This post is not about the Sagatun demo, nor is it about Lejonklou HiFi so it possibly doesn’t belong in this thread. But it is due to the visit for the Sagatun unveiling so I’m sticking it here anyway.
This post is about Fredrik as many have never met him in person, as I had not until this month. While this forum isn’t home to all the travel logs or cults of personality that some of the others are, after meeting Fredrik I felt it would be a good idea to talk about the visit more here even though it might embarrass him a bit. So we will have some photos along with the text.
To start out with Fredrik is really just a very nice guy. When I asked one of the regular customers a couple of days later how he liked the musical evening he said he really liked it and added: “Fredrik is really a breath of fresh air!” I’m not sure if I could have said it better. At the musical evening what was more obvious than anything was how much Fredrik is into the music, how much he loves it being reproduced well and how much he has put into allowing us to hear it with more emotional connection to the music than ever before. As Fredrik was demonstrating he was constantly dancing and playing air guitar to the music. (OK not constantly, he did stop short of playing air trumpet!) Indeed I made the comment at one point that you could tell he wasn’t a real salesman as he was dancing to the competition’s product ;-) He was so into the music he had a hard time lifting the stylus off the record to switch units. This to me is the essence of Fredrik: he has an obvious joy in what he is doing and also in life in general if my time with him is any example. Yet it is obvious from his works that he is very intelligent, quite clever and possessed of extreme determination - a fact that became more obvious to me as he told me of how hard designing the Sagatun was for him while he was doing it. Fredrik claimed at one point that he felt the Sagatun had aged him 10 years but you couldn’t tell it by me – he looks like he is still in his thirties! (Photographic evidence below.)
While he has that capability of focus and determination I found him to be very easygoing while he was here and he seemed to just enjoy everything with a constant smile on his face. Fredrik managed to get here the Saturday afternoon before the musical evening on Tuesday so we would have some time to talk, discuss business and just get to know each other better. If we had time we were invited to visit Salty Dog on his boat “Salty Dog” and spend time on Lake Michigan. Since I had wanted to show Fredrik what one of the biggest freshwater lakes in the world that surround Michigan was like we made time to go there. In fact we headed straight to Michigan City, Indiana from Detroit Metro airport and spent some time in the evening on the lake and talking with Salty. We slept on the boat to big thunder and lightening storms (Fredrik really enjoyed the lightning show), went out for a great Sunday brunch and had a few more hours out on the lake on a beautiful, sunny Sunday before saying goodbye and heading back to metro Detroit. The two and half hour to three hour drive each way gave us plenty of time to talk and share our experiences in the business and with music in general.
On Monday Fredrik, who “works as he walks” made the three mile walk to my house in the morning where he met Debbie, Jake and our black lab Bella. We spent a lot of time listening to my system, some of it with the KK/2 and much of it with Sagatun Monos, playing around with configurations of the Harmoni racks and exploring my music collection. A break for a home-made Greek salad (one of Fredrik’s favorite things) and back to more listening. Fredrik enjoyed a wide range of music from Devo to Satchmo to Porcuplie Tree and Led Zeppelin. Being my guest he had to be treated to at least one King Crimson tune (I chose “Starless”) but otherwise we mixed it up a lot. Many of the records we played I brought to the musical evening so he could use them if he wished. As mentioned in the other post the Satchmo track was a big hit. A nice dinner at our favorite sushi restaurant around here and then Fredrik and I went on to the store to test out speakers as already mentioned.
I have already covered the musical evening in detail so I won’t go into it again. Afterwards an Ethiopian dinner with Debbie and Jake was enjoyed by all and Fredrik was ferried back to Livonia. He had a morning flight so I picked him up at 9:00AM, drove him to the airport and bid farewell. When I got home I took advantage of the day off I had taken and the mostly empty house (except for Bella) and took a nap to recover from all the 5 hour sleep nights I had since Fredrik arrived (there just isn’t enough time in the day sometimes!). When I woke up four hours later I went into the kitchen where Debbie was sitting and she said she missed Fredrik already. I replied that I did as well. I think everyone who met him hopes he will return for a visit sooner than later and I hope he can schedule some more time so we can explore a bit more of the Great Lakes.
So a very enjoyable visit with a man who not only makes some of the best Hi-Fi in the world but is also just a fun, intelligent, modest and enjoyable human being. Our industry could use more like him.
Fredrik and Salty:
Salty Dog (the boat):
The stern:
Lake Michigan:
The setup in Studio C for the demonstrations:
Fredrik and the rarely photographed ThomasOK:
(It took forever to get that last photograph as neither Fredrik or I are very photogenic when we are posing for photographs.)