Earth Sound Research

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Earth Sound Research was a musical amplification firm based in Farmingdale, New York that made bass and guitar amplifiers in the 1970s^[1] . They also made PA mixers/power amps, and stand alone reverb units (solidstate). In addition they manufactured ESR Distortion Pedals, and Volume Pedals. The two owners were Marc Neumann and Dave Garrett. They were an interesting company. There's a website at www.plush-amps.com, which covers their sister company. Plush became Earth after they moved to California and Earth bought the remains of what was left in the NYC factories. They never actually had their own factory, but rather used various subcontractors around the NY/Long Island area. Mostly copied were Fenders (for the Plush lines), or Peaveys (that most Earth tolex amps resembled). They actually used Peavey schematics in the shop for service ! The biggest problem was, they copied Peavey, but used inferior output transistors. Sad part was, that everything else was equal (or in some cases better) than the Peavey counterparts, but the outputs failing hurt them as many amps came back for service or repairs. They used a high-grade military subcontractor (Qualtrol Electronics in Deer Park), who built vending machines, and military aircraft electronics for the metalwork and circuit boards that were copied from Peavey, and duplicated very accurately. Peavey was planning to sue them. Peavy flew one of Earth's technicians to Mississippi to interview him about the whole process, but the end result was to change the models to new designs (Peavey's attorneys advised), as it would be cheaper than suing Earth.

They changed the name and did business under ISC Audio of Huntington, NY. They soon went under, and eventually Marc started importing under the "Tour" brand name, which were foreign made (Japanese?) solid state amps, that blew up and caught fire, and he went out of business pretty quickly." ^[2]