Contract engineering & manufacturing for audio brands

Your name on the faceplate. Our hands on the rest.

Since 2009 we've designed and built tube amplifiers, speaker cabinets, pedals, chassis and circuit boards — for our own brand and for more than twenty-five others. Wood, metal, electronics, finish and QC, under one roof in Middletown, Ohio.

Start a project See what's in-house
Your Brand
Model
HX-50
Serial no.
26-0142
Power
120V ~ 60Hz 250W
Fuse
T2.5A SB
Caution: risk of electric shock. Do not open.
Designed by Your Brand · Made in USA
A rear-panel nameplate, laser-marked in-house.
Established
2009
Shop floor
18,000 sq ft
Location
Middletown, Ohio
Brands built for
25+
Units serialized
7,000+

What we build

If it plugs into a guitar, a rack or a speaker, we've probably built it.

Send the whole product or just the part that's giving you trouble. Tags show the departments each kind of job moves through on our floor.

  • Tube amplifier head in cream tolex with wheat grille cloth, on the loading dock

    Tube amplifier heads & combos

    Hand-wired or board-based, lunchbox size up to 100 watts. Built, wired and bench-tested before they leave the floor.

    • PCB Assembly
    • Electrical Assembly
    • Metal Shop
    • QC
  • PA-100R rackmount power amplifier on the loading dock

    Power amps & rackmount gear

    19-inch rack chassis, power stages, front and rear panels, and the cabling that joins them.

    • Metal Shop
    • Electrical Assembly
    • Laser Marking
    • QC
  • Seafoam green 2×12 speaker cabinet on the loading dock, with the shop behind it

    Speaker cabinets

    1×12 through 4×12, horizontal and vertical. Cut on the CNC router, assembled in our woodshop, covered to your spec.

    • CNC Cutout
    • Woodshop
    • Tolex / Finish
  • Head shell in blue sparkle covering with a perforated metal grille

    Head shells & cases

    Shells sized to your chassis, with roundovers, piping, corners and handles fitted.

    • CNC Cutout
    • Woodshop
    • Tolex / Finish
  • Rows of pedal enclosures finished in bright colors

    Pedals & preamps

    Enclosures drilled, powder coated, silk screened and laser marked; boards stuffed, soldered, tested and boxed.

    • PCB Assembly
    • Powder Coating
    • Laser Marking
  • Stack of formed aluminum amplifier hoods with perforated vents

    Chassis & panels

    Formed on a press brake with a CNC back gauge, milled, coated and marked — ready for your parts or ours.

    • Metal Shop
    • Powder Coating
    • Laser Marking
  • Pick-and-place machine loaded with component reels

    Circuit boards & harnesses

    Pick-and-place, wave and selective solder, hand finishing. Cables, field panels and wire harnesses built to drawing.

    • PCB Assembly
    • Cable & Field Panel
  • Engineer working across several monitors of circuit and CAD software

    Engineering

    Schematic capture, PCB layout, design-for-manufacture review and a costed bill of materials before anything is built.

    • Design / Engineering

On the floor

The shop behind the spec sheet.

Photos from our building in Middletown, not stock photography. These are the machines and benches your product goes through.

  • Two CNC routers in the woodshop
    Fig. 1CNC routers in the woodshop
  • CNC mill cutting an aluminum pedal enclosure, with a coolant line on the part
    Fig. 2CNC mill cutting a pedal enclosure
  • Press brake used to form chassis and panels
    Fig. 3Press brake: chassis and panels formed in-house
  • Operator in a respirator powder coating metal parts in the spray booth
    Fig. 4Powder coating booth
  • Amplifier faceplates marked with control legends, stacked for assembly
    Fig. 5Faceplates, marked and ready for assembly
  • Hands wiring an amplifier chassis on the electronics bench
    Fig. 6Wiring a chassis on the electronics bench
  • Shop area with laser and electronics production equipment
    Fig. 7Laser and electronics area
  • Craftsman finishing a birch speaker cabinet in the woodshop
    Fig. 8Finishing a cabinet in the woodshop

Finished, on the dock, waiting for a truck

  • Black snakeskin 2×12 speaker cabinet in the warehouse
    2×12, snakeskin covering
  • Purple 4×12 speaker cabinet on the loading dock
    4×12, purple tolex
  • Tube amplifier head with moon-phase faceplate art on the loading dock
    Tube amp head, custom faceplate art

Capabilities

Sixteen processes. Fifteen happen under our roof.

