Customer Service
At Grace Design, customer service is not taken lightly. Many of their customers are engaged in mission critical work: an expensive orchestral studio session, a sold-out show, a live remote recording. These professionals require professional customer service. For anyone to languish on hold or wait for a reply to an email is not acceptable. Grace answers the phone and replies to inquiries right away. If you have questions, they get answered. If you have a problem, they fix it – without exception.
In the Field
Grace Design has provided equipment for some of the largest productions and facilities in the world. Racks of their microphone preamplifiers can be found capturing audio for the Grammys, the New York Metropolitan Opera, the Tanglewood Music Center, and countless blockbuster Hollywood soundtracks. Their playback equipment is in use at every major broadcast company and many of the world's premier mastering facilities. And you'll find their instrument preamps are on tour with hundreds of high-level touring artists.
Onstage or in the Studio
When Grace set out to design a true studio-quality instrument preamp, many folks questioned the idea. After all, acoustic musicians had long grown accustomed to plugging in their beloved instruments to run-of-the-mill DI boxes and had put up with lackluster sounds, or they wanted better sound and begrudgingly schlepped studio rack gear on tour. So when Grace launched the FELiX, ALiX, and BiX preamplifiers that solved those problems, word spread quickly. Today, these preamps are either what discerning acoustic players own, or what they are saving up for. Photo: Molly Tuttle, 2017 IBMA Guitar Player of the Year.
Something for Every Engineer
Grace Design makes an incredibly wide range of gear. From the single-channel m101 for the novice engineer just getting started all the way up to the flagship 8-channel preamps used by the engineers and producers making some of the best-selling records and soundtracks in the world — to Grace, there's no difference. Everything they make performs to exacting standards of audio quality and reliability, so regardless of where you (and your budget) are in the adventure of creating and producing music, there is a Grace Design product that will suit your needs. Photo: Grammy-winning artist Jacob Collier at home with a Grace Design m905 monitor controller and m108 mic preamplifiers.
Clean and Transparent
Grace Design equipment often gets put in this camp, which is only the beginning of the story, because with Grace, the more you listen, the more you discover. To Grace, transparent really means "wide open," with all the detail of the signal allowed to pass (more so than with colored equipment), creating the possibility of a stunning level of realism and beauty. Clean, to Grace Design, really means "musical," as they optimize their designs to resolve complex musical waveforms, which, when well captured in a recording, make you feel like you're in the room with the performer.
Partnership
Twenty years ago, Grace began working with Sweetwater. A business partnership of this maturity is no accident. It's built over the years through fostering trust, good faith, and camaraderie. When Grace Design was tragically flooded in 2013, the Sweetwater team came through, not only with very touching gestures of solidarity, but also with a revved up commitment to support and promote the brand.
Born into Music
Michael and Eben Grace grew up in Colorado in the '70s, raised by musical parents and weened on the great albums of the '60s and '70s. Their babysitters were the Beatles and the Stones, played by their dad's '70s hi-fi. As their dreams blossomed, creating a life surrounded by music became their story. Mike took to building equipment, while Eben took to being a musician. Their partnership stays strong by keeping their passions in the driver's seat. Now they live and work in a great little mountain town full of musicians and artists. They're all friends at Grace Design, so when the day is done, they're either playing, seeing, or recording live music — or off to the hills enjoying the spoils of Colorado life.
