Where Tellurium Q® Came From

Geoff Merrigan
R&D Consultant
“The approach to audiophile cables is rather unusual, prioritising research on the nature of electric signals, physical phenomena and materials.”

Simon Lomax
Sound Engin-ear
“When we develop new cables, the prototypes always end up with one man, Simon Lomax…”

Ben Merrigan
Director of Operations
“The unusual process that Tellurium Q has developed to consistently produce better cables has been an interesting and eye-opening process to get to grips with.”

Helen Merrigan
Financial Director
“Our guiding principle is to ask ourselves, “how would we like to be treated” and that is simply how we approach all client interactions.”

People have been asking how Tellurium Q® came about and what we are doing to make our products work so differently from what is currently available. This has caused us problems because there are trade secrets and production methodologies that we definitely do not want to share with our competitors. We think that sometimes our team err too much on the side of caution and that causes reviewers and our distributors a little problem. What do they say? What is the story to give our customers, a hook, a reason to listen when there are so many companies claiming big things? Why should people believe that we have a genuinely different approach? Yes, a client can hear this is true within seconds of listening, but the big problem is giving people a reason to want to listen having not yet heard the cable. In the UK and increasingly in Europe and the rest of the audiophile world this is not such a big problem as more and more people are giving their feedback to their friends and Tellurium Q® is spreading rapidly by word of mouth as much as from all the remarkable reviews and awards.

However, we can say a little about our background, how Tellurium Q® came about and what we had to do to develop the products. So here goes.

Geoff Merrigan’s original role at Tellurium Q® was strategy and product development, however, most people don’t realise his original training was in industrial chemistry (materials etc) and he has kept his passion for science and learning through a range of activities which has given Tellurium Q® its unique approach.

An interest in accelerated learning and behavioural modelling led to co-developing the Music Skills System with Simon Lomax where students learn musical instruments at an extraordinary speed. (see for yourself at musicskills.co.uk). This project also paved the way to a novel approach to audio cable development, though Geoff did not know it at the time.

In the very early days of Tellurium Q® Geoff made up many of the prototypes himself, building a sizeable number of the cables that customers own. This experience coupled with his understanding of material science, allowed for an extensive mental-database and thus, the ability to visualise simulations of various materials, configurations and how they would probably behave. A huge, shortcut to the iterative design of physical cables. The sheer volume of work has been made manageable by this ‘mind hack’ shortcut. Over the years these principles, understandings and techniques have been infused into the small Tellurium Q® development team principally led by Ben Merrigan, director of operations (who was directly responsible for the unusual Plato’s Ghost streaming cable and took the lead on the award winning Silver III development project).