2018 Year in Review

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By Mac McDonough on January 1, 2019

Across-the-board, 2018 was an exciting year for us here at Sweetwater. We met lots of exciting new people and reconnected with many old friends. Our community gained a world-class concert venue, and we opened our campus to Purdue Fort Wayne’s music technology degree program. We announced our biggest expansion yet. We had a blast at GearFest, and lots of fun memories were made. And we shared tons of informative tips in our blog to help you become the best musician/engineer you can be. Here are a few of Sweetwater’s most exciting highlights from 2018.

Amazing Interviews

Sitting down with the best and brightest stars in the industry is always a thrill, and we got to chat with lots of them. Here are a few of our favorites.

Bootsy Collins

Bootsy Collins chatted with Sweetwater’s Mitch Gallagher and answered five questions about his approach to bringing the funk and holding down the bottom end.

Paul Gilbert

Paul Gilbert stopped into Sweetwater and chatted about his latest Ibanez guitar, how his playing has evolved over the years, and more.

Gene Simmons

Gene Simmons sat down with Mitch Gallagher to discuss his Vault box set, the music business, and a variety of other topics.

Billy Gibbons

ZZ Top front man Billy Gibbons sat down with Nick Bowcott to discuss Magnatone amplifiers.

Cory Wong

Cory Wong was kind enough to stop by Sweetwater to explain how his musical journey started (with bass), to talk about groove, and more.

Todd Rundgren

Todd Rundgren explained to us how he has built his diverse career and shared many valuable insights.

Sweetwater in the News

The Clyde Theatre

One thing had been missing from Fort Wayne’s burgeoning arts scene — a premier concert venue. That is, of course, until Sweetwater’s Chuck and Lisa Surack got involved with the renovation of the Clyde Theatre. Originally built as a movie house in 1951, the Clyde had long ago closed its doors and fallen into disrepair. That all changed last May, when the building was transformed into a 2,000-person concert venue with a state-of-the-art Sweetwater-powered sound system. Since opening its doors, the Clyde has hosted such top-tier performers as Stone Sour, Anthrax, WAR, Al Di Meola, George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic, Black Label Society, Blues Traveler, Jonny Lang, the Flaming Lips, the Chris Robinson Brotherhood, Buddy Guy, Machine Head, Eric Johnson, and Gov’t Mule. For more information about current shows at the Clyde, click here.

Purdue Fort Wayne Sweetwater Music Center

In August, we officially dedicated and opened the Purdue University Fort Wayne Sweetwater Music Center right here on Sweetwater’s campus. The 8,000-square-foot facility is a state-of-the-art learning center with a world-class recording studio and adjacent teaching lab, isolation booths, editing suites, a student musical collaboration center, an equipment library, classrooms, conference rooms, and administrative offices. The facility will provide Purdue students with a real-world hands-on education while they work toward a bachelor’s degree in either Music Industry or Popular Music with a concentration in Songwriting/Performance or Recording/Production.

Our Biggest Expansion Yet

Sweetwater is growing at a remarkable pace, and in October we announced the next step! A new, 350,000-square-foot warehouse facility will provide product storage, gear testing, gear photography, offices, staff amenities, customer pickup, and more. Beyond that, a new 35,000-square-foot conference center with room for up to 1,000 people will accommodate our ongoing employee training, so we can keep on top of the latest gear. The expansion is slated to be completed in the summer of 2020 and will bring 1,009 new jobs over the next five years.

Shout-out to Our Guitar Repair Shop

When Machine Head came to Fort Wayne to play the Clyde, the band stopped by Sweetwater to check out our facility. When guitarist Robb Flynn found out that we have an in-house Guitar Repair Shop, he brought in his Flying V to have its wiring looked at. He was so impressed with the quality of our work that the rest of the band brought in six more guitars to have them serviced before they hit the stage. As you can see in this video, they really dug our work!

Legends Lost

Here at Sweetwater, we love music, as well as the artists who create it. So when we lose a member of the musical community, we all grieve together.

Vinnie Paul

This was really apparent when Vinnie Paul of Pantera passed away in Las Vegas. Even though there were over 15,000 people here at Sweetwater for Gearfest, we all — employees and attendees alike — experienced an eerie quiet sadness as the news spread. Sweetwater’s Nick Bowcott, a longtime friend of Vinnie’s, took it especially hard. To pay tribute to his fallen comrade, Nick joined Nita Strauss and Mike Stanley, performing a moving and hard-hitting rendition of Pantera’s “Walk” on the GearFest stage.

Aretha Franklin

August 16 was a sad day. Aretha Franklin — the Queen of Soul — passed away, and the world lost one of its greatest musical voices.

Geoff Emerick

On October 2, engineer Geoff Emerick passed away. As the man behind most of the Beatles’ most seminal albums, Geoff invented a number of standard studio techniques that we all use to this day.

Other musical heroes that we lost this year include Ed King (Lynyrd Skynyrd), Roy Clark, Rick Hall, Pete Shelley (Buzzcocks), Marty Balin (Jefferson Airplane), Mac Miller, Conway Savage (Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds), “Fast” Eddie Clarke (Motörhead), Dolores O’Riordan (The Cranberries), and Otis Rush. They will be sorely missed.

GearFest 2018

GearFest 2018 was — in a word — huge! It was the largest, best-attended GearFest yet. Over 15,000 guests descended on our campus to experience expert panels, incredible performances, informative clinics, and other amazing moments. We had over 430 manufacturers on hand, $70,000 worth of giveaways, and dozens of free workshops and performances by clinicians and celebrities such as Larry Carlton, DJ Reborn, Peter Erskine, and many others. The festivities culminated with a spellbinding performance by Yngwie Malmsteen in the Sweetwater Pavilion. But that’s just scratching the surface — here are more highlights from GearFest 2018.

One-of-a-kind Virtual Mic Shootout

Thanks to the magic of modern technology, you can inject digital magic into a solid-state mic and make it sound remarkably close to a vintage tube mic. But how close? That’s what we discovered by conducting the Sweetwater Virtual Mic Shootout. During this comprehensive comparison, we took three leading virtual mic systems and threw them up against $50,000 worth of vintage originals. We arranged the microphones carefully, calibrated them to ensure a fair comparison, then had vocalists Addison Agen and Mike Stanley perform in front of them. It was an ear-opening experience! As for the results, head over to this page and hear for yourself. Read more about how we conducted the shootout, and find out if you can hear the difference between a digital modeling mic and a vintage original.

2018 Year in Review