Five years ago, 64 Audio was in its first stages of development, still taking orders in paper form, and employing only a handful of people, mostly friends and relatives of the company’s founder Vitaliy Belonozhko. A lot has changed since then, and there has been a lot of innovation here. One of the things that has changed is the appearance of our products, notably the faceplate options that we have offered. We just recently introduced some brand new options – gold, rose gold, and glow in the dark.
What about one of the old classics, though? Here is the story of how one of our vintage faceplates (real wood) came to be offered on our earphones:
This idea first came from Roman Belonozhko, who was, at that time, the buffing technician and is now Director of Marketing. Roman’s love for vintage guitars and their classic aesthetics drove him to create a genuine wooden faceplate for his own personal set of in-ears.
The material for this first pair of faceplates was sourced from a local paint store – the noble product? Stir sticks. Each faceplate was cut from the stir sticks manually. They were individually shaped and sanded by hand, then finished for a classy, vintage look.
Shortly thereafter, the wooden faceplate was introduced as an option for customers to choose for their own custom in-ear monitors. Now, we offer six different wooden faceplates, including exotic varieties like koa and teak (don’t worry, the stir sticks have long been abandoned and upgraded). Rather than cut the faceplates by hand, we now shape each wooden faceplate with our state-of-the-art laser to ensure that it matches up seamlessly with the custom earphone shell.
This tale reflects the innovative spirit here at 64 Audio: Coming from humble beginnings, driven by need for something of a higher quality, and changing over time to take advantage of new technologies for the sake of quality and precision.
To see the results, visit our IEM designer and take a look at our six varieties of wooden faceplates as well as the myriad of other options we offer for our clients to customize their high-quality in-ear monitors.