Audio Crafters Guild Vision Statement

Given access to the necessary parts and excellent circuit designs home crafts persons can build audio equipment fully the equal of any commercially produced component. Audio Crafters Guild exists to supply these parts and circuit designs.

A vision this ambitious (in some quarters even heretical) can only be brought to reality by focusing our energies, sticking to a mature world view, and observing certain boundary conditions.

• Trusting our own ears. Recognize there is life beyond the "Recommended Components" listings. Your custom design will likely never be reviewed and it could be a long time, if ever, before any Audio Crafters Guild kit is reviewed. Many audiophiles are doomed to audio purgatory forever chasing that always moving target of the latest reviewer certified High End establishment components. Others of us have direct personal experience with both the reviewer certified super component being found wanting and with craftsman built or regional products possessing unheralded world class performance.
• Work with a craftsman's attitude. The final quality of a piece is the sum of its parts and builder's care. Trust your personal skills, abilities, and capacity for growth. Whether you are taking that first tentative step of opening up a mid-fi CD player considering mods to unlock its potential for excellence or considering yet another scratch design know the human potential is unlimited and you can do it. Yes there are risks, some things will have to be redone in the pursuit of excellence or broken then fixed on the way to improvement. Keep in mind the tremendous rewards: knowledge gained, personal satisfaction, and closer contact with your music.
• Share and share alike. This enterprise resulted from our experiences sharing designs and ideas with others and their sharing with us. We know there are not enough hours in the day to build all the projects or implement all the refinements that can be dreamed up. Thus it has been with great joy we have witnessed people Norman helped get started take a circuit and refine it to extreme lengths while he moved on to the latest interesting new chip set. We really look forward to hearing the details of your project, if you wish to share them. This is why the term Guild is in our name, dreaming of an exchange of ideas, tools, and techniques among a select few craftspersons in the tradition of a middle ages crafts guild.

welcome to the guild

Norman & Marian Tracy