About Rigz Audio

Rigz Audio is the brain child of James Gregson. It is an informational blog and website where he shares information, resources, knowledge and experience in the worlds and industry of professional audio.

These days I work in the television and film industry but I am not afraid to get my hands dirty. It is just who I am and I will always be designing, testing, inventing and building things.

Years ago it was all about building big boxes, cool industrial cases, coming up with innovative speaker cabinet ideas and creating beautiful cabinets. Since then my talents have expanded into the world of TV/Film production, set building, props, studio layout and construction, sound stages, mobile facilities and visual effects. It’s great because my audio knowledge and experience growing up in a shop environment has been extremely valuable.

One of my main goals is to carry on the family heritage of audio, speaker building and fine cabinetry. We’ve setup shop here in Denver and have a secret tucked away location that is dedicated to engineering, prototyping and building equipment for our production studios… and my home theater, vehicles, guitar rigs etc.

Rigz audio is a platform where I can share the things I know, my experience and resources as well as the fun stuff that is about to be discovered. I am still building pro gear, guitar rigs, DJ systems, studio monitors, sub woofers and home theater setups. Now with our new ventures we will be building equipment for our mobile studios, live event rigs, sound stages and more.

It’s Just A Family Tradition

A shot from my nice collection of a few of my speakers and prototypes. Some of these date back to 1979.

Buddy James Gregson – An Audio Background

Growing up in a family-owned audio design and manufacturing company has made sound quality a priority in my life. As a kid, I thought it was normal to hang around musicians, audio engineers, advanced electronics, and studio recording equipment speaker parts. Most of my family was heavily rooted in the electronics industry and had a hand in the development of Allied Radio, Tandy, and Radio Shack. In fact, my father was very close friends with Charles Tandy, so much so, that I was told that Mr. Tandy never truly accepted my father’s resignation when he went on his own.

Day 1 of moving the family speaker business into our first industrial location. It seemed so big at the time, then we outgrew it fast.

In the far back corner of this shot there is a black cabinet. It was the first guitar cabinet I ever built and instead of using just 12″ I used 2-10″ in the top and 2-12″ in the lower section, they were seperate and had their own chambers. I really wish we had taken more photos, but back then we were just focused on designing, building and making money… Well everyone else was. I was focused on guitars, Rock-n-Roll, cars and girls.

After school working with dad as the crew starts to setup shop. My younger brother in the background. Dad is the one working, not sure who this other person was, he apparently couldn’t hang. The crew and team that grew around this little shop was amazing.

After school and during the summers, I spent a lot of time hanging out at the family shop. At the age of 14, with the help of my father, I built my first guitar headphone pre-amp. At the age of 17 with the help of Bob Ludwig, the company audio engineer, I built my first MOSFET power amplifier. I was also very much into music. Working around so many professional musicians, I quickly picked-up guitar skills. I now play professionally and for fun, as well as to keep myself sane when I need to escape.

Our company also designed and built speakers for other brands who put their label on our systems – OEM

I’ve developed critical listening skills at a young age and many of the standards we maintained are used in studio monitors and high-end systems today: We were designing and building home theater type systems before home theater even existed. Little did I know how important this experience would play in future production quality when I later decided to venture into video and film production.

I am very audio-sensitive and am attracted to all things auditory. My passion and experience in this field have given me the opportunity to work with many recording artists and studio engineers throughout my life.

While the family business focused on home audio, I was designing & building pro sound equipment before I could drive.

“I grew up with the family audio manufacturing business. I’ve been working with professional musicians and audio engineers for as long as I can remember.”

Audio Engineering Today

Recently I started looking at amp heads and decided to just build my own 4-12″ stacks… my way.

My personal and private shop as started growing again and will be equipped with some neat new tools.

Most of the engineering that I practice nowadays is done for personal reasons. I still play guitar and bass and have even started building guitars again. I love sound, music, electronics, and speakers gear and everything about them is like second nature to me.

I’ve been managing the audio side of my business under the name “Rigz Audio.” If you live in Las Vegas you can plan on seeing my stuff on stage in 2015. If you are a professional musician or sound man, I am looking for people to test equipment and give me some feedback.

I also recently learned that some of the speakers and subsystems I built years ago are still in use today.

I still work with live entertainment and these days I do it because I enjoy it again. I had a blast working with my friends back in St. Louis, who can resist 1980’s pop metal. Here we did a multi-camera shoot at one of the casinos and pumped the footage out through the whole facility live… just with a 1980’s MTV style video mix.

Recently at NAB 2016 in Las Vegas I ran into one of my heros Bob Heil. I worked with a friend in St. Louis for a brief period and never realized that Bob’s place was literally across the street. He also worked closely with another dear friend, Kevin McCarthy (Uncle Kev / Kmac) and it wasn’t until I moved to Las Vegas that I got to meet Bob and hang out for a bit to talk shop. As a kid I wanted one of his big white fiberglass concert systems.

My future shop will be used to design and build equipment for production vehicles in my personal studio. I have also ventured into making cases again as well as portable rack systems. This will all help out as I design and build my portable production machine. It will include video, computer rock stations, and work stations. I recently finished a few custom installations and have even exported some systems overseas.

Working on a mobile streaming workstation for a chapel located in Arizona.

Behind the scenes shot of some filming and speaker testing. Rigz TV coming soon to YouTube!

I sometimes build and do side projects when I am in the mood. We shipped a ton of cool little cabinets to a nightclub on the border of Texas and Mexico. They loved the systems and invited us out for a visit to check out the 16 speakers (+2 Subs) that are “rocking the joint.”