The Chord Company – a model of quiet innovation
By Roy Gregory
The Chord Company is not a name you are likely to hear in any conversation regarding the UK’s contribution to the world of high-end audio: Linn, Naim, Quad, Meridian, dCS and others – but not The Chord Co. Indeed, you’re more likely to hear the Chord name in association with (the entirely separate) Chord Electronics, long before anybody mentions Chord cables. In fact, Salisbury’s ‘other’ audio company, has made a positive virtue of flying under the radar. Four decades young, The Chord Company has ever been a part of the background – sinking into the landscape, rather than becoming a feature of it. I guess that, if you are never in fashion, you can’t go out of fashion: which hasn’t stopped this seriously underrated and underappreciated cable company quietly becoming one of the most significant and consistent members of the UK industry.
Where Chord’s products are discussed, it’s more often than not, under the distinctly double-edged banner of ‘good value’, a quality that’s absent to the point of irrelevance when it comes to high-performance audio. So much so that ‘value’ is all too often used as a dismissive euphemism for ‘cheap’ – where low-cost is considered an excuse for lower performance. Yet in Chord’s case, value – genuine value – is at the heart of everything they do, from their entry level cables to the flagship ChordMusic line. In between you’ll find not only a carefully structured set of cable ranges, but all the other parts that make up a modern, high-performance audio system’s cable loom and infrastructure, from AC distribution and network elements, to innovative and distinctly on-point grounding solutions and essential ancillaries. You’ll also discover that they have one quality in common: (GB)pound for (GB)pound, they all punch well above their weight.
The low-key market presence is down to a number of factors, not least messaging and marketing materials that are most kindly described as “parochial”. History tells us that the most successful products are not, generally, the best sounding, but the ones with the best story. The Chord Co. has a great story, but you have to tell that story if you expect customers to get on board. For too many years, the company has concentrated too heavily on the UK market, with its distinctly mid-fi bias and the heavy influence of the price-conscious What Hi-Fi magazine. Things are changing – not least because, post Brexit and post-Covid, the UK market is all but dead on its feet – and with change comes opportunity: the opportunity for dealers, distributors and end-users to reassess Chord’s products; the opportunity for the company to reposition itself, reflecting both the quality and ambition present in its product lines. Like all good stories, this one has a beginning, a middle and, if not an end, then a conclusion. So, let’s start at the beginning…
The Chord Company owes its existence to the arrival of CD on Britain’s embattled shores. Remember, this was a time when the flat-earth was the officially recognised audio reality and Linn were spreading rumours that playing the dastardly silver discs induced micro-fractures in your turntable’s main bearing! At the same time, Naim Audio, Linn’s partners in market terms (if not ‘in crime’) were supplying all their own cables based totally on Din connections between units – and for external sources. Ever the arch iconoclast, Julian Vereker refused to take CD seriously – or make any provision for its inclusion with Naim electronics: ever the arch pragmatist, Naim’s sales director Paul Stephenson, couldn’t ignore the demands from his dealers and distributors, for cables that would allow their customers to connect CD players to their Naim amps. The solution was so very English: Paul’s wife set up a small, side-line business, supplying RCA to Din leads, using the same cable that Naim used for its stock interconnects; Julian would turn a blind eye… So was born The Chord Company, a one product business intended to solve a single – and distinctly niche – problem. I’m not sure which saying is more apposite, but “From such little acorns…” springs to mind, as does, “Be careful what you wish for!”
