A Tradition of Innovation
Steve W. Rabe made it his mission to create full-range, hi-fi bass amplifiers at a time when most were simply oversized guitar amps without reverb. In 1984, SWR was launched out of Steve's garage on the strength of a revolutionary "hybrid" bass amp design, which utilized a warm but highly accurate tube preamp working in cooperation with a stereo solid-state power amp and a low-noise tone section.
SWR was immediately adopted by professionals, who praised SWR for adding useful, high-quality features to their bass amps, including semi-parametric EQs, side-chain effects loops and the Aural Enhancer™ tone-shaping circuit. In addition to setting new industry standards in electronics, SWR created the first 4x10 full-range speaker enclosure with a horn tweeter - the Goliath™ - which remains one of the most copied bass cabinet designs in history.