Hello Fellow Klipsch Friends, Family, and Fans!
Amy was kind enough to give me a place to BLOG! I guess I will start with an introduction of myself (seems appropriate) and how audio has played a roll in my life. It’s a long story, so if you don’t want to read it, here is the quick intro:
Brad Geswein
23 Years Old
Purdue University – Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering
Hometown – Plainfield, Indiana
Hobbies – DJing, Live Sound Reinforcement, Ping Pong, Running, Biking
Job at Klipsch - Mechanical Design Engineer/Resident New Guy
WARNING: BRAD IS USUALLY NOT THIS SERIOUS! SO DON'T GET USED TO IT!
My Audio Life Story:
I am currently 23 years old. I am a recent graduate of Purdue University’s College of Mechanical Engineering (Go Purdue!). I grew up in Plainfield, Indiana, which is on the southwest side of Indianapolis, just west of the airport (for those who know Indy). I have two siblings: Dave, a Mechanical Engineer from Purdue (four years older), and Laura, who is in her fourth year of six in Pharmacy at Purdue (two years younger). My dad is an Electrical Engineer from Purdue as well (Class of ‘72), and Mom, forgive her, is a graduate of Indiana University. I guess you could say engineering and Purdue run in the family. I have plenty of extended family who I am very close to, but believe me, there is not enough space to introduce them.
Audio first became an important factor in my life my freshman year of high school. Dave (my brother) just moved away to college and took the shelf stereo system out of our room. So Christmas time came around, and I asked for a shelf stereo. Now, my dad possesses the incredible ability to make great purchases at great prices. From Christmas gifts to scalped sports tickets, he always gets more than his money’s worth, and this Christmas was no exception. He pulled off a great deal, getting a 5.1 surround sound Aiwa shelf system. It was amazing! This was before shelf systems turned all flashy with blinking lights for short attention spanned individuals. I would just sit there and listen like the nerdy high school kid that I was. I would put my ear up to the ports, the sides, each driver, everywhere. It was GREAT!
Fast forwarding to sophomore year, many of my friends were turning 16 and having birthday parties. They would have a little boom box crunching out the latest teeny bopper music as loud as it could go. Being a good friend, I offered to set up my stereo for the next party. This turned into me controlling the stereo for the next party, as well as tweaking the EQ for maximum sound quality for how loud it was playing at the time. This morphed into actually DJing for friends.
And then the fateful day came. I received my first phone call to actually DJ an event –a high school graduation party, and they were going to pay. I had to be talked into accepting the gig, because I knew I didn’t have the song library or equipment to pull it off. I assembled three shelf stereo systems and a friend of mine had plenty of MP3’s to borrow. The buzz floating among fellow students at the party was that I should DJ the dances the next school year. I spoke it over with my parents and bought my first PA system. I quickly paid off the investment DJing for high school and middle school dances. Gigs kept coming in so I kept buying more equipment. The cycle continued throughout college and even into today. But this was only the first step of bringing audio into my life.
In college, DJing was a great way to make money and experience some very interesting situations. I think DJ stories is a whole different BLOG. Additionally in college, I met a great friend, Jason Bonta, who was as interested in Video as I was in Audio. We teamed up and started a small Video Production and DJing company. It was a lot of fun, and we loved our work.
DJing has always been audio as a hobby. Now that I work at Klipsch, audio is a profession; this transition occured after my sophomore year of college. At the time, I had two years of Mechanical Engineering School, and three and a half years of DJing. I landed an internship with a company, and the experience was less than stellar. This was my first exposure to Corporate America, and I did not like it. To me, there was no motivation to work or move up. The people I worked with were not motivated or excited to work; they were there for the money. This was much different than what I saw in my dad, who liked his job and enjoyed work. It seemed he was a minority in the world.
At this point in my life, I wanted to run my own business. I had been doing just that with DJing for years, why not make it bigger? It would be easy... right? I mean insurance and retirement planning didn't really exist in my mind at the time. How hard could it be? My friend, Jason and I began devising business plans to work for ourselves in the Audio/Visual world. We planned on converting a van into a video/audio production studio, and traveling around working gigs we could find for the summer after junior year. A great plan for two college-aged kids.
However, I got distracted. I was DJing a Formal where a recent Purdue Mechanical Engineering Grad (and now employee of Crown Audio) was in attendance. I have always used Crown Amps when DJing, and he was happy to see them in use. He was impressed with my enthusiasm towards the Crown brand (I am still a HUGE Crown fan) and asked me to contact him regarding an internship. Long story short, I ended up in Elkhart, Indiana working at Crown Audio for the summer instead of traveling around in a van full of equipment. At this point, I was hooked. I was in Corporate America, but a different Corporate America than what I had seen. Employees were passionate about their jobs. They were excited about where they worked! It was refreshing; they were working in Audio Corporate America.
My biggest problem with Crown was that they were more of an electronics company than an audio company. I wanted to work with speakers; but Crown did give me the taste of the passion and excitement I needed. Heading into senior year, Klipsch was dead center in my sights. I changed courses and added classes to steer my degree towards what I thought Klipsch would like to see. I picked up a CAD class and two graduate level acoustics courses. In these acoustics courses I met Jason K, who was working part time at Klipsch. With his help, I was able to get an internship at Klipsch after graduation from Purdue, which turned into a full time Mechanical Engineering position in the headphone group.
One year later brings me to the incredible exciting launch of my first products (the Klipsch headphone series) and a job I look forward to on Mondays.
And that is my audio life history. Thanks for reading if you made it all the way through. In future blogs, I hope to convey the experiences I have gained at Klipsch through my first year, a better explanation of what a mechanical engineer really does at a speaker company, and some of the silly situations I frequently find myself in on the weekends.
I love questions and comments, so feel free to post your responses, headphones related or not.
And thus, I leave you with one of my favorite mottos: Sleep when you're dead!
Brad