Jerry Harvey — the “JH” of JH Audio — is in the head of Aerosmith, Guns N’ Roses, Lady Gaga, Foreigner, Linkin Park, Alicia Keys, Bon Jovi and many others, including Van Halen, where it all began for him. His desire to achieve “audio awesomeness” in a tiny monitor that fits in the ear led to two companies and multiple products, including a number of technological breakthroughs. The net result for JH Audio: In just four years, president and CEO Brittany Harvey says they’ve sold nearly 12,000 sets of custom IEM and related products.
Learning on the Road
Harvey grew up in St. Louis, MO, and started mixing bands when he was 16. He headed West to Los Angeles and started working with drummer Carmine Appice for a short period before he got a chance to work for David Lee Roth’s band. “Patrick Whitley asked me if I could tune a bass and I said, ‘I think I can,’” Harvey says, of an encounter with Roth’s tour manager at the time. “He said, ‘Good! You’re the bass tech now!’” Out on the road, the sound guys took a shine to him, and soon he was at the bottom of that food chain — running cables, etc. — and happy to be there.
“What’s really funny is that, around 1989, Marty Hom [tour manager for The Cult] and us watched five monitor guys get fired in the first leg of that tour,” he laughs. “Then Marty approached me for the job, and I said I didn’t want to be fired! He said if it happened I could have my old job back.” He took it, and not only did he not get fired, he got asked back.
Harvey then worked for A-1 Audio and, with them, became Van Halen’s monitor engineer in 1995. Back then, crude in-ear monitor technology was starting to surface. Drummer Alex Van Halen was considering it and had Harvey look into it. Harvey quickly burned through what was available at the time. Deeming it inadequate, he ended up developing his own.
“I wanted to have a two-way earpiece that could handle treble and bass, and thus a wider frequency response,” he explains. “I did research, went to hearing aid manufacturers, and worked with Rick Zanardo with Knowles Electronics, and he sent me something that turned out to have a nice high-end driver.”
The whole band quickly adopted them. Soon the word got out, and Harvey realized he was on to something. He formed Ultimate Ears in 1995 in Las Vegas. The company was strong and grew, and he continued developing products. In 2005, the company took on venture capitalists, relocated to California, and then [cue dramatic music] “by 2006, I got pushed out the company.” The last custom model he made at his first company, the UE-11, was a three-way four-driver ear piece.
A New Beginning
Harvey took a little break from this business and developed communication products for pilots. Then, in 2009, he and Brittany founded JH Audio. He says that they’ve pulled in a fair chunk of the touring market already. While the last product he delivered at his first company had the “11” number, he decided to skip “12” and go straight to “lucky 13.” Team Harvey launched the JH13, the world’s first six-driver earpiece.
More recently, there’s the JH16, the world’s first custom in-ear monitor with eight drivers per ear. “Double dual low-frequencies drivers offer even lower distortion, and more importantly, increased headroom and accuracy. It’s become the new touring standard.”
In discussing his R&D process, Harvey says he first does a survey of components available, and whatever he settles on, he immediately tweaks the specs, changes the impedance, and starts to work to eliminate distortion. “I work backwards — I work on the audio design first, whether it’s a custom one or one-size-fits-all. Then it really becomes about the frequency response – we’re picky and have stringent audio standards.”
Reflecting back, he comments about how fast IEM went from being looked down upon to being widely accepted. “Most musicians were so used to using monitors, they liked the feel of that, hearing the crowd, and having nothing in their ear,” he says. “But then issues like hearing loss played a factor.” (Though, ironically, early on, many artists didn’t want audiences to see something in their ear, lest it be identified as a hearing aid.)
And, once technology made gains and the singers got comfortable, “you couldn’t pry it out of their hands. Drummers too — they were happy to lose the bulky headsets, especially the drummers that relied on click tracks.”
Today, the company is based in Apopka, FL, with an office in Burbank, CA-based Center Staging. But Harvey himself is quick to credit the crew he works with. “Its one thing to sit back and design… my job is easy! Running the company, having good customer service, being responsive — that’s the important part.”
The company has since expanded to having some 20 employees, with Chris Morrison in Burbank as an AR person. There’s a lot of family working for them. “When we first got back into the business, we had a lot of orders right away, and we needed a lot of family to take the plunge,” Brittany says. Jerry’s daughter from a previous marriage, Jaime, is the COO, and her husband, Zac Penrod is the art director. Brittany’s brother, Adam Roberts, is repair manager. Jerry’s first wife, Shelley, handles general consumer sales and services the house of worship market.
Then there are the extended family members — several employees from Harvey’s first company who followed him to Florida as well.
Brittany confirms that customer service is key to the company’s early success. “Our cell phone numbers are public, and mine is on 24/7,” she says. “Obviously, we’re growing fast right now and maintaining the growth level is challenging,” she adds. “But next up is to release a mass-market IEM product, and we’re very excited about doing that.”
More details at jhaudio.com.
