Auditronics

Auditronics, Inc. of Memphis, Tennessee was founded by Welton Jetton — a WWII radar technician who had come to Memphis in 1953 as chief engineer of WDIA radio, then chief engineer at Pepper-Tanner. From a garage operation in the mid-1960s, Auditronics grew into one of the most respected Southern American console makers, with desks installed at Stax, Ardent, and broadcast facilities across the United States.

The earliest Auditronics consoles were built under license from Spectrasonics — assembled, tested, and commissioned in Memphis from Spectrasonics designs and components. The original "36 Grand" naming referenced the $36,000 base price of those Spectrasonics desks; when Welton began designing his own consoles independently in the 1970s, he kept the lineage in the name with "Son of 36 Grand" (formalized as the Model 501). Co-owned with Steve Sage, Auditronics shifted increasingly toward radio mixing consoles through the 1980s and 1990s while continuing to deliver recording desks to studios that wanted serious build quality without the British price tag.

Notable users included Stax Recording Studio (Memphis), Ardent Studios (Memphis), 20th Century Fox, ABC-TV, National Public Radio (Washington DC), Paramount, MGM, and Capitol Records. The Ardent Auditronics console was donated to the Stax Museum of American Soul Music in 2008 — a quiet acknowledgement that Welton's desks had become part of the Memphis recording story.