Sansui Electric Co., Ltd. (山水電気株式会社) was a Japanese manufacturer of audio and video equipment headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It was active internationally up until the late 1990s at which point the Chinese company Grande Holdings acquired the rights to license the Sansui name outside Japan.
History
The company was founded in Tokyo in 1947 by Kosaku Kikuchi, who had worked for a radio parts distributor in Tokyo before and during World War II. Due to the poor quality of radio parts Kikuchi had to deal with, he decided to start his private radio part manufacturer facility in December 1944 in Yoyogi, Tokyo. He chose transformers as his initial product line. Kikuchi's thought was "Even with higher prices, let's make the higher quality of products."[3]
In 1954 manufacturing pre-amp, main-amp kits, as well as finished amplifiers which used tubes, was started; in 1958 Sansui introduced the first stereo tube pre- and main amplifiers.[3] By the 1960s Sansui had developed a reputation for making serious audio components. They were sold in foreign markets through that and the next decade. Sansui's amplifiers and tuners from the 1960s and 1970s remain in demand by audio enthusiasts.[4]