Electro-Voice RE20

The RE20

An American made legendary microphone that has been a staple in broadcast studios and recording studios worldwide for over half a century.

90 years ago two men, Lou Burroughs and Al Kahn, formed a small electronics company in Indiana.

The company was Electro-Voice. You can read all about the history here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electro-Voice

In the mid 1960s a technology emerged and from that came a microphone called the 668. You can read all about it here:
http://www.electrovoice.com/binary/Microphone%20Facts-%20The%20Model%20668%20and%20How%20it%20Grew.pdf

The RE20 and near twin sister PL20 can be read about here:
http://www.coutant.org/evre20/

People have been paying to fix these microphones for decades and each year thousands more are introduced into the market.

I've "forked off" from Electro-Voice and will host a node of servicing these microphones as well as manufacturing a hybrid of the legendary 668 and the RE20.

There are things we can learn and use from both iterations and implement into a modern form factor while adhering to some of that charm of the old.

We have developed a service that rivals that of the manufacturer.

Let me present to you this scenario;

Your automobile is acting up, it seems kind of sluggish, doesn't have that same response at the gas pedal and overall just isn't performing up to the standard you're used to day in day out, but yet it still gets you to point B from A.

You bring your car to your mechanic who you trust as having technical expertise.

You receive the quote, and expect the usual, air filter, oil filter, fuel filter, flush fluids, general service..

Yet the quote reads:

"it looks like you could use an oil change and some spark plugs, so we'll change out the entire drive-train at your cost.... sound good?"

You might be confused, and asking yourself..

"why wouldn't they just replace the spark plugs and change the oil?"

Good question...

The idea and the intent is that by replacing the "motor" the service department then has to purchase a new one from the production end of the business. This is a sale on the books as the business units are separate.

The main argument for a flat service (replace the motor for any fault) is so that service can expedite quotes. See if there's only one price to ever quote the quoting process becomes easy.

The extent of any failure mode analysis extends no further than "does it work?"

There is no diagnostic process at all, it's been ELIMINATED!

What we've done over the past 7 years is create a production facility that can manufacture a "to print" RE20 microphone capsule.

The body was easy, I did that the first year from 2010-2011. The capsule was the hard part.

We (me myself and I) finalized the last pieces of tooling (entirely out of my own pocket, I have NO investors) in 2017.

That's all for now.......so would you want the mechanic who swaps motors at every oil change?