Fostex “Pro Sound Reinforcement Components” Guide/Catalog 1981

It’s to bad Charlie that you don’t know the big picture and, consequently, make very bad assumptions. 🙁

The then parent corporation of Fostex – Foster Electric – was (and still is) the second largest electro-acoustic manufacturer in the world who built loudspeaker drivers for virtually every company you have ever heard of! That included Altec, JBL, Cerwin Vega, Sony, Philips, you name it.

Foster was and is an OEM – an “Original Equipment Manufacturer” – who designs and builds the innards of products bearing their customers logos. Foster’s name has never appeared on a product.

In about 1978, Foster created a specialty subdivision which bore the name “Fostex” which stood for “Foster Excellence”. The Fostex name appeared on only crème de la crème products.

The very first Fostex product introduced to North Anerica was the RWO/Fostex “Laboratory Series” studio monitor loudspeakers. This product was immediately accepted but the recording industry and within three months of its introduction had been installed in about 5% of all 24-track recording studios. Many revered companies in the industry, such as the JVC Cutting Center chose the RWO/Fostex Laboratory Series studio monitors as their reference standard.

Almost every major artist from the 1980s forward has been recorded using Fostex monitors.

Fostex released a family of pro-sound loudspeakers (seen in the above brochure) which easily performed as well or better than the brands Americans were familiar with. But Fostex grew explosively and chose to focus its resources into the recording industry and did not aggressively persue the sound reinforcement.

At the time of the introduction of the original studio monitors, the Fostex specially division numbered a couple dozen employees. Today, Fostex now owns its parent corporation and has about 60,000 employees worldwide.