Me: "Where do you manufacture your gear, and how do you decide what is manufactured stateside versus overseas?"

Ty: "All of our 'pro' gear is assembled and largely manufactured in the US. Pro gear includes: Bluebird, Baby Bottle, Dragonfly, Woodpecker, Bottle Rocket Stage 1 & 2, Blueberry, Robbie, Mouse & Omni-Mouse, Kiwi, Cactus, Bottle, plus all of our Bottle Cap capsules. All of our mics use our own proprietary capsule designs which are designed and largely built in Latvia or the US. The housings and preliminary assembly for Bluebird, Baby Bottle and Woodpecker are completed in China while final assembly, testing and packaging are done in the US. For all other pro products the capsules are completed and tuned in the US and Latvia while all other parts are globally sourced (90% from the US due to small runs of very high quality standard parts), 100% assembled, tested and packaged in the US."

"For Blue Microphones and I think in general, for smaller runs of highly technical, high quality expectation parts, it just works better to do this in the US. The US Team here in Southern California just has better understanding of the technology so we have more control over the final product. However, we do receive excellent quality from our global supply base, but this is concentrated on longer run, less technical parts."

Me: "How are you competing against microphone companies who only use the cheaper overseas manufacturing?"

Ty: "At Blue we compete on sound quality and design and take pride in being recognized as the best in the world when it comes to the microphone business. With our large number of unique models, many of which are made in the US, we--by definition--have a higher cost basis in each mic. That said, we don’t think anything replaces the feeling or performance of owning a timeless handcrafted microphone, with a unique hand-tuned capsule. Luckily, our customers agree."

Me: "That's great. Thanks for talking with me."

Music Gear Made in America!