Above: Robert Gordon Epstein and Barak Epstein, CEO of Pilot Radio.
At Capital Audiofest 2025 I was enthused to see the return of Pilot Radio, an audio company that was founded in 1919 by Isidor Goldberg and after manufacturing radio receivers and the first battery-powered portable radios in 1937, enjoyed a heyday in making affordable high-fidelity components in the 1950s and 1960s. In 2025, Barak Epstein, the great-grandson of Isidor Goldberg, has re-launched the Pilot Radio brand with designs that hearken back to the past, while incorporating modern design attributes. I spoke with Barak about how Pilot came to be revitalized, and what’s in store going forward.
Frank Doris: Can you give the readers some history on Pilot Radio? I know a lot of it has been lost.
Barak Epstein: The company was started by Isidor Goldberg in 1919 in Brooklyn, New York. He was a test pilot for Curtis Aeroplane and Motor Company, and then he became an inventor, inventing things for airlines and airplanes. He turned that style of innovation into audio [manufacturing], and that's why he called the company Pilot Radio. Pilot started off making radios, and they also were an early pioneer in television. They did some television broadcast tests as early as 1928.
Isidor Goldberg, founder of Pilot Radio.
By the late 1930s they were selling televisions, very small ones. They were called the Candid, and the screen was about four inches big, but the console that they came into was [like] a suitcase. By the early 1950s they had migrated most of the business to hi-fi, and the 1950s and 1960s was their heyday and that's the era that we're going for in [re-launching the company]. Isidor Goldberg died in 1961 and the company was sold a couple years later. It became part of Emerson Radio, which kept the brand alive through the early to mid 1970s as their hi-fi brand.
It basically became a dead brand trademark for 50-plus years, until I acquired the trademark during the COVID era. I had always known the stories of Isidor Goldberg. He was my great grandfather who I'd never met, obviously, but my dad knew him. My dad would talk about him and Pilot Radio, and it was always in my head that it'd be great if we could somehow bring this brand back to life. I had time to figure out [how to do it] during COVID, and got an engineer involved, and we’ve started making products.
Our first product is a preamp. It's an all-tube-based preamp that we announced earlier this year, and just started shipping a couple of months ago. Right now, we’re in development of a power amp, which we're modeling after one of the most popular amps we made in the late 1950s, the Pilot 232 power amp. We're going with the same basic tube layout that they did in 1959. It will ship in the second quarter of 2026.
FD: The model you showed at Capital Audiofest looks so much like an original, I couldn't believe it. Even the color and the shape of the slots or the tube cage are exact. So, do you have original schematics or blueprints or are in touch with any of the original vendors?
An original Pilot stereophonic amplifier.
BE: We have the SAMS Photofacts from that era. [SAMS Photofacts are technical and pictorial manuals with detailed information on electronics components – Ed.] We [also] have some of the actual products, because I've been collecting them over the years. So, we reference the original products and the Photofacts and old marketing materials.
The preamp is sort of a newer design. It's based on a design that our engineer, Damon Coffman, modified from a preamp that he had made years ago, but using the concepts and the external design of the old days. The 232 amplifier is going to be more closely to the design of the original product. We're using EL84s in push-pull [configuration], 12AX7s for gain, and a 5AR4 power rectifier. That’s our plan at the moment.
The new Pilot preamplifier and Model 232 stereo amplifier.
FD: Were there any unique design attributes or trade secrets?
BE: I don't know about trade secrets, just…
FD: Good, solid design?
BE: Yeah; I feel like Pilot was known for creating value in hi-fi without having extremely high prices, and that was even something they [emphasized] in their marketing materials in the 1950s and 1960s. They wanted to create an accessible product that was still a hi-fi product, and that's kind of the mindset we're taking. They had this whole concept in the late 1950s called the Curtain of Sound. Some of the early engineers that were employed at Pilot were Sid Smith and Dick Sequerra, who later went on to go work at Marantz after Pilot was bought and sold. We had those engineers before Marantz did. So, some of the Marantz designs that they did may have started at Pilot.
FD: I wonder how many people know that.
BE: Well, I'm trying to tell people! We also had this Italian engineer in the 1920s named John Geloso, who was the television guy. In 1928, in front of several scientists he demonstrated a system for reproduction of moving images based on a Nipkow disk with 44 holes. The system was able to generate 36 lines and 15 frames per second. Images were transmitted from a transmitter site at Hudson Terrace in Coytesville, New Jersey to Philosophy Hall in New York, on the wavelength of 326 meters, since pictures could not be properly synchronized through the WRNY Hotel Roosevelt studios. Reception required a 24-inch scanning disc rotating at 240 rpm.
