Original image from Amazona.de interview with Jack O’Donnell in 2018.
In the absence of a PR image, this was bound to happen. You know how I roll.
Stanton, like Vestax, is a name that brings the warm and fuzzies to a great many of us, especially those of advancing years and enduring memories of simpler times. But equally, it’s a name that conjures images of a company pushing more boundaries than most and delivering many firsts in this industry.
It’s also a name that means a great deal to inMusic owner Jack O’Donnell too. Back in 1992 when Jack was the Vice President of what was then Stanton Magnetics, he set off on the start of his own journey with the purchase of Numark. And after adding a significant number of brands to his collection, he formed inMusic as a place to keep them all together. And Jack has now snapped up the very company he left. Yes, people — Stanton is now part of the burgeoning inMusic music brand empire.
PR follows:
INMUSIC ADDS STANTON TO ITS FAMILY OF PREMIER MUSIC TECHNOLOGY, DJ AND AUDIO TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES
Legendary DJ equipment manufacturer Stanton leaves Gibson and joins inMusic’s roster of DJ Brands including Numark, RANE and Denon DJ
Fort Lauderdale, FL USA (May 21, 2020) inMusic, the global leader in music production hardware, software and consumer electronics, today announced the acquisition of Stanton from US-based music company, Gibson Brands, Inc.
With a legacy spanning over 70 years, Stanton is the perfect complement for inMusic’s family of DJ brands. From developing the replaceable stylus and sparking a consumer market for audio equipment, to becoming an industry leader in the design and manufacturing of professional audio products for club, mobile DJs and turntablists, it is only fitting that Stanton joins the home of DJ technology leader, inMusic. Stanton specialized in creating ground-breaking solutions for the DJ market including Final Scratch (the industry’s first DVS solution), stereo cartridges designed for the working and performance DJ, and one of the first innovative standalone smart controllers, all of which makes Stanton the perfect addition to the inMusic portfolio.
inMusic is the parent company for the world’s premier family of DJ brands, including Denon DJ, Numark and RANE. Alongside these pillars of the DJ industry sits world-renowned music technology, software and consumer electronic brands including AIR Music Technology, Akai Professional, ALTO Professional, Alesis, Denon Professional, HeadRush, ION Audio, M-Audio, Marantz Professional, MixMeister, Rane Commercial, SONiVOX and SoundSwitch. inMusic’s world-famous, state of the art research and development teams respond dynamically to its customers with advanced technology in both software ecosystems and hardware – the perfect environment to guarantee a prosperous and innovative future for Stanton.
“inMusic continually redefines the landscape for expressive DJ performance through unparalleled innovation and a dynamic response to the demands of its customers. With Stanton joining the home of the world’s premier music and audio technology brands, inMusic’s ground- breaking advancements in engineering, design and technology guarantees Stanton’s place at the forefront of this performance-driven industry, in the world’s true home of DJ.”
– Jack O’Donnell, CEO of inMusic
BUT WHY?
It’s no secret that Stanton is dead in the water. Gibson acquired the whole Stanton Group (Stanton DJ, KRK, and Cerwin Vega) in December 2011, and despite having products in the pipeline, Gibson struggled to do anything meaningful with the company, or frankly itself. Unusually, Stanton seemed to miss out on the Serato love too, which might explain why it has never prospered.
And even when faced with the ideal opportunity to capitalise on the demise of Technics, the heir apparent — the ST/STR8-150s — remained unpromoted. And when they relaunched the turntables a few years ago, there wasn’t a single piece of PR available. The tonearm patent that bears the name of our own Drew Bach was never put into production either. It felt like Gibson almost immediately gave up on Stanton because they got the others in the deal.
So Stanton has merely existed, more or less on life support for a number of years. But now it’s in the hands of inMusic. The question is why?
SOME THEORIES
When this news landed, I pondered possible reasons to snap up what is effectively a dead company:
- Perhaps Jack is a sentimental softie who cannot bear to see his former employers disappear into oblivion.
- It’s costing relative pennies to buy up the company he left. Perhaps they said he’d never amount to anything, and this is his way to clearly prove them wrong.
- Stanton is a much-loved brand. Owning it is a good look for the group and expands the portfolio nicely.
- If handled well rather than being a vanity purchase, Stanton can be an asset that adds value, something that Jack will be mindful of as inMusic looks to the future.
