(honest answers from founder)

A nautical-themed natural wood speaker company? Why?

I was a happy HiFi enthusiast buying, selling and listening to a ton of gear. There were things that were clearly out of my price range that I wanted to try, but wouldn’t fork over that kind of money. I was considering some DIY projects that might give me similar sound to some of those high end pieces I was lusting after. Then a local woodworker who had done work for me asked if I had extra work. Maybe we should try building speakers, I thought. Thus began the journey…

The nautical stuff comes from where we live and it’s just cool. And to me, there’s nothing quite like real wood.

Why a single driver? Doesn’t that limit you?

I wanted to build high quality, crafted speakers at a reasonable price. So I set off on how to achieve that. A single full-range driver is limiting… but it’s also freeing. It greatly simplifies things: less drivers and no traditional cross-overs. This allows cabinet design to be singly focused on making that one driver sound really good. But it wasn’t until I tried a single full-range driver speaker that I saw it had something special. My main system at the time cost many times what my modest full-range speakers cost. And while the main system was highly accurate and was powered by high-end electronics, I found myself wanting to go listen to the full-range speakers! Why? (Now, we’re gonna use a bit of jargon). Basically I was more emotionally “sucked into” the music on the smaller system. People will say that full-range drivers sound more “coherent” and are naturally “time-aligned”, etc. What I can say is that for the most of the music I listened to, the full-range drivers were just more engaging.

What’s special about your gear?

We think it’s the combination of trying to reach the high-end but also trying to keep it in reach of normal folk. It’s one thing to custom hand-craft speakers and charge an arm and a leg… It’s completely different to try to bring high-end custom down to earthly sums. How do we go about that?

• Use quality but simplified electronics and drivers

• Focus on making the driver sing with cabinet design quality over multiple drivers and electronic cross-overs

• Design with great minds (we team with Woden Design)

• Purchase rough lumber and have it milled

• Use the latest tools (like lasers), to reduce the time to craft and assemble the speakers.
  

  What’s the “Two Audiophiles Walk Into A Bar” Story?

  Sunday afternoon of Axpona 2024, I was grabbing some lunch at the “public house” bar.  As I was finishing, two young-ish guys (for a HiFi conference) sat next to me at the bar and started talking about music and music systems.  One, a musician, had a modest system, and his friend wanted a HiFi system after hearing his friends.  They talked about what gear they would buy if they had the money… maybe next year.  We started a conversation. Then the musician said, “but I got one cool thing”… he proudly pulled out a Geshelli Labs DAC in a carved wooden enclosure and said to me, do you know Geshelli?  I said “know them… I was in their room”.  Confused he said “you mean you went to their room”.  I replied, “no, my speakers were on display in 1209 — I make handcrafted wood speakers with real hardwoods”.   After a short pause, a realization crossed his face, he pulled out his phone and started searching through his photos… he pulled up a photo and showed it to me.  It was a picture of my speakers he had taken while he visited the Geshelli room.  He said “Those are sick, dude”.

Where can I hear your gear?

There’s a set of our speakers at Linear Tube Audio listening room in Tacoma Park, MD. We also have a listening room in Stevensville, MD. We’ll also be at Axpona conference in the Expo Hall on April 11-13. Submit the contact us form to learn more.