Jan P. Lodström, in memoriam. My little brother.

My brother Jan was born in April -45. I was barely three at the time, and do not remember much of him until about a year later. Red hair and dimples!

As we grew up, I was not as nice to him as I should have been. Fortunately I got to bring this up with him shortly before he died from a stroke in December -94. He said he had no hard feelings about it. Well, I now demand that my own sons respect each other, so even if Jan did not get the benefit, "Little Richard" may, and Philip will feel better when he has grown up.

Jan had a very good ear for what sounds good. He actually made a living, as it were, building tube amplifiers. We had some animated discussions in the early years, solid state vs. tubes, but he had his opinion, and I am beginning to think he was right all the time. He must have had close to a perfect pitch. I remember he tuned our piano with an adjustable wrench when he was about 12 - 15 years old. At another time, in his room, he had a record with classical music going. The record player was up on a shelf so he could not see the deck of it sitting down. He left the room for a while, and in the meantime I gave the speed adjustment a little tweak. When he came back, he sat down, looked at me and reached up for the player and the knob, adjusted the speed. I was standing up and could see the stroboscope speed indicator go back and forth, and come to a stop!

At another time I had built a simple power amplifier with transistors. On a visit over Christmas, I brought it with me. I thought it sounded really well and figured it would settle our discussions about transistors vs. tubes in amplifiers for good. I had seen on an oscilloscope that it had some crossover distortion in the higher register, at higher levels of sound, but who can hear that? Distortion on 10 kHz?! It means harmonics at 20 and 30 kHz! Who can hear that?! Jan hooked it up to his loudspeakers and put on a record. Within ten seconds he said: "well, it has crossover distortion in the high register." I was right. It settled the discussion, but not the way I had expected. Finally I had to admit to that my little brother knew what he was talking about. Add to this that he was very knowledgeable about music, musicians and melodies. Even the very obscure. He reached a plane and a dimension I will never even know of.

He stayed in Stockholm as I got sent off to Göteborg, "The Fishing Camp" as it is referred to in Stockholm, but in Göteborg they are at least on the "Swedish Best Coast"! I had come to not fit very well with the life I lived in Stockholm and it was a good thing, although I felt like Napoleon must have felt on St. Helena at the time. It did not take long until I realized that I was much better off this way. Since I did not meet Jan, or my parents, more than a few times a year there after, 1959, I never got to know Jans friends until at his funeral. I understand better now why he did not want to move.

Friends like Felix & Annse, Ingemar and Johan. (links) One will not find them just anywhere. Neither will they let just anybody call them their friend.

They have set up a foundation in Jans name. The purpose is to make it possible to assist in the further studies for someone interested in audio and related equipment. I would think that studies of solid state equipment would be a bit of a heresy...

The picture on the top right of this page is taken by our mother off screen from the Swedish TV2. I should have some better pictures for this page once I have gotten through boxes and boxes of prints and negatives.

It did not take us long to get into some of the French habits. With meals, children there commonly drink wine with water. About 1/2 of each. This gives an alcohol content of about 6 % by volume. If I gave my kids here beer (3.5% I think) and someone reported it, the kids would be taken from us and placed in protective care! Anyway, on the picture above you can see Jan pouring some! He never developed a problem with alcohol. Almost the other way around, actually. As an adult the most he had was a beer with a meal. It may prove something.

With his fantastic mind, Jan soon learned the entire Metro system in Paris! One could ask him how to go from one station to another, and he named the line to take, the direction, what stations one would pass, where to change, to what other line and direction. At the time he was just short of 9 years old.

Not only was Jan good at sound. He was a real expert on older cameras as well. He knew what lenses various cameras came with, what was good and not, and what years they were sold. Our thanks to John Gustavsson, Wibergs Foto, Karlavägen, Stockholm, (he ought to be on the web!) for actively contributing to Jans knowledge in this field!

I remember one of our (often quite lengthy!) telephone conversations where Jan had been to Paris and picked up some old stereo cameras and viewers. I asked how he managed the language. "Ah, one picks it up!" He had an unusually good ear for languages. I bet he could have learned any language quite well in three - four months. Our parents had a summer house on the southern tip of Gotland, a Swedish island in the Baltic sea. The accent spoken on Gotland is quite different from the "standard" Swedish, but in the southern part it is more like another language. With roots to medieval Swedish. When the natives get together I do not even understand what they are talking about! Jan picked it up in a summer, and conversed with them in their own tongue.

May 26, 1997

Last Update: October 31, 1998