Author: mattwaddell

“Before long, Brad Lovett decided to exit, and Jim Koomar and I both uprooted and moved from Chicago to Reedsburg, WI. There we established Sound Devices’ manufacturing division in a rented space within a company owned by the angel investor. We met Libby, who worked at said company, and hired her as our first employee (later Jim and Libby got married – our first SD marriage!). Libby has a math degree but turned out to be brilliant at mechanical engineering, and she replaced Brad Lovett as my primary engineering partner in crime. Jim, Libby, and I were the ‘three musketeers’ who set up all of the original manufacturing, and heavily collaborated on the design of the original products. Later on, Jon moved north to Wisconsin as well, and the four of us worked on all aspects of the business, designing products, finding and visiting vendors, talking to potential customers, creating ads, establishing a reseller network, setting up tradeshows, hiring employees, and everything else needed to get a company going. After many years of hard work and meticulous attention to detail, we designed many groundbreaking products (more on these in subsequent posts), and attracted and gained the trust of many customers. Slowly but surely, we became more well known, turned a profit, paid back the seed money, and bought our own 30,000-square-foot manufacturing building down the road from our original rented place in Reedsburg…”  

“Sound Devices started as nothing but a crazy idea inside my head. I had grown up creating little businesses mowing lawns, fixing bikes, repairing electronics, motorcycles, cars and such. I was heavily into music, and started building speakers and audio circuits as a kid. I eventually went to college, got a formal Electrical Engineering degree, and then was hired by a fantastic pro audio company, where I worked for several years. As I was nearing 30 years old, I figured it was time to give it a go on my own, designing and manufacturing audio equipment. I enlisted fellow engineer and friend, Brad Lovett, and we started drawing up plans. We first hired a lawyer to make sure we were squeaky clean legally, and then started planning from my basement outside of Chicago. Brad and I realized that – while we could handle the ‘tech side’ of things – if we wanted to be truly successful, we’d need more than just engineering. I then convinced Jon Tatooles and Jim Koomar to join us on the journey. They became the heart of the Sales and Marketing team. We found a good angel investor, did more planning, and then we incorporated. The four of us set up shop in a small office in Park Ridge [Illinois] above a paint shop – this is where we found the infamous box labeled ‘Sound Devices’ — our name was set, and we were on our way. I started designing what was to become the MP-1…”