Pickathon, Portland’s roots music festival, is always a summer highlight for me. While enjoying workshop concerts by Laura Gibson, The Two Man Gentleman Band, and The Cactus Blossoms at this year’s fest, I found myself focusing on the uniquely stylized microphones being used by the performers.
One of my first businesses was a recording studio, so it wasn’t just the attractive look of these mics that drew me in. The stellar sound quality was hard to miss. As luck would have it, I ran into the man behind the mic, Philip Graham of Ear Trumpet Labs. He let me pick his brain about his new role as an “audio bricoleur.”
NN: What was the inspiration for Ear Trumpet Labs?
PG: I was getting into making recordings and realized just how expensive nice microphones are. I know electronics and started making my first mics.
I was looking for ways to make my own bodies without needing to do a lot of machining, and came up with designs that repurposed standard plumbing and electrical parts and used big tea balls for the capsule suspension. Then I realized how neat they looked, and that they looked like old broadcast mics from the ‘30s. I kind of had this epiphany that you could have as much fun with the visual design of microphones as the acoustic design.
NN: How did you move from inspiration to creating microphones professionally?
PG: It was sort of the other way around: Creating the microphones inspired me to play around more with new designs, and inspired me to have people use them, who pushed the idea that I should make more and make a business.
I quit my job as a software engineer to do this—classic case of “follow what you love.”
NN: What separates Ear Trumpet microphones from other microphones out there?
PG: Two things: the visual designs, which are very unique; and the acoustic design, in which I concentrate on making condenser mics with studio sound quality that have the feedback rejection to work great on stage. They not only look cooler, they sound much better than most performance mics.
NN: Your microphones have names like Edwina and Edna. Are there special meanings behind the names you give your mics?
PG: We think of them as “old lady names.” When you go through the process of designing and building something, you feel pretty close to it, and I think it's natural to give it a name to personify it.
NN: How did you finance Ear Trumpet Labs? Did you seek out any professional advice on planning your business?
PG: It's just been self-financed so far—start-up costs weren't very high, and it's mostly been a question of living off my savings and my wife's salary while it gets started. I was covering costs other than my time pretty soon after starting.
I haven't ever started a business before. I'm about to go have a first in-depth talk with my accountant tomorrow, and I'm prepared to hear about everything I've been doing wrong.
NN: So many companies, even small ones, have embraced outsourcing. Why did you decide to make your product in Portland?
PG: The entire point was to try to make a living by hand building mics. I want to be a craftsman more than a business owner. While I would love to grow the business so I can hire other folks who want be craftspeople, I always want to be doing some building myself.
NN: How are you managing sales now? Is it direct sales only, or have you been able to place your product in retail outlets?
PG: Most of my sales are still direct through my website. I've had many more sales outside Portland than here—I've made sales to Japan and all over the U.S.
I have a few retail resellers, but I'd like more. The most successful so far is in London. I've had to restructure my prices a little in order to accommodate reseller margins. I went to a music retailers trade show this summer which helped me find more interested retailers.
NN: What are your plans for moving Ear Trumpet Labs forward?
PG: The primary emphasis now is on getting press exposure and judicious advertising to spread the word. A lot of that comes through working with artists using my mics, which is really fun. My immediate goal is to grow sales to the limit of what I can produce myself, so I can hire some production assistance.
Ready to rock the mic? You can be a rock star (or folk star), or at least look like one. Check out the latest lovely microphones from Ear Trumpet Labs.
