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I think we are speaking about different things, you speak about real High End which should be best possible sound quality to serve a musical purpose, and I'm speaking about a High End industry which doesn't give a damn about musical performance, because it's all about selling you a difference. The status difference and irrelevant sound differences.
I meant High End as a whole audio conception with the marketing strategies and magazines we have now. At that time you're refering they started more to speak about High Fidelity than about High End, though I don't doubt those were the first High End tapes, maybe there wasn't still a High End industry in the same way it started to exist in the sixties, changing their focus more on exclusivity and high prices than in real better sound for a musical purpose. My impression is that historically High-Fidelity became a popular term in the 50's and with the advent of inexpensive japanese gear in the 60's which also met the DIN 45500 standards (so might be called HiFi), the audio industry in the US needed to develope a marketing strategy based upon the "even better" which became High End to be differentiated from average HiFi.
Nevertheless I think we agree that High End should be a different thing than it is :-)

rgrds,
A.

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