Sweetwater Sound

Sweetwater Sound

Sweetwater Sound is one of the United States' largest dealers in musical equipment for musicians, recording studios, concert sound companies and broadcasters. Sweetwater sells microphones, mixers, loudspeakers, digital recording systems, digital signal processors, electric guitars, electronic keyboards and electronic drums.

History

Chuck Surack started the company as a recording studio in 1979, originally based out of his home in Fort Wayne, Indiana. When the Kurzweil K250 programmable keyboard and sampler was introduced in 1984, Surack became known for his custom K250 sound library and programming skills as well as his upgrade kits. Surack became a Kurzweil dealer, but his clients were asking for advice regarding other products as well. Surack expanded Sweetwater to become a music retailer whose emphasis was pre- and post-sale customer service. [http://www.sweetwater.com/about/press-releases/pr.php?id=00104 Sweetwater Press release, May 3, 2006. Mike Ross. "The Sweetwater Story"] ]

In 1995, Sweetwater mounted a website: www.sweetwater.com. By 1999, most of the inventory was available for purchase online. [ [http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.sweetwater.com Internet Archive. Wayback Machine. Archived results for www.sweetwater.com starting from 1996.] ] "Electronic Musician" named the website one of the nine best information sources for a musician, due to its 63,000 pages including instructional videos, demos and technical documents.

Surack moved Sweetwater to its own building in 1990 and subsequently expanded it four times; the company had grown to 220 employees by 2005 and still needed more room. Choosing to remain in Fort Wayne, in 2006 the operation moved to larger, custom-built headquarters using 14 acres of a 44-acre parcel; enough area to allow for planned further expansion. [ [http://www.prosoundnews.com/publish/web/Sweetwater_s_New_HQ_Open_For_Business.shtml ProSoundNews. Frank Wells, 2007. "Web Bonus: Sweetwater's New HQ Open For Business"] ]

The new headquarters includes a Performance Theatre designed by Russ Berger Design Group. The 250-seat theater has a LARES electroacoustic enhancement system, and is connected to three recording studios. [ [http://www.rbdg.com/projects/sweetwater/ Russ Berger Design Group. "Sweetwater"] ]

Awards

*2005, "Independent Retailer of the Year" from [http://www.musicincmag.com/magazine.html Music Inc. magazine]
*2006, "Torch Award" for business ethics, integrity and honesty from Better Business Bureau

ee also

*American Musical Supply
*Guitar Center
*Musician's Friend
*Sam Ash
*Sam Goody

References

External links

* [http://www.sweetwater.com/ Sweetwater home page]
* [http://www.flickr.com/photos/northeastindiana/tags/sweetwatersound/ Flickr photostream of Sweetwater Sound]


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