- When you dig into it, Stanton Magnetics has some cracking IP. That’s often a profitable axe to swing.
UPDATE: I’m told that most is this is expired. The good stuff remains under the Gibson name. - Turntables are still a thing, and Stanton was good at making them, and carts too.
My money is on a little bit of all of the above, which would make perfect business sense, as well as satiating human needs too. Stanton could easily be focussed on being a turntable/cart only brand (interestingly the only page missing on the Stanton site), but they also had success with headphones in the past too, which is another area lacking in inMusic’s offering.
As the brand stands, I can’t see how Stanton can fit alongside Numark, Rane, and Denon DJ. Painting broad strokes, you’ve got entry-level, turntablist, and club brands. After a period of inactivity, Numark is pushing out the affordable large volume units that keep the lights on, Rane keeps beavering away with Serato based scratch mixers, and Denon DJ is pushing out truly groundbreaking units while trying to chip away at Pioneer DJ’s booth dominance.
Do you see a place for Stanton? Why would you buy a Stanton controller or mixer? How would it be differentiated from the rest of the DJ brands? Maybe given Stanton’s pivotal role in DVS, Stanton could be the software brand that drives the group’s hardware.
On a related note, it occurs to me that inMusic now has Torq and Deckadance in their software offerings. But I hold out zero hope of them ever being developed further, but perhaps dipped into for inspiration. I’d still put money on Engine becoming a full package before too long anyway.
I fired my thoughts back at inMusic and got the expected “wait and see” response.
SUMMING UP
I expect there will be a modicum of inMusic hate, just like when they bought Rane and Denon DJ, all of which has for me been proved quite wrong. They have a habit of jumping to early with announcements, but when things arrive they’re on the money. And it’s hard to screw up Stanton, if only because there’s so little left to actually screw up. It’s a win-win for inMusic really.
I am however happy that Stanton is still a thing. If he doesn’t build it into a valuable part of inMusic, perhaps Jack will give it a graceful retirement instead. God know it’s played an important role in modern DJing.
Maybe, just maybe it will continue to have a role too.
I had the ST150 MKII for about a month, they were garbage. I much prefer the MKI ST150’s. But honestly, I wish I could still get a pair of Numark TTX!
I still have two TTX1’s, motor in one stopped working at some point, I soldered new motor controller chip for about £7 and added bigger heat sink, it is working like new. Greta turntables and you can set pitchfader vertical in battle mode.
Honestly, as flawed a unit as it was in practice, I would absolutely love to see what Stanton could do with the same innovative approach that brought the SCS.3 touchpad modular controller thing. I owned it twice; it was cool, but the weird Bome’s middleman software always gave me a ton of trouble. But maybe they can carve out a niche with modular controllers to fill the void of NI’s X/Z/F1 form factor? Fuck I’d love that.
The 3d is the best midi controller ever made, respect due to Jim.
“Stantouch” has tremendous potential and value, and darouter is already in a fw version.
“I am however happy that Stanton is still a thing.” I am as well. I love my ST-150 turntable and really hope they do something meaningful with the brand. It has had its share of innovations decades ago that helped progress the DJ equipment realm to where it is today. InMusic is the right company to have them.
Here’s hundred bucks, give me stanton :)
Seriuosly, i really don’t think Stanton has anything related to the dj world today.
That would be more entry-mid level gear Numark style with Stanton logo.
ProbBly the most rodiculos business act of the decade.
Well it’s now Pioneer vs InMusic vs Native Instruments. If InMusic goes under, then there goes the DJ industry.
InMusic crashes everything it touches. Are you listening InMusic ?? DEAL WITH YOUR MIXMEISTER MESS or you just don’t give a F and are only concerned about the money?
20…11 called, they’re wondering how you remember that MixMeister was ever seriously part of the DJ industry.
There a lot of DJ’s who use the software for radio mix shows and aerobics mixes. When InMusic bought it it went in the tank just like all their other acquisitions. Go look at their message support forums, people are begging for help and they don’t even respond. Yet they keep selling snd putting it on sale for people to buy, so give us your money, but we aren’t updating the product. If this is how they do business, then I really hope they fail. Whoever the president is now needs to get his ship in order.
InMusic is about the only exciting show in town right now.
I guess you need to to learn how to mix your own tracks eh.
