Hi Friends!
Acorn Amps was started in Gainesville, FL in 2007. The picture above shows my first space, a little metal shed that was located on the side of our house. I began doing repairs for my friends and that quickly grew. We frequently had touring bands knocking on our door at 1am in a panic because their equipment stopped working mid-tour. As word of mouth spread I added building custom amplifiers and effects pedals to Acorn's list of services. We rapidly outgrew that little metal shed and a mix of friends and regular customers offered their time to help raise a bigger workshop in our yard. I decided to enroll at the University of Florida to major in Engineering so I could better serve my customers. I graduated last December and immediately moved to Atlanta for my wife to attend grad school for nursing. I gave up my hope to continue Acorn and started looking for a "grown up job". Through word of mouth, once again, people in Atlanta found out that there was a new guy in town offering quality repair and builds. I am now at the point where it is no longer sustainable to continue operating out of our rental home and we need to look for a real storefront. This is where you come in, we need help getting started!
Coming up with a cost was rough. Starting a business is expensive but sometimes it can be difficult to feel comfortable falling back on your friends and community and asking them to catch you. We landed at a goal of $6,500. While we are still looking for a live/work space to meet our needs we feel that this will help us with the upfront cost of first month's rent and a deposit. This will also put a nice dent in the bigger start up cost of workbenches and additional stock needed.
Atlanta repair is pretty pricey, and we would like to keep equipment repair something that musicians can afford! We will be offering workshops on DIY repair so you do not always need to rely on someone else when your gear stops functioning. In addition, we recognize that so many of our friends and community members are amazing and talented people and that not everyone wants/has access to a storefront. It is important to us that part of our shop is dedicated to exhibiting/selling items for our friends, family, and community.
If you are unable to contribute financially then we ask that you please pass this link along to your friends, actually, please do this even if you DO contribute financially! When we find a location we will also be accepting help setting up!
Thank you for reading this and for passing the word along!
UPDATE!!!: We have been approved for a live/work location in East Decatur Station! Acorn will be moving on in (and up!) on September 1st! Just a few more months! (Don't worry, we will still be accepting repairs and custom requests until then!)
