s own history gives the reason as Meguro’s age and the lack of a successor. In 2015 Stax moved to new premises at Fujimi, Saitama, with a clean room and production robots, and in 2016 Meguro handed over the presidency. The company’s profile lists 16 employees. It says it makes all its earspeakers and most of its driver units in its own factory, with diaphragm units built in a temperature- and humidity-controlled clean room and run in for a week to ten days before assembly; we give that as its claim.

Edifier has also put the name on products of its own: SoundStage! Solo reported in 2022 that Edifier designs and makes the Stax Spirit S3, a $399.99 Bluetooth headphone with planar-magnetic rather than electrostatic drivers. Beware look-alike names: stax.com belongs to a consultancy, and Stax Records is the Memphis soul label.

For a design guide, Stax shows how a single technology can define a brand for more than six decades. Compare Sansui, the amplifier maker a later Stax president came from, and Audio-Technica. For this guide we use a graphite black, a smoked bronze and a pale silver with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Stax’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.