Mission G Stereo: A 60s Design Icon

Dizzy Gillespie was a fan. Frank Sinatra purchased one for himself and gave them to his Rat Pack associates. Hugh Hefner acquired one for the Playboy Mansion. Clairtone Sound Corp.’s Mission 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 glossy, trendy stereo an object of want.

By the point the Mission G was launched, the Toronto-based Clairtone was already properly revered for its lovely, 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—in regards to the value of a small automotive—it’s unlikely that the native truck driver would have really purchased a Mission G. However he might nonetheless dream.

The design of the Mission G appeared to come back from a dream.

“I would like you to think about that you’re guests from Mars and that you’ve got by no means seen a Canadian lounge, not to mention a hi-fi set,” is how designer Hugh Spencer challenged Clairtone’s engineers after they first began engaged on the Mission G. “What are the options that, no matter design issues, you want to see integrated in a brand new hi-fi set?”

The movie “I’ll Take Sweden” featured a Mission 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 Mission G had sound globes. As a substitute of the heavy cabinetry typical of Nineteen Sixties leisure consoles, it had glossy, angled rosewood panels balanced on an aluminum stand. At over 2 meters lengthy, it was too massive for the common lounge however good for Hollywood films—Dean Martin had one in his swinging Malibu bachelor pad within the 1965 movie Marriage on the Rocks. Based on the 1964 press launch asserting the Mission G, it was nothing lower than “a brand new sculptured illustration of contemporary sound.”

The primary-generation Mission G had a high-end Elac Miracord 10H turntable, whereas later fashions used a Garrard Lab Sequence turntable. The transistorized chassis and management panel supplied AM, FM, and FM-stereo reception. There was area for storing LPs or for an elective Ampex 1250 reel-to-reel tape recorder.

The “G” in Mission G stood for “globe.” The hermetically sealed 46-centimeter-diameter sound globes had been product of spun aluminum and mounted on the ends of the cantilevered base; inside had been Wharfedale audio system. The sound globes rotated 340 levels to mission a cone of sound and might be tuned to re-create the setting 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 Mission G2. Nina Munk/The Peter Munk Property

Initially, Clairtone supposed to supply solely a handful of the stereos. As one author later put it, it was extra like an idea automotive “supposed to provide Clairtone an aura of futuristic cool.” Finally fewer than 500 had been made. However the Mission G nonetheless turned an icon of mod ’60s Canadian design, successful 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 delivery of Clairtone Sound Corp.

Clairtone’s Peter Munk lived a colourful life, with a nightmarish begin and lots of incredible 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 prepare with greater than 1,600 Jews certain for the Bergen-Belsen focus camp. They arrived, however after some weeks the prepare moved on, finally reaching impartial Switzerland. It later emerged that the Nazis had extorted massive sums of money and valuables from the occupants in trade for letting the prepare proceed.

As a teen in Switzerland, Munk was a self-described social gathering animal. He loved dancing and relationship and happening lengthy ski journeys with associates. Schoolwork was not a prime 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 lady 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 thought 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. For those who had been the kind of lady 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. For those who had been a person who dressed well and owned an Arne Jacobsen Egg chair, you’d even be listening on a Clairtone. That was the fashionable 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 constructed from 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 Mission G meeting line in 1965. Nina Munk/The Peter Munk Property

Design was at all times entrance and heart at Clairtone, not only for the merchandise but additionally for the typography, commercials, and even the annual reviews. But nothing within the early designs signaled the dramatic flip it will take with the Mission G. That took place 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 recurrently with Clairtone on the corporate’s graphics and signage. The one stereo he ever designed for Clairtone was the Mission G, which he first modeled as a picket field with tennis balls caught to the perimeters.

From each design and high quality views, Clairtone was profitable. However the firm was nearly at all times hemorrhaging money. In 1966, with nice fanfare and huge 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 required abilities, and the encompassing infrastructure couldn’t deal with the manufacturing. On 27 August 1967, Munk and Gilmour had been compelled out of Clairtone, which turned 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 associates and went on to change into serial entrepreneurs. Their subsequent enterprise? A resort in Fiji, which turned half of a giant 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 turned extraordinarily rich and famous philanthropists.

Preserving Canadian design

For instance of iconic design, the Mission G looks as if a perfect specimen for museum collections. And in 1991, Frank Davies, one of many designers who labored for Clairtone, donated a Mission G to the just lately launched Design Alternate in Toronto. It could be the primary object within the DX’s everlasting assortment, which sought to protect examples of Canadian design. The museum rapidly turned Canada’s heart for the promotion of design, internet hosting greater than 50 applications every year to show individuals about how design influences each facet 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, nevertheless worthy, shouldn’t be taken as a right. In 2019, the DX abruptly closed its everlasting assortment, and curators had been charged with deaccessioning its objects. Luckily, the Royal Ontario Museum, Carleton and York Universities, and the Archives of Ontario, amongst others, had been in a position to settle for the artifacts and companion archives. (The Mission G pictured at prime 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 means of the xDX Mission. They’re utilizing the Linked Infrastructure for Networked Cultural Scholarship (LINCS) to show interlinked and contextualized knowledge in regards to the assortment right into a searchable database. It’s a worthy purpose, 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 little bit unhappy {that a} unified assortment that after spoke to the historic significance of Canadian design not exists.

A part of a persevering with sequence historic artifacts that embrace the boundless potential of know-how.

An abridged model of this text seems within the February 2026 print problem as “The Mission G Stereo Outlined Nineteen Sixties Cool.”