Twisted Pear Audio is a collaborative effort between Brian Donegan and Russ White to provide superior quality, but low cost, high-fidelity electronic kits to the Do It Yourself (DIY) market.

Where are we, and where to we ship? We ship anywhere USPS ships, which is just about everywhere. Here is a map of some of the places we have shipped to so far: See the map!

Who are we? To be honest, I can't remember exactly how we started talking, but we met on DIYAudio.com, and first worked together on a group buy for Mauro Penasa's 3886 My_Ref (RevA) board and kits. It was a good experience, but we found the whole group buy process to be disorganized and hard to manage.

Because we are both software guys, we thought, "Hmm, a simple web site would make this whole thing easier to deal with." It took a while to think of a name. Eventually we came up with Twisted Pair Audio. Next was a logo. I asked my wife what she thought of when she heard "twisted pair," to which she replied that it made her think of the fruit. She drew a little logo and Twisted Pear Audio was born.

How does it work? Well, either we see a design that we want to work on, or we think of a design that we want to see made. Russ designs the boards and has them made, Brian buys all the parts and makes the kits. We sell both bare boards and complete part kits.

We tried at first to have funky colored boards, but settled on plain old green, and put the extra cost toward better quality. Our parts kits are made up of solid, name brand parts, nothing really fancy. Quality where it counts. Exotic upgrades are up to the buyer. We also provide PCB layouts and schematics for our products for those who wish to etch/wire their own boards. (We do not usually distribute our design source files.)

Our theory is, expert builders will likely buy their own parts anyway, and maybe just buy boards. Beginners (or busy experts) will find value in the kits. If you use all kit parts, you will end up with a quality piece of audio equiptment. Even if you want to try some exotic parts, the kit is a solid starting point.

How much profit do we make? A little, but we are not in it for the money. We try to keep the cost of the boards and kits as low as we possible can while remaining in operation. Most profit is quickly consumed by labeling, packing, shipping materials, credit card charges (this stuff costs a lot up front), and the cost to run the web site. Whatever is left over is generally spent on beer.

So, why is this better than a group buy? Well, it's easier for us to manage it. Plus, we aren't taking money before we have the whole deal worked out. We do sometimes accept pre-orders, but this is only after we do a small run beta test of the boards and kits to be sure they will work, and everything is ordered and we know the final costs. The other advantage is that we usually buy larger lots of parts and boards, counting on them selling over time, so we can get them a little cheaper.

So, if you aren't making money, why are you doing this? Easy, it's fun. Why are you reading this page? Check out the stuff! ;)