How This All Started: Introductions

My name is Adam, and I make music equipment. I’ve been a player for over 20 years, and I’ve been building things for just as long. Maybe longer. From hacked-together stands to custom guitars, I’ve found a lot of solutions to the very specific problems of music making over the years, which is why I started this company: RXB. 

It brings together two of my most closely held passions, and gives me a chance to nurture them and share them with the world. Or at least, with whoever I can convince that I know what I’m doing. Right now, we almost exclusively sell amp stands. They look like this:


RXB Amp Stand

I have some new designs in the works, including a guitar & bass wall-hanger that actually looks good. But that’s not why I’m here today.

Truthfully, my current focus on production and marketing is absolutely destroying my inner joy and creative energy. 

Creating a new product, solving the problems that come up along the way, and making it the best it can be: that’s exhilarating. I love it. 

Figuring out how to make them by the hundreds, show the world what they are and why they’re awesome, and then get them into the hands of customers… less awesome. More like grueling. Fulfilling, in its own way, to see your work go out to musicians all over the country (and sometimes the world). But definitely exhausting. 

And that’s why I’m here. I need exciting projects to bring me back to myself, and help me remember the reasons I started this company in the first place. I love music. I love making stuff. It’s easy to forget those things when I start spending more and more time at my desk, but there’s nothing like a one-off project to remind me who I am. Or at least, who I think I want to be.

That’s what this series is about: passion projects, prototypes, and philosophy. Creative work to bring me back to myself and ---

But, if this whole thing is really about reinvigorating yourself and your creative drive, why document it like this? Wouldn’t it be just as fulfilling to simply do the work and enjoy the results

 

 

Maybe, but the documentation of the projects will hopefully help to keep me ---- 

 

Doesn’t that mean this is really a marketing ploy? Or an attempt to make the projects serve some kind of “business purpose?” Isn’t it really just a masturbatory exercise in narcissistic self-referentialism? 

 

 

I mean… Look, some of that stuff probably has a degree of truth to it, but a couple of things to note here: First, I’m doing most (if not all) of this work outside of my normal business hours. And Second, I have definitively proven to myself recently that I know absolutely nothing about marketing. As to the last point: unnecessarily hurtful, okay?

In all honesty, documenting the builds in this way just feels like the right thing to do. I’m trying to trust my gut here, and get more comfortable showing my work. I’ve spent far too much time overthinking things lately. (And always)

And so:

Here’s the Workshop Series. (Cue the fanfare)

 

 

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  • Adam B. Widmer

    Made these things, thought these thoughts, and had the audacity to express them.