The Amplifier Assembly Space here at DECWARE  

One of the unique things about Decware amplifiers is the simple fact that they are all hand made here at Decware by highly skilled and well paid artisans where the assembly space is as well engineered as the amplifiers themselves!  One day Mr. Deckert decided to look at the assembly space and benches as though they were one of his amplifiers and designed new ones using the exact same principles and processes.  Less than 6 month later, the "Machine" that built the machine was born to optimize every aspect of the build and the four magic men who build them.  Make no mistake about it, this is not a manufacturing plant, this is an art studio with very limited production.  It is very unlikely Mr. Deckert will ever grow Decware any larger than what can come out of this room, because as he says, there is a tipping point where art becomes product and passion becomes business and everything becomes all about money.  We're just not going to go there.  Nobody makes a better amplifier for the dollar than Decware and this is the reason why.

Like a good amplifier must be placed in a good room to sound good, so must a good room be provided to build a good amplifier.  The room and bench must be designed as though it were a singularity.  So in the Spring of 2011 concrete was poured and the work began.  An entire winter doing 3D CAD design on the computer for the actual bench design is what determined the shape and size of the room you see here.

After all, It's just like a giant amp chassis right?  And after 1780 pounds of extruded aluminum and steel were fashioned into the worlds slickest powder coated laboratory grade assembly bench we had no where to put the over 911 pieces so it was assembled here in the space and can never be removed due to it's size. You don't even want to ask how much this bench cost but as Steve said, it has to be trickier than the amps we make on it which is what forced it to be what you see here.

The ceiling was done in solid cedar to absorb solder smoke that the carbon filters don't pick up.  It also helps the room stay dry should the power go out and we loose the air conditioning in the summer time for a day.

The room has nowhere to set anything (like amps) so if they're not in the bench, they're in the rolling bin carts. This makes it impossible to mess up the room and if any of you are amplifier techs you will understand how difficult it is to keep an assembly space clean. Some carts are for finished amplifiers and some are for "parts pulled" amplifiers ready to be built.  Through the doorway is the quality control area and reference listening room where everything is tested and evaluated after it is made and listened to in here.

To keep a high level of karma various speakers are provided and a fire exit ensuring peace of mind.  These speakers are of course wired into the bench so that the amps under test can be used all throughout the day for music playback.

Here is a view of the completed bench during the testing phase.  Build samples of each amplifier will be stored on the far wall.  You can see three in this photo.  There are places for twenty.

The benches were designed with an adjustable rail system to hold the amp plates at the perfect angle and by the edges making it highly ergonomic to work on and nearly impossible to scratch.

This makes it possible to put a build sample of a given amp in the same rail where it can then be duplicated by hand.  Once the unit is built, it can then be tubed up and tested upside down without removing it from the rails.  This includes being able to listen to it as each bench has it's own set of stereo speakers designed specifically for the bench as well as source jacks.  All source jacks in the room have the same signal going to them so that if more than one amp gets tested at the same time it will be playing the same music.  This eliminates constantly moving the amps around during the initial testing phase. The end of the bench, shown below, is the second stage of testing where the amps are listened to and analyzed on the scope into 6 different dynamic and static loads.  The distortion, power output, balance, noise and tubes can be tested automatically as the amp plays both test tones and music.  See the rest of the pictures in this high resolution slide show - click here.