My guess there was something to the cultural aspect years ago when the manufacturers in a given country actually produced the equipment and competition from outside the country was either non-existent or prohibitively more expensive. A bad analogy would be say McDonalds back in the day when they were really the only fast food franchiser of hamburgers. At the time some might say that is the "american" hamburger because it was a popular with the public and soon spawned a series of imitators who essentially produced a similar tasting product. Weak analogy I know but hopefully you see my point. Anyway with the equipment now produced worldwide (and contrary to what some in the audio world want to acknowledge) there is shared technology and in some cases shared parts between a variety of brands of different nationalities that probably have made these cultural differences less pronounced from the early years of audio.

Equipment aside I did hear something recently regarding the use of bass in early Beatles records. It seems the in Britian the bass levels on many records were purposely reduced because they thought that high levels of bass would cause the needles to jump when the record was played. After hearing several Motown recordings with heavier bass the members of the Beatles found out about the way bass was being handled on their records and had it changed. Maybe some other members here could collaborate that story but it raises the question; Is it the recordings or instrumentation that has an effect on how the culture wants to hear their music and the equipment follows???????