Garland man uses retro technology to make music ring true
04:57 PM CST on Monday, January 19, 2004
By MICHAEL E. YOUNG / The Dallas Morning News
In the rarefied world of high-end audio, where the fanciest designs compete with Ferraris and Porsches in price, Gary Dodd's stuff comes much closer to the cars he favors – vintage Hondas.
From his modest home in Garland, Mr. Dodd creates musical devices built around the vacuum tube, the glowing glass bottles that were largely shoved from audio by transistors and silicon wafers and other designs. But to Mr. Dodd and a growing niche in this tiny world, nothing that has come after the vacuum tube sounds nearly as good.
"There's always a lot of new things out there, but they're just modern," says Mr. Dodd, who masks his passions with his easygoing ways but nonetheless tells you exactly what he thinks. "Nobody has come up with anything really magical that didn't come from the '30s or '40s. Nothing else sounds like tubes. They make music sound like music."
And though he wasn't born until the mid-'50s himself, he's always found his inspiration in early designs.
"We were never real well-to-do when I was a kid, so I'd just go to a junkyard and find some old radios, and I'd pull the parts out and make things," he says.
"I found it fascinating. I've always built my own stereo stuff."
Instead of using circuit boards, Mr. Dodd wires his amplifiers, which power the loudspeakers, and pre-amps – basically the control center of an audio system – by hand, wielding his soldering iron like a surgeon.
Given his early fascination with sound, and his 20-plus years in electronic engineering, designing audio equipment is almost intuitive now. And though he has no qualms about running his products through a thicket of test equipment, only one thing determines the designs he pursues – the way they sound making music.
"I have a buddy who was boasting once about his new $8,000 350-watt-per-channel digital amplifier, and he brought it over to show me. All I had in the house was one of my eight-watts-per-channel amps and it was running when he came in," Mr. Dodd says.
"He sat and listened for a few minutes and he said, 'My amp doesn't do that.' We plugged his in and after listening to it for 15 minutes, he said, 'Mine really does suck.' "
Mr. Dodd's gear wouldn't seem cheap to the average person. His least expensive offering is a $450 pre-amp, and his priciest offering so far – a pair of red-lacquer 120-watt amplifiers – wowed the crowd at the Vacuum State of the Art Conference in Washington a few months back. Price: $4,500.
But in an arena where CD players can cost $25,000, speakers $80,000 and more per pair, and even a turntable, another technological marvel that simply refuses to go away, $70,000, Mr. Dodd's pricing places him in the bargain basement. His no-frills manufacturing operation makes that possible.
"I build my stuff right here in my house, in the garage on a bench. The house is the warehouse," he says. "I really don't make any money out of it yet, but it's fun, a hobby that I've turned into a business."
And like his designs, his business continues to evolve. His first customers came to him by word of mouth. Danny Richie, who builds loudspeakers near Wichita Falls, first met Mr. Dodd when he drove up from Garland to listen to Mr. Richie's product line.
"He asked me what I was using for electronics and he brought up some of his stuff and it blew away what I was using," Mr. Richie says.
Mr. Richie bought a pair of amplifiers, Mr. Dodd a pair of speakers.
"The stuff he does is right up there with the best," Mr. Richie says. "He's the kind of guy that if it doesn't sound great, he isn't going to build it."
Friends since that first meeting, Mr. Richie and Mr. Dodd use each other as sounding boards for new designs. Occasionally they'll work together on the same project. "Danny does all the design work for people and he calls me when he gets swamped and I go up there for the weekend and put things together," Mr. Dodd says.
And for the past three years, Mr. Richie's GR Research has provided Dodd Audio its Internet presence, a situation that soon will change.
"I get tons of e-mail through the GR Research site, and a lot of people call me up and say, 'Danny said to call you for this.' Just about everything is through Danny," Mr. Dodd says. "People call him because they don't know how to get me.
"But now everyone says I need a Web site and my own Internet forum and that makes me a little nervous."
A good Web site will put his designs before many more potential buyers. But if it generates a lot of business, Mr. Dodd wonders how he'll keep up.
"I'm a little nervous about that part. I do this on basically a zero budget," he says.
"He needs a little more presence," Mr. Richie says, "and Gary isn't a marketer. But since we've been friends, I've tried to promote him, because he's a unique person in the market. I don't see his honesty a lot in this business."
That honesty – and his growing reputation – wins Mr. Dodd a loyal following, though.
An Asian audiophile who had heard about Mr. Dodd's designs asked whether he'd build a headphone amplifier for his very expensive headphones. No problem, Mr. Dodd replied. Send me the headphones and I'll build the amp.
"I sent the amp and the headphones back to him and he called me up a few days later and said, 'I'm mad at you.' I thought, 'Uh-oh.' And he said, 'These are so revealing that now I need a new CD player.' "
Another customer wanted Mr. Dodd to build an amplifier with huge tubes used only by the U.S. Navy between 1920 and 1930.
"It's a really pretty tube, but it's really hard to find," Mr. Dodd said. "We use one tube per channel and I'll be able to get 160 watts from each one."
Best of all to Mr. Dodd, the huge tubes provide much more power than other tube types, so they'll handle just about any loudspeakers.
"I have a couple of designs like that that are higher power," Mr. Dodd said, "but I can't offer them as a product you'd have in average folks' homes because the voltage could be lethal."
Most of his customers, though, are looking for less exotic designs, and products that will last.
Chris Seaman, formerly of Carrollton and now in St. Petersburg, Fla., was interested in Mr. Richie's speakers when he met Mr. Dodd.
"I'm the one who pestered him into building his basic pre-amp – I think I have the first one," Mr. Seaman says.
It might be Mr. Dodd's least expensive piece, but that doesn't lessen his commitment to it, Mr. Seaman says.
"The thing with Gary, his whole motivation is that he does this because he really likes it. It's a real passion and a commitment to craftsmanship," he says. "He wouldn't compromise on what he does to meet a price point or to mass-market something. That's such a rare quality."
Some in audio seek out those no-compromise designs and find the best of it in vintage gear, Mr. Seaman says. Mr. Dodd's amps and pre-amps are direct descendants.
"I can't think of any companies today that do what Gary does," Mr. Seaman says. "You look back at the Harmon-Kardon Citations and the Dynaco designs and they're still great. Gary's little eight-watt amp, that'll still be around in 30 years."
E-mail myoung@dallasnews.com
