The Tale of Mana
I wrote this story about Mana Acoustics – makers of the industrial looking but magical sounding equipent supports – and its public-school educated, Hell’s Angel founder for Q magazine in 1994.
The notion of placing hi-fi on a custom table to improve its performance sounds like the ultimate in voodoo. But it isn’t. It’s demonstrable that unwanted vibrations – airborne and structural – can adversely affect the performance of electro-mechanical devices, such as record decks and CD players. Even purely electronic components, such as amplifiers, suffer albeit to a lesser extent.
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The man responsible for these mind-blowing tables is John Watson, who isn’t exactly your archetypal hi-fi designer. His public school education could have led him into “proper” engineering but his Victorian father, who only spoke to him to tell him that he’d never amount to anything, ensured it didn’t. Aged fifteen, Watson rebelled by joining the army, this choice of career influenced by his fanatical desire to ride motorcycles. When the army told him he’d have to wait until he was eighteen before becoming motorised he bade farewell to military life.
Back in civvy street he joined the rebel biker scene. He didn’t fit in with the then prolific Rockers, partly because his tastes in music went beyond rock ‘n’ roll and because he found those with whom he associated had a habit of starting trouble and then vanishing: “I’ve always stood my ground and I regularly wound up finishing off trouble that someone else had started. So I began hanging round with people who were more like-minded; people who were into bikes, music and partying but who, although they weren’t loud-mouths or troublemakers, wouldn’t disappear if trouble started.” That crowd became The Nomads and Watson followed the biker custom of adopting a pseudonym, Johnny Nomad. The Nomads were not unlike the American Hells Angels but were more loosely structured, not adhering to the Angels’ hierarchy or rules. There were only two requirements for members, loyalty and a bike.
Watson’s “crew” eventually met the England Hells Angels Chapter and its leader, Buttons who had brought back from the States an official Angels’ charter. He wanted to unite all the British bike gangs and introduce American ways into the outfit. Watson says: “I couldn’t agree with the notion of an outlaw bike gang having rules and regulations. When the original England Chapter subsequently split, many of them joined us. Eventually the Nomads became an Angel crew, wearing an Angel top rocker but with the Nomad patch underneath.”
The Nomads had their share of rucks and press attention although, contrary to what the media often reported, Watson says that trouble rarely involved “citizens” (the general public). “Most of the fights were with crews that didn’t run with our particular crowd. Nowadays most outfits run under the England Chapter, which I think is an official, registered company. Back then, if they caught you wearing a patch to which you weren’t entitled you’d get stomped; nowadays they’d probably stomp you then take you to court for trademark infringement!”
His five-year stint with the Angels ended in 1973. Music and the zealous search for inexpensive ways of improving the sound of his hi-fi system replaced his passion for motorbikes. However, it took several years before building hi-fi supports provided him with a livelihood. His experimentation with tables began with repairing turntables during the winter months when the landscape gardening work that provided his income was unavailable. He found that decks regularly sounded better when he supported them on a jig so that he could work on them more easily.
This led to his first domesticated support for his own deck, which consisted of four aluminium beer cans placed under the deck’s feet. He soon discovered that different cans, and the level of beer in them, influenced the way the deck sounded. The cans were replaced with neater milled aluminium blocks topped with a sheet of hardboard with running shoe spikes attached to give point-contact support.
At this time, loudspeaker stands were starting to appear and Watson considered building a similar platform for his turntable. He investigated how differently constructed stands worked by listening to them with stethoscopes. Frequent trips to casualty wards meant that a Nomad was never without a stethoscope, which he could use for checking the state of the bearings in his bike’s engine. Ever inquisitive, Watson was also always absorbing ideas from people around him. One that subsequently proved significant came from an acid casualty acquaintance who, for reasons best known to himself and his doctor, ran into the room and placed a ringing alarm clock against a window pane. Watson was shocked with how the sound filled the room when the clock came into contact with the glass.
The first recognisable Mana-style support was born in 1978. He made a small number for friends who admired its performance but he didn’t think of it as a potential commercial product even though other supports were appearing on the market. He then built similar shelves for his amplifiers, mainly to keep them out of the reach of his toddler, and found that too improved the sound of his system. Substituting a bathroom mirror for the stand’s hardboard shelf – don’t ask why, it’s a long story – enhanced its effects. More listening sessions, further experimentation, constant pushing from friends, and favourable comparisons with commercially available stands finally persuaded Watson to patent the stand and produce it commercially. All it needed was a name: he thought Manna was appropriate – “the table was like a gift to the hi-fi” and he decided to check the word’s spelling before labelling the tables. Above the manna entry in his dictionary he found the word mana – an awe-inspiring supernatural force that emanates from persons, places and things. He now had an even more appropriate name.
Watson trawled his supernatural support round hi-fi dealers imagining that they would be wildly enthusiastic about selling it. However, the general reaction was “bring it back when it’s been reviewed favourably in the hi-fi magazines and we’ll consider it.” Disheartened and disillusioned, he advertised the table in the hi-fi press and sold it directly to customers, establishing the business through word of mouth recommendations. “I couldn’t understand why dealers and the press weren’t as excited by the table as everyone else who had heard it. I was so enthusiastic then and would drag people in off the street to hear it – even my insurance salesman was impressed and the guy who came to the house selling Aloe Vera wanted to sell the table door-to-door after hearing it! When I rang my bank to discuss borrowing some money the guy who answered the phone was a hi-fi enthusiast and listened for hours while I talked about the tables; I never got my loan but he did buy a table.
After a very slow, financially difficult wait, the tables started to sell, helped by an enthusiastic review. Paul Messenger, one of Britain’s most influential audio writers, instantly recognised the tables’ worth. Thereafter, Mana’s phone rang constantly with dealers wanting to try the products. Watson subsequently signed up several but having had real problems coming to terms with the attitudes of many retailers he’s now returned almost exclusively selling direct. “I know everybody has to make a living but somehow many of those guys have forgotten what the whole purpose of hi-fi is. We had a telling experience at a hi-fi show: an established manufacturer came to our room while we were setting up the system and said that we’d never attract any visitors playing music at the sort of volume levels we were generating. He also said he couldn’t really understand why we were playing music at all when we didn’t make equipment just tables. When the show started his room was empty but we were packed to capacity – at times we had to stand in the hallway because there was no way we could get into the room. Visitors were going wild with the sound we were making. That’s what hi-fi is all about – getting fired up by music. So many people in the industry miss that point.”
Mana’s range now includes isolation platforms, wall shelves and tables, with prices ranging from £115 up to £1000 plus for the exotic seven-tier support for turntables and CD players. All come with a money-back-if-not-satisfied guarantee. In four years of selling the tables Watson has only ever had to refund two purchasers’ money. One customer had to downgrade from a Reference table to a basic Soundframe because the extra bass the Reference table extracted from his system brought his ceiling down. The other guy was “a dork – you had to talk to him to understand why.” If you want to hear your system performing as it’s never done before, you can contact Mana Acoustics on 081 XXX XXXX. Just check your plasterwork before you call.
