George Krampera

George Krampera is truly one of the audio pioneers of modern times. He has been designing and building audio equipment for nearly fifty years,  as literally millions of people have experienced the highest quality sound reproduction as a result of his work. Through his long and successful career, George’s vision has remained unchanged- that is to eliminate distortion and loss of information in the signal path, thus providing sound reproduction that has true dynamic range and representation of the source.

Growing up in the Czech Republic, George was exposed to electronics at an early age. His father was a notable technician who built one of the first televisions in Czech, climbing a local mountain so he could get reception from neighboring Germany to test the unit out. As a young child George played with valves and other parts, building his first radio before he was ten. His interest in music and sound grew and by the age of fourteen, George was building power amps and other equipment for local bands in Prague. He would regularly visit the local electronics club where he heard a huge metal horn with an aluminum diaphragm connected to a valve amplifier. The glassy sound coming from that horn struck a note in George, for him it was all about the sound!

George continued his electronic training after leaving school and worked as a technician in Prague, repairing various pieces of equipment while retaining a strong connection with the local music scene.  He became renown for his famous “snippers” as he would cut components out of various backline amps to improve their sound or snip the connectors off people’s cables if they were faulty!  While this met with many protests, it always meant the cable got resoldered properly.

The Russian invasion of Czech in 1968 brought tough times for the country and as George built his career he became increasingly concerned about the future of the country and the safety of his young family.  In August of 1983, George loaded his family into their car and left everything they owned behind to escape to Austria. Once safely across the border, George was granted asylum status and a few months later they departed for Canada. 
It wasn’t long before George found himself drawn back to the music industry, taking a job with Yorkville Sound. There George designed many of their guitar and keyboard amplifiers, greatly improving performance and built a complete range of processed speaker systems. After leaving Yorkville George started his first company Rexx, which built high quality solid-state guitar amplifiers. In their first year of production Rexx outsold Marshall in Canada, testimony to the quality and value of the product. 

A growing reputation resulted in several manufacturers requesting George to join them and so eventually decided to head back to Europe taking up a job offer with Italian speaker manufacturer- RCF. George’s goal at RCF was to work with and improve transducer technology. This was the final part of the chain he felt he needed to master to achieve perfect sound reproduction. 

Heading a team of young engineers, George made a number of break throughs at RCF including the development of the silicone spider.  He also designed the complete ART active speaker series, which was a hugely successful line for the company. George departed RCF when it was sold to Mackie and continued his work in transducer development at B&C. It was during the late nineties and George had relocated back to his homeland of Czech, forming his own pro audio design company- Class A. Utilising several of the  B&C components recently developed, he worked on a large format active box that could cover big crowds and distances with optimum quality and clarity.

In partnership with one of his old team from RCF, Marcelo Vercelli, the pair started Fusion and took their new speaker system to a large US trade show where Greg Mackie was suitably impressed by the products and made them an offer to join Mackie. With RCF now owned by Mackie, George found himself back within the company, and in his role there apart from putting Fusion into production, he designed a range of speakers for Mackie. Sales of these new boxes skyrocketed but George’s real passion was for designing high end market quality equipment.

George and his old partner Marcelo once again departed Mackie/RCF to form their second company, which was clearly represented by its name, K for Krampera, V for Vercelli and 2 being their second venture. A third integral link came about with another of George’s old RCF colleagues, Andrea Manzini who had started his own transducer manufacturing company called Eighteen Sound. Working closely with Andrea, George co-designed components to match the products he exactly wanted to develop. This combination along with his expertise in cabinet design and electronics built the perfect platform for George to follow his vision, a vision realized today in products of exceptional performance and quality built by KV2.