About Us

ART - Applied Research and Technology - was originally founded in Rochester, New York by a team of engineers who originally worked together at legendary pedal company MXR: Phil Betette, Tony Gambacurta, John Langlouise, Richard Neutrour, and Terry Sherwood.

We originally focused on the recording market, and the first ART products were digital reverbs. “We set out to produce good, solid, reliable products,” recalls Steve Hendee, Export Manager at Yorkville Sound and one of ART’s original employees. “No bells and whistles, just affordable, easy to use, and built to stand the test of time.”

The product range expanded to include mixers, amplifiers, mic preamps, power amps, compressors, multi-fx, guitar and bass processors, and more. Readers of mid-90s guitar magazines may remember the striking aesthetics of the SGX2000 and Nightbass from the notorious “pink years”. We offer a wide range of solutions for project and professional studios, performance and live sound, and installation audio.

In 1995, we released the product for which we may be best known, the Tube MP. At the time, tube mic preamps were mainly found in big-budget studios, and we wanted to make that sound accessible to any musician. The Tube MP was a huge success, and was nominated for a prestigious TEC Award in 1996 for “Outstanding Technical Achievement” in the Mic Preamplifier Technology category. It remains in production today, and has earned the title of the world’s most popular external microphone preamp.

Yorkville Sound was one of ART’s original distributors, and in 1999, ART officially joined the Yorkville family. Today, product development is headquartered at the Yorkville Sound campus outside of Toronto, Canada, in collaboration with a sales and service team that remains in upstate New York.

ART is celebrating some notable milestones between our 40th anniversary in 2024 and the 30th anniversary of the Tube MP in 2025. Four decades in, we’re still focused on making creative audio solutions that are affordable, solve problems, and sound great. Almost everybody involved with the ART brand is also a player, and the company culture is all about musicians helping musicians - just as it has been since 1984.