Alesis Acquires Groove Tubes Technologies

Alesis Corporation announces the formation of GT Electronics, a new division of the company that will focus its efforts on the development of equipment using classic analog technology. Toward this end, the company has acquired the microphone, amplifier, and signal processing technologies of Groove Tubes, founded by Aspen Pittman in 1978.

The first new products of the new GT Electronics division will be four new large-diaphragm condenser studio microphones, the AM51, AM52, AM61 and AM62. The cardioid and multipattern microphones range in retail price from $549 to $1299, and utilize either FET or tube preamplifiers (see related release for more information).

"Alesis has considered doing high-quality condenser studio microphones for a long time," said Allen Wald, executive vice president at Alesis. "They're the first link in the recording chain and our vision at Alesis has always been to provide our customers with a complete studio. Simultaneous with our research in this field, we discovered that Aspen Pittman had already developed a line of mics that embraced the most important qualities that we had in mind: high character and high value.

"We found that by combining our efforts we could produce a line of mics and other non-digital equipment that would be more powerful than our individual efforts. The range of products that will eventually come from GT Electronics is virtually limitless."