Plenty of contract shops broker the hard parts. Here, wood, metal, circuit boards, finish, marking and QC are departments, not vendors — and the one job we send out, anodizing, stays in the region.

In-house Regional partner
DisciplineProcessEquipment & methodWhere
EngineeringCircuit & PCB designSchematic capture, board layout and Gerber release — board files on record back to 2009In-house
Design for manufactureCosted BOMs, labor routed by department, revision-controlled build filesIn-house
ElectronicsPCB assemblyPick-and-place, wave and selective solder, hand soldering and reworkIn-house
Wiring & harnessesPoint-to-point amplifier wiring, wire harnesses, cables and field panelsIn-house
MetalCNC millingFryer CNC mill for panels, brackets and fixturesIn-house
Sheet-metal formingPress brake with CNC back gauge; PEM hardware installationIn-house
Powder coatingChassis, enclosures and hardware coated on siteIn-house
AnodizingAluminum panels and partsPartner · Indianapolis
Wood & finishCNC routingShopSabre router, Vectric toolpaths — 1,700+ cut programs on fileIn-house
Cabinets & head shellsBuilt to your drawings: dimensions, roundovers, grooves, piping channelsIn-house
CoveringTolex, piping, corners, handles and grille clothIn-house
MarkingLaser engraving & markingTwo laser systems, 500 × 700 mm bed — panels, nameplates, graphicsIn-house
Silk screeningPanel legends, enclosure graphics and logosIn-house
Quality & logisticsFinal QCEvery unit, before it ships — with checks between departments where you want themIn-house
SerializationSerial numbers in your format and a build record for every unitIn-house
Stock & fulfillmentFinished goods held on our shelf; drop-ship on your own packing slipIn-house

How a project runs

Every job gets a traveler. Here's what's on yours.

A traveler is the card that follows a build from station to station. Nothing moves to the next box until the last one is signed.

Example traveler — a 50-piece cabinet run, midway through production.

TravelerExample job
Customer · ItemYour Brand · 2×12 vertical cabinet
Qty50
Job no.OEM-0417
  1. 01

    Conversation & NDA

    Send a drawing, a prototype or a sketch. We'll sign your NDA or send ours before you share specifics.

    OK
    08/04
  2. 02

    Engineering review & quote

    We cost the bill of materials line by line and route the labor department by department, so the quote matches how it's actually built.

    OK
    08/19
  3. 03

    Prototype & golden sample

    We build it, you play it. The unit you sign off becomes the reference every production unit is checked against.

    OK
    09/08
  4. 04

    Production run

    The job moves through wood, metal, electronics and finish on its traveler, with checks between stations where you want them.

    In work
  5. 05

    Final QC & serialization

    Every unit passes final QC and gets a serial number in your format before it's packed.

  6. 06

    Ship or hold

    Ship to your warehouse, drop-ship to your customer on your own packing slip, or leave finished stock on our shelf until you need it.

Partner portal

See your stock without calling us.

Every partner gets a login to the same system our floor runs on.

  • What's built, what's held, what can ship — by model, updated as units clear QC.
  • Hold finished units against an order you haven't placed yet.
  • Orders, open questions and shared projects in one place instead of an email thread.
  • Every unit tracked by serial number, from its traveler to its tracking number.
Partner portal · Example Audio Co. Example data

Available to ship

Your models on our shelf
ModelOn shelfHeld for youCan shipStatus
2×12 vertical cabinet18612Ready
50W head, black990All held
Boost pedal642044Ready
2U rack chassis000In build · 24 due 10/02
Held units stay reserved for your next order.
The shop crew sitting together on the loading dock
The crew, on the loading dock in Middletown

Sister brand

We build our own amps on the same floor.

KSR Amps, our boutique tube-amp line, goes through the same departments, the same QC and the same shipping bench as your job. We learned what an OEM customer needs by being a very demanding one.

Visit ksramps.com

Discretion

More than 25 brands. None of their logos on this page.

A lot of the gear we build ships under names you know, and most of those companies would rather you didn't know who built it. Your drawings, your costs and your customers stay yours.

Start a project

Tell us what you're building.

A sketch is enough to start. We'll reply with questions, an NDA if you want one, and an honest read on whether we're the right shop for it.

Shop
2520 Atco Ave
Middletown, OH 45042
Getting here
On I-75, halfway between Cincinnati and Dayton
Where is it today?