The Shift
After two decades of designing on screens, the work pulling me forward is made of aluminum, steel, and walnut. jmonky is my current chapter: a restoration house for golden-age Japanese audio — and it is as much industrial design as digital. The same discipline that shaped product flows now shapes tonearm geometry, plinth materials, and power supplies; the same obsession with the user now serves a listener, holding forty-year-old precision in their hands.
Years ago, in my Transmethod bio, I wrote that “the processes of identification and problem solving, building, repairing and creating have been the driving force of my work.” jmonky is that sentence made literal.
The Heritage
There was a time — through the 1970s and 80s — when Japan’s audio companies weren’t making consumer electronics. They were making precision instruments.
Technics, Micro Seiki, Luxman, Accuphase, SAEC, Fidelity Research and their peers built to a standard where machining, engineering integrity, and durability mattered more than the next model year. Much of what they made still runs today, four decades on. That is not an accident — it is the proof.
The generation that created these instruments is now passing the torch, and too much of their work is being scattered and forgotten.
jmonky exists to preserve that heritage and place it, intact in spirit, in the hands of a new generation.
The Philosophy
I am not here to “improve” these machines by changing them. Like Singer with the Porsche 911, I ask one disciplined question: what would the original engineers have built with today’s materials and knowledge, if they kept the soul completely intact? I reveal what was already there — keeping the engineering and the design language that make each piece what it is, and elevating it only where that genuinely honors the original.
Each piece is fully documented, and entrusted to its next caretaker — someone who understands what they hold.
Preserve the soul.
Improve the execution.
Respect the engineers who created it.
Carry Japanese analog culture forward.
The Practice
Industrial design, one instrument at a time
The flagship work is a series of reference restorations of the Technics SL-1200 — each one an industrial-design project end to end: era-correct finishes specified to OEM standards, custom plinths, precision tonearms and armboards, external power supplies, and upgraded platters — every decision weighed against the original engineers’ intent, every build fully documented for its next caretaker, down to a bilingual owner’s manual.
The music room above is the laboratory: every restored instrument is tested and lived with before it moves on.
The Digital Side
jmonky is also a digital design project — a bilingual brand and web experience, in development now, built with the same OEM-plus discipline as the machines: nothing decorative, everything in service of the story each instrument carries. The site will document every restoration and place each piece with its next caretaker.
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