Soon the company was turning out thousands of P50s from its factory in St Ives, Cambridgeshire. However, despite strong sales the company still needed more investment to develop new products and so it was sold to C E Hammond Ltd, a large global distributor of Revox tape recorders at the time. Legendary audio industry figure Stan Curtis was brought on board to design new products and before long the company had grown to 300 employees and was producing some of the best audio kit on the market.
By the early 1970s, Cambridge Audio had added loudspeakers to its product line-up and it soon carved out a reputation for audio equipment that offered a clean and neutral sound that enabled the original recording session to shine through without any of the added artefacts that were popular in other markets, such as the USA or the Far East. Due to the Cambridge Audio design philosophy, the term ‘British Sound’ became shorthand around the world for audio equipment that served up music the way it was intended to be heard by the musicians and recording engineers of the time.