Trew Audio has a long and proud tradition with Lectrosonics and their wireless microphone systems. Responsible business practices, engineering excellence, great customer service, and the close scrutiny of Trew Audio's customers have resulted in Lectrosonics earning an amazing 90% share of the portable wireless market in the US. Now, with the addition of Trew Audio's store in Toronto, the news is out and acceptance of Lectrosonics wireless is becoming widespread throughout Canada as well.

From their beginnings of making lecterns with internal powered speakers (thus, the name, Lectrosonics) to becoming a world leader in TV and film production audio, they have been committed to being the best they can possibly be. They are very proud of the business they have built, and it shows. A recent trip to the Lectrosonics facility in Rio Rancho, New Mexico gave some more insight into their success.

The staff at Trew Audio has known the Lectro staff for years. We see them several times a year at our Nashville office and at trade shows. But seeing them work - where they work - tells it all.

Rio Rancho, a close suburb of Albuquerque, is a like a location straight out of a classic Western movie. Correction it actually is a location straight out of many classic Western movies. You can see forever there. Maybe I just got lucky with the weather on the day of my trip, but I have a feeling that people who live in Albuquerque and work in Rio Rancho feel they are the lucky ones. It could be that the 5000 feet altitude, clean crisp air, and common clear blue skies tend to make you want to put in a full but happy day at work.

Pulling into the Lectro parking lot with Gordon Moore, VP of Sales, in his fully restored British Racing Green MGA sports car that he personally re-built from boxes of rusted parts, sales associate Frank McKenna pulled in beside us in his pristine white MGA that he bought ready-built. That began a show of competitive camaraderie that gave a glimpse into the Lectrosonics company personality that shines in their products.

Walking through the front door and into reception of the Lectro building, there is the sense of a business that gets down to business. The guided tour by Gordon takes us through the sales offices, I.T. room, boardroom, accounting, and then into the break room for a cup of coffee before going into the factory. All along the way, it was great to put unfamiliar faces with voices well known from years of phone conversations.

The engineering room is full of, well, engineers, in front of their computer stations, oscilloscopes, and service monitors. The introduction was like a starting line up of a Monday Night Football game: Bob Jones, MIT, UCR201 Display; Joe Smith, UNLV, 400 series DSP, and the list went on in front of the proud Coach Larry Fisher.

With a background in factory machine work, I was most interested in seeing where and how the products were made. I wanted to see metal being cut, screws being turned, and solder flowing. I was not disappointed.

More and more, the trend for manufacturers is to have many parts built by outside specialty manufactures. For instance, it is common for the metal chassis, circuit boards, molded plastic pieces, label engraving, circuit board stuffing, etc, to all be done at different specialty factories then brought in for assembly and testing. However, this is not the case at Lectrosonics. What impressed me the most about the Lectro tour was how much of the product, from the most complex part to the least significant, is made right in the factory.

At one end of the factory there was a large plasma machine cutting out the flat aluminum antenna brackets seen in their dipole antenna kits. Next to that, a machine milling out the waterproof enclosures of the UM400a transmitter. Stepping into a clean room revealed several automatic machines placing surface mount components onto circuit boards. Nearby is a room filled with laser machines engraving the Lectro logo and labels onto the chassis. When I asked about smell of molten plastic, Gordon took me to the injection molding room. I was very surprised when I saw what they were making: the tiny rubber grommets for the UCR201 receiver antennas. At the end of the line is the testing area where every wireless transmitter and receiver is thoroughly tested (no spot checking).

The point here is that nearly every piece of every Lectro product is made right there at the Rio Rancho factory. When they say they make audio products, they make audio products, from the concept right down to the knobs and rubber grommets. This gives Lectrosonics an important amount of quality control: Everything about the Lectrosonics products, from design, development, manufacture, assembly, testing, and service is done right here.

What happened after the tour was as impressive as the factory itself. During lunch with VP of Sales Gordon Moore, founder John Arasim, President Larry Fisher, VP of Marketing Bruce Jones, software designer Dave Thomas, and others, most of the conversation was them wanting to better understand the situations that their products were used in. They wanted to know things like, What is the percentage of wireless microphone use compared to hardwire boom mics on a movie set? and, What is the optimum time between battery changes for a production? Etc, etc. To their credit, they acknowledge that their expertise is in making equipment, the customers expertise is in using it, and big part of their job is understanding what you, the end user, want and need. And that, probably as much as any other single factor, is the key to their success.