I was having and issue with Rane/SSL and working with a support engineer on their forum. Since I live in Seattle I offered to bring my system by so that they could see it in person. They accepted and I drove on over to the office today.

It's a fairly small building and nothing too fancy. The carpets are probably the same ones they had installed in 1981.

What impressed me is that they do 100% of the manufacturing in house. And they really do it all there. I watched some machine surface mounting all the capacitors and what not and folks putting the hardware together by hand just 10 feet away. They even do the silk screening for the gear in house. They control the process end to end and that isn't what I expected at all. It was strange to look at the small manufacturing operation knowing that every single Rane mixer was born in that room. From there they have gone to the biggest clubs across the globe and have been used by the top jocks to spin amazing sets. But I digress...

Engineering shares a common wall with manufacturing and support/repair is just up the stairs from them. Having engineering that close is virtually unheard of in any industry! Honestly it felt like a Mom and Pop shop. I doubt they have more than 100 employees.

Walking around there was something else. I felt like I was a celebrity or something. Everybody was super nice, stopped to say hi and I wanted to chit chat. There was definitely a real sense of pride in what they were doing there.

Oh and my issue is addressed in the next version of SSL so I’m a happy camper on that front as well.

Just thought I would share…

Keith

Last edited by Keith Chambers on Dec-10-2004 at 23:24