Daniel McLean McDonald (1905–1991) founded Birmingham Sound Reproducers as a private company in 1932 in the West Midlands of England.

By 1947, the company chiefly manufactured communications sets (intercoms), laboratory test equipment, and sound recording and reproducing instruments including phonographs.

In the early 1950s, Samuel Margolin began buying auto-changing turntables from BSR, using them as the basis of his Dansette record player.

[4] During 1975, with the help of Pico Electronics, BSR started the manufacture of a new upmarket turntable for its ADC line called the Accutrac 4000 at its Garratts Lane factory in Cradley Heath.

[5] After producing their last turntable in 1985, BSR McDonald closed all divisions except for Astec Power Supply; they maintained investments in entities including dbx and X10 (another partnership with Pico Electronics).