Perhaps they’ll bring back the SCS.1D but with USB rather than FireWire…
What about something more portable?
Oh yeah :)
They now have the IP for DVS on Prime Engine :)
Nope. FS patent is almost expired. They also had a better engine with Torq.
Stanton had some very innovative ideas 10-inch mixers when they were working with DJ Focus and DJ Craze, etc. I don’t remember many of those ideas taking off, but the innovation was there.
I can very much see this being InMusic’s answer to Reloop.
It will be interesting to see what happens to turntables, because there are Denon, Numark and Stanton turntables with very different styles and target markets.
The Denons are discontinued.
Reloop? I didn’t think of that. Great observation. I am curious if that is where they’ll focus Stanton to compete against.
I heard DJ Focus was a real electrical engineer.
Focus is active on a few groups on FB, portabilists, scratch mods, etc.
Yeah I shared a similar thought that Reloop would prob be the most likely brand ID comparison, I certainly hope so anyway. I do admire Reloop, keen to take the odd risk vs playing it safe and there pricing is pretty reasonable…. having another brand occupying a similar ethos should hopefully give us users some interesting new options.
As a more nerdy leaning tablist I’d like to see this new Stanton fill the grey area between what Rane and Denon are doing scratch dj related wise =
“Flexible” tech thats not jus balls out next level and the return of feature sets which made the early 2000’s the most interesting time to buy a scratch mixer…. vs the modern era where all we’ve had since 2015ish is 2k dollar software dongles which are mostly multi format approach units pretending to be battle mixers.
I’m with you on this, even though I have the 2k to drop on a battle mixer right now, there isn’t a single unit out the to cover all creative bases. We have only a couple of brands out there, and neither of them have a unit with an FX loop. I’m still stuck on a Z2 and Vestax08…
A sad state of affairs indeed.
I’d like inMusic to get Vestax onboard, and for that to become the experimental brand it was known to be. Float a few ideas as loss leaders so that they get a clear picture of what to make in the future. But at the same time, if it’s not in Japan, is it really Vestax?
Wouldn’t that be a beautiful thang! (but yeah, take the Japanese-ness out of Vestax and you’d prob loose that bold but bonkers approach.
True, but if it’s dead for years to come, no point. (Taken from the point of view of a VCI-400 owner that still works with Serato DJ Pro, but thinking of going top Roland DJ-7070m…)
Interesting stuff. Looking forward to the “seeing”, not so much the “waiting”
That depends on where Stanton is with products. If as we suspect they’ll focus on turntables and carts, a spit and polish of the brand would soon yield dividends.
InMusic’s attempt with their own turntable design wasn’t too successful (at least with the now discontinued VL12).
Maybe buying Stanton and selling Hanpin turntables under that brand is a way to keep face for them.
Re your comment about Torq & Deckadance. ….I can see see plenty of torq’s DNA in engine prime. There’s even a couple of moderators on their forum that I recognise the names of from the M-Audio days.
Plus the original Stanton final scratch maybe they can combine all these and come out with something that will beat the pants off the competition like prime series is doing now
You have to remember that Final Scratch was Traktor 1. Torq & Deckadance are like 5 years old. It would probably be more trouble to rewrite all of that software than to just start fresh with a new platform that incorporates any of those ideas. That being said, is there any space in the market for another software platform? Serato, Traktor, Rekordbox, VDJ, PCDJ is still a thing, and if they make Engine a thing…
The str8-100 is a great turntable, and my favorite of all time.
The 150s… Ehh, not so much
Larger 3d, with my design changes, and Stanton is back.
Mark Settle are there details about the history that Jack O’Donnell asked you to leave out? Jack O’Donnell has far more than a “sentimental” connection with Stanton.
Unfortunately the realities of this industry are either merge or do unique niche stuff. Back in the day small to medium resellers could go to Japan, Taiwan, or China and ask a major manufacturer to make something and put their name on it.
I have good memories of learning how to DJ with Stanton TT’s. I look forward to seeing what they’ll release next.
Inb4 Denond S500 Craze Edition. :-p
Here’s hoping they bring back the HP 680 series of cartridges. I loved those. Still love my mk1 STR8-150’s too, even if they don’t see anywhere near the use they used to.
this guy is not passion driven – he is money driven
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdMRxUC77RQ