The Manley Labs factory tour..........

We own this 11,000 sq. ft. building and the twin building next door so we're not going anywhere anytime soon.
Read about it: Manley Poised for Expansion 1/2001 in Pro Sound News

First to get into the lobby, you have to be approved by Max. Max assures the premises is secure.

 

Max is assisted by the dummy in the front office who models our SWAG.  He just stands there all day, looking cool.

Here's EveAnna's crazy red office. You can read more about her on her bio page.

Hutch, Mitch Margolis, Baltazar, Michael Hunter and EveAnna work together to develop new products.   Here is Hutch and his test bench October 1999. He still looks the same. Hutch is timeless.

Mitch inspecting a transformer for the Steelhead in 2000. Mitch mostly works over at Groove Tubes these days, but we still call upon him for emergencies.

This is Baltazar Hernandez, Manley's chief draftsman, working on the first prototype of The WAVE in 1998.

Baltazar also directly coordinates with our metalworkers so that the prototypes are made right.

Sometimes hands-on or rather "foots-on" testing is required to assure mechanical fitness. Here esteemed mechanical engineers Jesus and Balta apply well over 500 pounds of force to the upper deck of the Neo-Classic SEPP 300B amplifier. And when they jump on it, let's see... f=ma sooooooooooooo.....         August 2007

Elias Guzman manages our printed circuit board, silk-screening and engraving departments. Having this facility in-house sure makes prototyping fast! From a PCB layout film, we can have a proto "copper" in just a few hours.   Here he is shown touching up the film artwork on his light table.

From the artwork, Elias makes a silk screen that he will use to screen the circuit onto the PCB. Just like making tshirts.           Photo ca. 1996

Then the boards are put in the oven to cure the epoxy screen mask. Just like baking cookies.

Once the board panels are complete, they are passed along to be cut to size and routed before heading upstairs to be stuffed by the PCB Girlz...

Maggie and her girlz 2000.

Navorra stuffing some Langevin DVC boards 2001. The girls hand-load and hand-solder the components onto the printed circuit boards. We also have a wave solder machine that they fire up every two weeks or so to run certain boards through that.

Here's Caro in 1999 soldering up some Variable Mu boards. These days she works with Manny Sanchez and loads all the GML PCBs.

Meanwhile down in our machine shop,  the boyz get all the metalwork fabricated.     This photo was taken in 1997. That guy no longer works here, but it is still a cool photo that EveAnna took, developed, printed and all that when she was taking photography classes.

The guys on the Bridgeport mills 1999.

The guys on the Bridgeport mills 2000. The green line graining machine can be seen in the background. We do all the finishing here at Manley Labs before the aluminum parts go off for anodise.    Because we know how picky our customers are.

EveAnna writes all of the code for our computer-driven engraving machine. The computer is an Apple II. No hard drive! 5 1/2" floppies! It doesn't even know what day it is. No Y2K problem!  Engraving lasts a lifetime. Maybe even longer than Apple II computers. But we do not know that yet.

Upstairs, Joe Rodriguez heads up the Manley Magnetics department. We design and wind all of our audio transformers and chokes here at Manley Labs.

1997 Stingray output transformers

We have a big swiss-made Meteor winding machine for the big amplifier output transformers and a couple of smaller Adams-Maxwell machines made in Inglewood, CA for winding the little audio iron.

Here's Little Tony with one of the Adams-Maxwell machines. 2006

There are always plenty of parts to keep track of! Lovely Rita gets to purchase all the parts.  Spend all our money.

And all those GML parts too.  Manny Sanchez keeps an eye on those.

Everything comes together on the production floor where the gear is assembled and wired up by hand.

Another view of the main assembly floor, sometime in 2001.

The guys gotta take a break for lunch...

...or go outside to have a smoke.

Although Ramy doesn't take too many breaks. He works hard building all those mixers.

1999 overhead shot of the production floor.

2001 brought GML products into the assembly line at Manley Labs.  Here is GML production manager Manny Sanchez going over an 8200 EQ.

Finished products await their day in the QC room...

But you want to be careful getting into the QC Room.         2005 QC Room door.

...where Humberto leads the Quality Control department through multitudes of specialized tests and calibration procedures to assure every Manley product operates in peak condition.

Here's a 2001 shot of the tech guys.

Sometimes there are gobs of amplifiers burning in for days or even weeks. They keep the place warm.

Attention to detail...

After passing through QC, Manny Q packs up each unit. Sometimes we actually have stock on the shelves but mostly we are usually behind and need to get these pieces out right away against dealers' orders.

Cindi cuts the invoices and keeps all the books straight.

And if we screwed something up in all this, Paul Fargo heads our service department and keeps everyone happy.

Watch Tim's Manley Factory Tour Movie!

Hi Speed Internet Connection 256K Quicktime

Lo Speed Internet Connection 56K Dial Up Quicktime

A Sunny Future for Manley Labs: In late 2005 I re-roofed my two commercial buildings here in Chino with highly reflective insulating foam roofing and installed a 30KW Solar Power system on the Manley Labs' building which will provide 1/3 to 1/2 of our energy needs here at the factory. Additionally I installed a 6KW solar system at my house on the back of the studio. The initial investment for this is large, however more than half of it comes back quickly through tax incentives and rebates. The whole system will pay for itself in 5-6 years, and after that, one thing I know for sure is the cost of purchasing energy will not be going down, especially in California, so we will enjoy cheap and environmentally friendly energy for years to come because of this investment now towards our future. I hope you think that's pretty cool. I do! --Vanimal

Installation performed by  Solar Electrical Systems of Southern California.

View from the Manley Labs factory roof of the angry smoke coming from an industrial fire down the street on 9/10/2002.