Our History

Most hi-fi shops can tell you about the gear on their shelves. Gold Sound can tell you about the better part of a century spent designing it, building it, and chasing the sound.

The story begins a full fifty years before the store opened — with a cat’s-whisker radio and a wartime Silver Star — and runs through concert stages, magazine covers, and the laboratories of NASA, Boeing, and Lockheed-Martin. Here’s how a Denver speaker bench became a Colorado institution.

Before the store (1926–1975)

Audio is the family trade. Ron Gold’s father, Irving, built his first radio in 1926 and, during the war, designed the radar-guided gunsights carried on B-29 bombers — work that earned him a Silver Star. Ron grew up beside him with a soldering iron, then spent the better part of two decades studying music and acoustics, from Interlochen to Columbia to the University of Colorado, where the music department asked him to teach its course on professional speakers and studio monitors.

• 1926 — Ron’s father, Irving Gold, builds his first AM breadboard cat’s-whisker radio.
• 1944 — Irving works on the first remote-controlled, radar-guided ball-turret guns on B-29 bombers, alongside IBM, and is awarded the Silver Star for his gunsight design.
• 1958 — Ron Gold helps his dad fix tube TVs and amplifiers.
• 1961 — Ron builds his first Knight-kit radio.
• 1965 — Ron builds his first three-way speaker.
• 1965 — Ron builds an electric guitar, using a turntable cartridge on the bridge as the pickup.
• 1966 — Ron modifies his first amplifier, a tube Harman-Kardon.
• 1966 — Ron researches perfect pitch at Interlochen Music Camp.
• 1967 — Ron gets his first preamp and power amp, tube Harman-Kardon Citations.
• 1967 — Ron fixes and modifies his first shortwave radio, a 1937 tube Hallicrafters S-20.
• 1967 — Ron studies music at the University of Michigan summer school at Interlochen, MI.
• 1968–72 — Ron studies music at Columbia University in New York.
• 1970 — Ron visits New York speaker makers Ohm Acoustics, Rectilinear Research, and Becker.
• 1970 — Ron receives a commendatory letter from Benjamin Electronics, importer of Elac and Miracord turntables.
• 1975 — Ron studies sound recording and reinforcement at CU Denver; music-department chairman Roy Pritts asks him to teach the class on professional speakers and studio monitors.

The shop opens (1976–1981)

Gold Sound opened in February 1976, and within a year it wasn’t only selling speakers — it was building them. Through the late ’70s, Ron designed and hand-built the custom rigs that ran sound across Colorado: banks of fifteen-inch woofers, horn-loaded midbass, midrange and tweeter horns, all tied together with his own electronic crossovers. Those systems powered festivals and touring acts alike.

• Feb 1976 — Gold Sound opens. Early customers include the State of Colorado, the First Baptist Church of Denver, and National Jewish Hospital.
• 1977–81 — Gold Sound provides sound for every stage at Denver’s Capitol Hill People’s Fair.
• 1978 — Sound for Paul Simon in Denver, and for the Central City Jazz Festival.
• 1979 — Sound for the Rocky Mountain Bluegrass Festival, for Asleep at the Wheel in Colorado Springs, and for Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt.
• 1980 — Ron studies solar design at CU Denver.
• 1981 — Sound for Willie Nelson at Denver’s Mammoth Gardens.

Building a name (1982–1991)

The work got noticed — national television, magazine bylines, speakers riding in celebrity tour buses and rolling off Citroën’s assembly lines — and in 1990 the shop settled into its permanent home at 4285 South Broadway.

• 1982 — Ron studies architectural acoustics at CU Denver.
• 1983 — The nationally syndicated TODAY Show features Gold Sound.
• 1986–90 — Installation News runs five articles on speaker design featuring Gold Sound speakers.
• 1986–90 — Gold Sound speakers are installed in tour buses for Cyndi Lauper, Dennis Rodman, and Chuck Mangione.
• 1988 — Gold Sound speakers are installed in all U.S. Citroën models.
• 1990 — Gold Sound wins a CES Innovation Award for Ron’s electronic-crossover design.
• May 1990 — Gold Sound moves to its present home at 4285 South Broadway.
• 1990–91 — The Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, and Denver Business Journal run articles and photos on Gold Sound.

Recognition that lasts (1991–today)

Then came clients you wouldn’t expect for a Denver hi-fi shop: NASA, Boeing, and Lockheed-Martin all bought Gold Sound–designed systems. And the national press kept coming back — Stereophile, The Absolute Sound, the Denver Post — making Gold Sound the rare Colorado dealer the audio world came looking for.

• 1991–92 — NASA buys Gold Sound–designed speaker systems and crossovers to recreate the sound of a rocket blast-off at its Langley, Virginia laboratory.
• 1992 — Boeing buys Gold Sound–designed systems for its flight simulators.
• 1992–2008 — Lockheed-Martin buys Gold Sound–designed systems.
• 2008–2020 — Gold Sound wins “Best of Englewood” awards.
• Oct 2009 — Gold Sound is the only Colorado dealer featured in Stereophile’s online blog.
• Jan 2010 — Gold Sound is the only Colorado dealer in any 2010 Stereophile; Ortofon chooses the Gold Sound room to launch its Cadenza cartridge line, and the issue notes the shop’s new Parasound JC3 phono preamps.
• Feb 2011 — Gold Sound is featured in The Absolute Sound.
• Jul 2011 — The Denver Post South Hub runs a full page with color photos on Gold Sound.
• Oct 2012 — Stereophile praises Gold Sound’s Rocky Mountain Audio Fest display of amps, speakers, and turntables.
• Oct 2014 — Ron leads an RMAF seminar on vintage and new tube amps with Kevin Deal of PrimaLuna.