Tom's official business address was his home address - as was/is mine, BTW - but his operation was based in a warehouse space. Although I've never been there, I know it's where he took delivery of container-load shipments of CLRs. There's no way he could receive all those goods at his house, and he'd been buying similar quantities of speakers - Reactors and FRs - for years when I began developing the CLR.
While I can't rule that out, I won't draw exactly the same conclusion. I have no idea what his long-term aspirations were or are, but I am convinced that he simply didn't anticipate or understand the challenges he would face trying to build a technology-based business from scratch. His interest and skillset seemed to me to lie more in sales and marketing than in R&D, production/QC management, or customer support. To be successful in the long term at what he was trying to do, IMO you've gotta have people with technical skills on your full-time staff. You can farm out some analysis, design, and/or testing to hired guns, but unless you've got people in-house with similar skills, you're gonna wind up in over your head at some point.
I also think lack of focus played a role. When I met Tom, Atomic was exclusively in the business of selling amplification for modelers. Once CLR production and sales were steady, his focus shifted dramatically, and he devoted his energy to getting the Amplifire product line moving, an entirely new direction. It appeared to me for a time that he planned to get out of the business of selling speakers entirely and move over to modeling. Ironically, the CLR is now the only product that he can still have made and sell.
It certainly seems to have worked out that way.
Yes. My amplification needs are very simple these days, as I'm old and feeble and only ever play in one of two big bands. An Amplifire (3), one of my prototype small monitors, and a D'Angelico EXL-1 constitute my rig.
![[Nathan]](/data/avatars/m/0/613.jpg?1726885163){kind=avatar}
Lololol
