Equi=Tech CEO, Jan Glasband, at NAMM 2023 with Stevie Wonder
Martin Glasband, standing to the right of Stevie Wonder at NAMM 1995.
Martin with the late, great Ray Charles
Martin Glasband (March 17, 1950-November 17, 2017) was a master electrical engineer and industry visionary who didn’t just recognize a problem but developed a solution.
In 1988 Martin was approached by Rick Perrotta, (Royer Labs), to design an electrical system for his new studio complex in California. After exploring the traditional areas such as grounding and isolation transformers, Martin was challenged by an engineer concerning filter capacitors since they direct current onto the ground from the hot side of the AC mains. A pseudo-balanced system was developed and presented to the electrical inspector of Los Angeles who immediately rejected his design as being unstable and ungrounded. Back to the drawing board where a viable solution was ultimately achieved that satisfied both the noise issues for the studio and safety concerns for the city.
In 1992, while Equi=Tech was essentially an R&D start up, Martin and associates proposed amendments to the National Electric Code Board for the use of balanced power. The solution was elegantly simple and Equi=Tech’s subsequent products were initially marketed primarily to professional audio and video studios, but it proved to be only the beginning of a technology that changed the entire electrical industry.
Today our customer list is a high-tech “Who’s Who” spanning the top recording studios and artists, film and post-production facilities, military and research laboratories, and the most prestigious governmental agencies such as NASA, the Library of Congress, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Balanced power, in essence, improves the performance of any sensitive electronic equipment in any environment. We are the original pioneers of symmetrical power – often imitated, but never duplicated.