It was one of the first series of regularly scheduled transmissions of a television signal over the air. But it was barely documented. How did you document stuff in 1928?
Scenes from inside the original Pilot Radio plant.
FD: So Pilot is really one of the founding companies of radio and TV, and it seems like that's been lost to history. But I imagine you had to go through all kinds of legal stuff to get the rights to the Pilot name.
BE: We acquired the trademark legally, and that was a process. But there were no assets of the old company. They were long gone. So, all there was is a trademark, which was fine, because then we could just start from scratch, but using some of the old mentality.
FD: When you were acquired by Emerson Radio in 1965 it wasn’t some kind of corporate takeover, then?
BE: No, Isidor Goldberg died in 1961 and there wasn’t a strong number two in place and no one in the family was able to take it over. My father was 10 years old at the time.
FD: Was it you who single-handedly decided to bring it back?
BE: My dad is involved as a consultant, but he's not technically part of the company, so right now it's just me and the engineers and the case designers that we use.
FD: And you're going to build everything in the US?
BE: That's the plan. We're doing the casework in Dallas; Shad Wilson is the designer. The engineering is being done in the Portland area, where Damon Coffman lives. Most of the parts are US [made]. We OEM tubes from PSVANE, and there's a few other tiny little capacitors and a couple of parts we're getting from where we can get.
BE: [The original] Pilot [company] made tubes as well. I can't figure out exactly when our tube factory closed, but Pilot made tubes from the 1920s until maybe the 1950s, as far as I can tell.
FD: I didn't know that.
BE: If you go on eBay, you'll find one. I also have some Pilot tubes that say Pilot by Mullard on them.
FD: That could be a little secret there. Some of the original Mullard tubes are revered by audiophiles and guitar amp people.
BE: But [now] our 12AX7s are custom-made for us by PSVANE. We might get them to make EL84s next.
FD: PS Audio also uses PSVANE. I guess they picked them because of the same criteria that you guys would use, that they're good-sounding tubes and reliable.
Workers assembling and testing tubes at the Pilot Radio plant.
BE: Yeah. Our transformers that we're putting in the 232 are made in Tennessee, actually handmade by a guy who specializes in guitar stuff, and he does some hi-fi too. It’s part of our trying to get as much stuff as possible made in the US.
FD: That's not Mercury [Magnetics], is it?
BE: No, it's Musical Power Supplies. He winds them to our spec.
FD: In your literature you stress the use of passive RIAA in the phono section. Why?
BE: Our engineer is passionate about that style of RIAA for the phono. I don't know if Pilot did that 50 or 60 years ago, but that was something that my engineer wanted to do.
FD: How much does the preamp sell for?
BE: $3,475. The power amp price is not set yet, but it will be under $4,000.
A new Pilot preamplifier.
FD: Are you going to sell through dealers, or direct?
BE: Right now, we have a web store set up, but I am actively looking at the dealer channel.
FD: Are you going to be exhibiting at AXPONA 2026?
BE: That's the plan.
Also, a lot of the [original Pilot products] had built-in headphone amps and good quality ones. They used to call it “Private Listening” on the front of the device. We’ll have them in [the preamp and 232 amp]. We’ll see if we make some dedicated headphone products. Damon, or engineer, has his own headphone amp that he has under his brand, Coffman Labs.
FD: Let’s talk about the connection Pilot and Isidor Goldberg have with Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology’s research institute.
BE: Goldberg was Jewish and a supporter of Israel. He was a supporter of Technion, a big donor, and after his passing, they built a wing in his name actually, which was supervised by his wife who lived until her nineties, maybe a hundred years old. I met her when I was a kid, and she would go to Technion and would supervise some of the things that were happening at the center; it was built in 1966 and called the Goldberg Electronics Center. And apparently when she finally did pass, they donated whatever was left of their estate to Technion.
In 2022, I went to look at the Isidore Goldberg archives. There’s a fair amount of materials about him that were donated to the American Jewish Archives there. It's an archive of Jewish people. I found out that this archive was there, it's like half a pallet of documents, and I just sat there all day and took notes.
But other than that, there are a few things that you can poke around online about the history [of Pilot Radio], but there's not a lot out there. Some of it's on esoteric history of radio-type websites. A lot of the information about [Pilot Radio’s involvement in] television is not online. I found that most of it in the archive. I’m still trying to find information about the stuff that Sid Smith and Dick Sequerra worked on. If you have any way of finding out, let me know.
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