Ashley Entertainment Corp. & Spectrum Musical Instruments

At the 2010 Winter NAMM show, Spectrum Musical Instruments released its brand new line of wireless guitars. To get some more info on the instruments and the company as a whole, MMR sat down with Richard Borden, president of Ashley Entertainment Corp.

“Spectrum Musical Instruments is a line of product distributed by Ashley Entertainment Corp. in the United States,” says Borden. “We’ve been in business since 2001 and are incorporated in the state of New Hampshire. We sell a complete line of musical instruments including acoustic and electric guitars, digital drums, different kinds of keyboards, and accessories.”

The group holds a number of patents on different products and they try to do things to set themselves apart from than some of their competitors. In an effort to give their customer a complete solution, Spectrum partners with other suppliers to enhance the product by providing additional content. Cakewalk and Music Sales Corp. are two such companies. Although based in the United States, Borden notes that Ashley “partners with a couple of companies in Asia where we have our quality control and engineering staff on board.”

The New Wireless Guitars

After positive feedback at both CES and NAMM, Richard is excited about Spectrum’s new product offerings. “We’ve developed a couple of different items,” he says. “We’re working with both analog and digital systems, and we’ve just filed patents and for FCC approval on a particular unit that’s built into the guitar.” What makes Borden’s unit unique is the fact that the wireless system is fully integrated into the instrument. “It’s not a fanny pack,” he explains. “It’s in the guitar. There’s no lag in the playtime and it’s got about a hundred-foot range with perfect clarity. It also has an audio input where you can plug in a headset microphone or some type of a mobile device,” says Borden. “You could actually go to our Web site – www.ashleyintl.com – and download backing tracks from our play along series, put it on a mobile device, and plug that device into your guitar. The backing tracks could then be heard through your amplifier while you play lead. It’s a one channel, two setting system.”

The two different settings allow two people to use two different wireless guitars at once: “If we were both on stage at the same time, there would be no interference between you and myself,” says Borden. “All around it’s just a very high quality, yet very affordable system.”

Price Points & Customer Service

“It’s going to be very affordable,” Richard says. “We can put this system into any guitar that we chose to and you can own it for the same price that you could go out and buy an existing wireless system without the guitar. Guys on stage that spend thousands of dollars — they have all this stuff. But, I don’t think they have it for a couple hundred bucks! I mean, a lot of other people have fanny packs and things like that so they can make their guitar or microphone wireless and I think that’s great. However, with our product, someone can buy the guitar with the wireless system already installed inside the instrument. And we’re talking about a retail of maybe $229. I don’t think you’re going to find this out there for less than double! It’s a priced right solution for a quality item. Aerosmith isn’t using it, but we’re not making this product for Aerosmith! It’s an affordable system. You can buy this guitar with the wireless built in for the same kind of money that you can buy a brand new wireless system, so it certainly has value, it works well, and the guitars are great. We try to be very consumer friendly. We try to not to make things difficult and our customer service is very good. If anyone has a problem, we take care of it, so in those respects we’ve had a very good response in what it is we’re doing.”

Looking Towards the Future

Although the current economic crisis has stunted growth for many companies, Borden is optimistic about Spectrum’s future. “Over the next two years I see double digit growth,” he says. “I don’t think business was good for anyone over the last two years and we probably did less business with a lot of our customers, but we increased our customer base by more than double, so our sales were up. We’ve positioned ourselves for substantial growth both this year and next just because we’ve increased our customer base. When things get back on track, sales should be much better. We are getting a great response from the people that we are selling our product to. They love the stuff that we’re doing and we’ve got a high quality product at an affordable price. Like I said, we try to be very innovative and very consumer friendly and I think in the long run, those two things will really pay off.”

Borden’s belief in innovation has certainly put Spectrum on the MI radar. “We might be doing some OEM stuff for a couple of other companies that I won’t name at this time,” says Borden. “Other than accepting an audio in, I’m sure that a lot of other companies have the capability of doing this, but we just happen to have it as an all in one unit, built right into the guitar.”