Neat Microphones
After selling Blue Microphones in 2013, I wanted to take some time off and analyze what had transpired in the industry over the last few decades. While driving one night with Martins, he raised the question of “What’s next?”
I responded that frankly, I didn’t know.
We spoke about the last 18 years of building a microphone company, and what we learned. We realized that if we were to start from scratch today, we could create a new company—and a new microphone product line—far more efficiently.
We were so inspired from our conversation we did exactly that. The result was Neat Microphones. Partnering with Gibson Brands, who embraced our vision of easy-to-use product design, we created two award-winning families of mics (Bee and Widgets) designed for a variety of uses and applications. We didn’t want to fall prey to what I call “remote control syndrome.” Most of us would just like to come home from a day’s work and if we want to watch TV, it should be simple: volume, channel change, mute, on and off. Instead, we’re inundated with options we never use (although we might if they were easier to navigate). I wanted our microphone designs to be plug-and-play; anything complex should be under the hood.
The Neat Mic lines not only embraced and expanded on everything we’d learned over the years, but also reflected the evolution of our own personal views and personalities: our love of quality sound, a fondness for interesting, non-cookie cutter design, and, perhaps most important, the belief that inspiring products produce inspiring results. Pretty important in our line of business, eh?
After three years of partnership with Gibson and the Neat product lines successfully launched, our mission was complete and it was time to move on. Time, trends, and technology don’t stand still, and neither do I. The passion to always be creating, always pushing forward, was as strong as ever. New ideas that began percolating while I was at Neat could now be explored. It was time to begin a new orbit, one that will take me to hear and experience things I’ve thus far only imagined.