Lectrosonics Celebrates 40 Years Behind The Scenes And On Camera
Quick Bio
COMPANY: Lectrosonics
HEADQUARTERS: Rio Rancho, NM
DESIGN PHILOSOPHY: Lectrosonics has made its products essential to various applications by founding its innovations in field research and user input and continually improving its manufacturing processes.
The company motto says it all: “Made in the USA by a Bunch of Fanatics.” That phrase reveals the ethos of privately held Lectrosonics, which manufacturers all of its products at its newly expanded headquarters in Rio Rancho, NM . As the company celebrates 40 years in the business of sound, its longstanding team of employees and devoted customers has proven that the fanaticism is mutual.
The company’s technology evolution began in 1971 with amplified lectern systems, and continued into portable instrument and voice amplification with the MaxiMouse and Long Ranger products. In the 1980s, wireless microphone development began at the company, patenting its Digital Hybrid Wireless and creating Smart Diversity and LecNet2 along the way. Today, Lectrosonics’ commitment to the installed sound market has been further bolstered by its ASPEN series of DSP audio matrix and conferencing products. Picking up where the DM Series left off, ASPEN adds network capability, programming flexibility, advanced automixing options, and a hip new iPad interface option to the mix.
Lectrosonics’ product museum displays the continuum of technological innovations produced by the manufacturer.
“The iPad is now the most rapidly adopted technology ever, and it’s of course turning the whole control world upside down,” noted Gordon Moore, CTS, Lectrosonics vice president of sales. With the manufacturer for 22 years, Moore’s experience and that of all the other pros at Lectrosonics is what guides product development, sales, and application support.
More than a few changes have occurred in technology over the past four decades, as witnessed by Lectrosonics president Larry Fisher, who has been with the company for 39 of its 40 years. “You really can’t make the same product today that you did 40 years ago,” he commented, except he added, for the Lectrosonics Long Ranger, which is still in demand today.
Manufacturing in the new 6,000-square-foot addition to Lectrosonics’ headquarters places an emphasis on reliability and product testing. All along the factory chain, Lectrosonics has implemented ingenious way to cut out excess weight on its wireless offerings while also making them nearly indestructible. Every board, every end product, is checked and even hand-tweaked as necessary to guarantee successful implementation in the field.
It’s not just quality control that customers are demanding in a market where technology becomes more complex each day—it’s design and programming expertise, a substantial amount of which is handled in house at Lectrosonics every day.
In short, this is really a “hands-on kind of company,” said Karl Winkler, Lectrosonics director of business development. “Engineers can walk down the hall and show up to the machine shop with literally sometimes a drawing on a napkin, and it will become a reality.”
