Your favorite gear CEOs, hands off or hands on?

[Bruce]

Carryover thread from the uad forum. I’m of the opinion my view of a company is more favorable if the CEO is hands on with the customer base. The opposite is true if he or she is a ghost. Let’s make this thread a shout out to those CEOs who are passionate and accessible to the customer base and let’s put out a silver alert for those who are nowhere to be found. I’ll go first.

Shout out to Cliff Chase from Fractal. He’s on his forum constantly with more product information than I can even fully understand.

Silver alert going out for UAs Bill Putnam, jr. Seems to be completely hands off.

 

[JiveTurkey]

Cliff and DI

 

[Bruce]

Cliff and DI

DI?

 

[TSJMajesty]

That's easy.
Cliff Chase, Fractal Audio.

I'll never forget how he chimed in on a forum member's thread, who was at a gig setting up, and having problems. Iirc, it was a weekend night, and Cliff posted within ~15 minutes.

 

[JiveTurkey]

DI?

Digital Igloo. He's not CEO, though. But still a great rep for L6.

 

[Bruce]

CEO that should have NEVER been seen: Henry Juszkiewicz.

What an asshole.

 

[Achilles]

Depends on the CEO.....

 

[Sidler72]

Cliff is a legend but Fractal Audio is a smaller company and it’s usually smaller companies that are more involved with the customer base. Larger companies have employees who work social media and forums but it’s usually not the CEO IME.

 

[Bruce]

Cliff is a legend but Fractal Audio is a smaller company and it’s usually smaller companies that are more involved with the customer base. Larger companies have employees who work social media and forums but it’s usually not the CEO IME.

Steve Jobs answered the occasional email and question. Doesn’t get any bigger than Apple.

 

[Bruce]

Cliff is a legend but Fractal Audio is a smaller company and it’s usually smaller companies that are more involved with the customer base. Larger companies have employees who work social media and forums but it’s usually not the CEO IME.

An overwhelming majority of musical instrument companies are by definition small to medium sized companies. Some of the larger ones have pretty visible CEOs, too. Paul Reed Smith. I think he has a few thousand employees now. He could be hiding away just collecting a check, too.

 

[Bruce]

I’ll never forget the picture of him awkwardly holding a guitar. It was like handing a 15 year old boy a newborn baby and asking him to watch it for an hour.

No one should ever live down the firebird X. That happened under his reign.

 

[Frodebro]

There have been quite a few through the years. Cliff, Christoph Kemper, Bruce Egnater, John Suhr come immediately to mind. On the Marshall forum is Ken Underwood, who is obviously not Jim Marshall, but he was there at the beginning and has a ton of stories about the early days and has been very vocal about making sure credit was given where due to the guys behind the scenes who made everything happen.

 

[TSJMajesty]

An overwhelming majority of musical instrument companies are by definition small to medium sized companies. Some of the larger ones have pretty visible CEOs, too. Paul Reed Smith. I think he has a few thousand employees now. He could be hiding away just collecting a check, too.

Plus, if one owns a company, they can choose to delegate whatever position they want, to someone else, and take on customer relations themself, if they so choose. Just because a company is large, doesn't = CEO being out-of-touch with their customers.

As an example of my point, most residential builders I've worked for, handle sales and estimating themselves, and delegate project and site management and production to others. That's pretty typical. But one very good builder I used to work for had a guy in his office handling most of those duties, while he worked out in the field with his tool belt on, "swinging a hammer." There are no hard-and-fast rules. You own the company, you can set it up to run however you want.

 

[Bruce]

Plus, if one owns a company, they can choose to delegate whatever position they want, to someone else, and take on customer relations themself, if they so choose. Just because a company is large, doesn't = CEO being out-of-touch with their customers.

As an example of my point, most residential builders I've worked for, handle sales and estimating themselves, and delegate project and site management and production to others. That's pretty typical. But one very good builder I used to work for had a guy in his office handling most of those duties, while he worked out in the field with his tool belt on, "swinging a hammer." There are no hard-and-fast rules. You own the company, you can set it up to run however you want.

Without question a company is free to operate as it chooses. For ME, I view a company more favorably when the CEO is at least occasionally active with customer interaction. Thats me. You may feel different, and thats cool too.

 

[TSJMajesty]

Without question a company is free to operate as it chooses. For ME, I view a company more favorably when the CEO is at least occasionally active with customer interaction. Thats me. You may feel different, and thats cool too.

No, I was agreeing with you.

 

[Bruce]

Keisel. Love or hate the guy, he is right out front. Steven slate, too.

 

[laxu]

Cliff Chase has already been mentioned so I'll throw in Pete Celi of Strymon. I'll always watch Walter White peddle me another Strymon in a "deep dive" video.

Source Audio's Roger Smith is also great. He's happy to tell about what SA is working on, the ins and outs of their gear etc on TGP.

Thomas Blug is also a favorite. He just seems like a really nice dude, and helluva player too.

 

[V|J]

Agree on Jeff Kiesel.

David Barber (Pedals) and Hogy (Komet Amps) seem very active on TGP.

David also seems to be very insightful and articulate in his interviews and forum posts.
Great player, too.

 

[LeftyLoungeLizard]

Shout out for Robert of BadgerFX (Badgerplex variations, 1011, etc).

Awesome dude, responsive and his pedals were works of art.

Sadly, he decided a handful of years ago to close shop.