Austin Guitar House

Selling direct to customers was one of the best decisions we made in lining out what Zu would become. One of the prime reasons for that choice was being able to work directly with customers—one crazy music and tone freak to another. Everyday we get to learn, help and work with really interesting and passionate people all searching for their individual expression/reception of tone. And when I say tone we are talking about how Hermann von Helmholtz defined the word (klangtone) and how guitarists the world over use it to express difficult ideas on the qualities of a note and sound. One such customer is Oz Hofstatter, a tone-head guitar man making his living helping other tone-heads find theirs.

My name is Oz Hofstatter and I am the owner of Austin Guitar House, a boutique store located in Austin/TX, specialized in hi-end guitars, basses, amps and effects. The passion for music brought me to Zu Audio. I am a proud owner of the Druid VI. I really love them!!! They deliver a honest, balanced, without any frills, but with a lot of character tonal experience. Uber highly recommended!!!

Thanks Oz, we love knowing what we create is making a difference.

Oz has a great home, just check out these photos—beautiful, open, fun, but as with most spaces, it does come with some sound challenges. Oz was after an expressive yet tone dense sound, and a loudspeaker system that would give him that in his voluminous space even when playing at realistic sound levels, a playback system that was able to cut through the reverberatory clutter without sounding piercing.

Photo from the loft. It takes time to really dial in a room, or a new system; dialing in both at the same time is very much a two-body problem.

As happy as Oz is with his Druids we are working with him on getting even better and bigger tone within his home—getting all the gear playing well with each other, some judicious cable choices, and even modeling of a likely custom subwoofer to help round-down the bottom octave and bring to bay the inherent reverb.

As Oz gets his large playback space totally dialed we’ll give you an updated of what was done and why—the Oz in Austin case study. To be continued.