How We Do What We Do ...

Big E Technology Partners is a partnership between Big E Loudspeakers and established loudspeaker manufacturers in a Distributed Manufacturing model. Big E Loudspeakers holds the intellectual property and develops and licenses manufacturing to our manufacturing partners. Supplier/Purveyor partners provide specialty transducer solutions to further optimize the potential of the MVW technology. Big E Loudspeakers provides marketing and publicity support as well. This Distributed Manufacturing strategy provide for a very responsive and agile corporate structure with unified communications and branding while preserving each manufacturer's unique market space. This allows for a shorter design to market time frame and a more personalized buying experience for every client.

How This All Got Started ...

            Thomas Ewers and Stephen Regier had been collaborating on technology development long before Big E Loudspeakers was formed, and introduced the Manipulated Vortex Waveguide Loudspeaker Alignment. The pair's first major challenge came from a major international medical equipment manufacturer seeking assistance in development of a PC based life support system. If successful the platform would be adapted for use in dialysis machines, ventilators,  patient monitors, and anesthesia delivery for medically fragile patients. The team was successful after some big names in the industry failed. Today these machines are preserving and enhancing lives worldwide.

            Several years after the medical equipment project Tom and Steve were collaborating again, this time in the music industry. Steve began working with a local group of veteran musicians. Steve and Tom teamed up to record, produce, and publish music from local artists. As their artists started receiving attention it was time to go on tour. Budget was limited. Steve had been involved in sound engineering since the mid 1970's and Tom had demonstrated his uncanny ability for exhaustive research on any subject presented. The pair turned their abilities to the issue at hand: Touring on a budget. They landed in the DIY arena constructing an entire touring rig of folded horn loudspeakers in Steve's garage. As a reward to Tom they built a set of small line array loudspeakers for Tom's home theater. After listening to the small line array Steve, a.k.a. Dr. PsYchoBoom, remarked; “How do I get that sound in there?” motioning toward his newly created PA. At that point it was “game on” for the partners.

            The first product of the two men putting their extraordinary talents to work was a column line array loudspeaker named the 612. Testing of the 612 was quite successful and later the same year JBL released the CBT 70 series column line array loudspeaker. Larger column line arrays started to appear in the DIY market as well. The pair knew then that they were not only onto something, their ideas about what a PA could be were becoming more main-stream. Tom and Steve took their creations to a nationally recognized musician and concert producer, Chuck Gomez. Chuck was quite impressed and affirmed their direction of development; adding suggestions for making the products more commercially viable.

            Tom and Steve always welcomed any opportunity to demonstrate their creations. Over the course of the ensuing year of touring and demos, they met a Chicago DJ with a very specific request. He was seeking a series of sub-woofer scoops like the EV MTL series. In reality, the customer was seeking exact copies of the MTL1 using a specific B&C transducer. Neither Tom nor Steve wished to pilfer the EV design. Instead they  offered to develop a loudspeaker of equivalent or greater performance. The 218SLS cross-fired-in-a-scoop reflex sub-woofer was developed for this client, and installed in a popular Chicago Area night club. The club was popular but had a reputation of loud offensive sound. Not only did Tom and Steve install the new 218SLS units, they re-aligned and reprogrammed the entire loudspeaker and signal processing system. The  debut was to a packed house with a special guest touring DJ. The client was not sure if the new system was loud enough by his standards until he was shown the SPL level to be in the mid 120's db, behind the bar, 90 degrees off axis, at the far side of the club; a sizable increase from the original system. Steve relates that his personal favorite moment from that night happened while standing in the parking lot of the club. The music was still pounding outside and a patron emerged with a cell phone pressed to his ear. After several attempts at a conversation the patron yelled, “I am outside!” into the phone. The high bass Sound Pressure Level was confirmed when the chef had to convert to galley style cooking by securing all loose items to prevent the heavy bass from depositing his culinary masterpieces on the kitchen floor. The new PA was an instant success for the club, resulting in their online reviews becoming enthusiastically positive. Steve and Tom's theorems of loud but not harsh PA were beginning to prove themselves in the real world. It was at this time that the duo was introduced to concepts that led to development of MVW technology. Big E Loudspeakers was formed with its name derived from Tom's Naval moniker given to him by MM1(SW) Ranada while serving in 1AMR aboard USS Independence CV62 (Freedom's Flagship).  The story of Intimate Power derived from MVW technology continues to unfold. DIY plans for the 612 and 218SLS are available free at bigeloudspeakers.com

Meet the Inventors...

Thomas "Big E" Ewers

We will post Tom's bio ... soon ... maybe ...

We can say that the nickname Big E is a US Navy thing. He was given the moniker "Big E" by MM1(SW) Ranada because of the E in his last name as well as a reference to The Enterprise CVN-65 while serving aboard USS Independence CV-62. The logo was conceived by Tom while serving in Yokosuka Japan. It is comprised of the Kanji representing the word "big" with a capital letter E superimposed. Later the calligraphy for the Big E Loudspeakers^tm logo was drawn by Stephen Regier's mother, Lenora, who was born near Shanghai China.

Stephen "Dr. PsYchoBoom" Regier 

 Steve started his loudspeaker building career at the age of thirteen founding ICT Electronics. The proprietorship built and repaired custom loudspeaker cabinets and amplifiers. During his educational career Steve also became an On-Air personality and an FCC licensed engineer. Mr. Regier's resume also includes logging in Michigan, a restaurant turn-around-manager, an ASE certified undercar specialist, founding a logistics company and an IT consulting firm. Steve is also responsible for much of the "interesting" humor found at Big E.  As far as the "Dr Psycho Boom" thing goes; he would rather be called "BaronVonSteve", a long standing nickname, but here at Big E he is the in-house DJ and is always trying to make things go BOOM! so ...