About Gold Sound

For fifty years, Gold Sound has helped Colorado music lovers build systems that sound right — new and vintage, from a real shop on South Broadway. Not a big-box aisle, not an anonymous listing.

We choose every piece for one reason: an exceptional ratio of quality to value. We’re proud of what we sell, we set it up properly, and we stand behind it. No pressure and no hassle — just honest advice from people who have spent their lives around this gear.

Why Gold Sound

Our story

Gold Sound runs in the family. Ron Gold’s father, Irving, built his first radio — a cat’s-whisker AM set — in 1926, and during the war earned a Silver Star for designing the radar-guided gunsights used on B-29 bombers. Ron grew up beside him repairing tube TVs and amplifiers, built his first three-way speaker at fifteen, and even wired an electric guitar using a phono cartridge as the pickup — the same idea Leo Fender is credited with on his earliest electrics. He went on to study music and acoustics at the University of Michigan, Columbia, and the University of Colorado, where the music department asked him to teach its class on professional speakers and studio monitors. He opened Gold Sound in February 1976.

Through the late 1970s and ’80s, Gold Sound designed and built the custom speaker systems — banks of fifteen-inch woofers, hand-built wood horns, electronic crossovers — that powered stages for Paul Simon, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Willie Nelson, and festivals across the Rockies. Ron’s crossover design earned an Innovation Award at the Consumer Electronics Show. NASA used Gold Sound systems to recreate the sound of a rocket launch at its Langley laboratory; Boeing built them into flight simulators; Lockheed-Martin bought them for years. Along the way Ron came to know audio’s founding figures — Avery Fisher, Paul Klipsch, Saul Marantz, Bob Carver — and the shop has been featured everywhere from the nationally syndicated TODAY Show to Stereophile, The Absolute Sound, and the Denver Post.

Fifty years and four expansions later, Gold Sound is still on South Broadway, still run by people who design, build, and repair this gear themselves. International audio executives have called our speaker-kit showrooms the best in the country — but mostly we’re here to help you find music you’ll want to sit down and listen to.

A few milestones

• 1926 — Irving Gold builds his first radio, a cat’s-whisker AM set
• 1944 — Irving earns the Silver Star for his radar-guided B-29 gunsight design
• 1965 — Ron Gold builds his first three-way speaker
• 1968–72 — Ron studies music at Columbia University
• 1975 — Invited to teach pro speakers and studio monitors at CU Denver
• Feb 1976 — Gold Sound opens
• 1977–81 — Live sound for Paul Simon, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Willie Nelson, and Rocky Mountain festivals
• 1983 — Featured on the nationally syndicated TODAY Show
• 1986–90 — Ron writes five magazine articles on speaker design
• 1988 — Gold Sound speakers fitted in all U.S. Citroën models
• 1990 — Wins a CES Innovation Award for Ron’s electronic-crossover design and moves to its longtime home at 4285 South Broadway
• 1991 — NASA uses Gold Sound systems to recreate rocket blast-off sound at its Langley lab
• 1992 — Boeing builds Gold Sound systems into its flight simulators
• 1992–2008 — Lockheed-Martin buys Gold Sound–designed systems
• 2010 — The only Colorado dealer featured in Stereophile
• 2011 — Featured in The Absolute Sound and a full-page Denver Post profile

“Your willingness to teach me about caring for my records and turntable made a great impression on me. I’d love to keep coming to you for my analog needs.”

A Gold Sound customer

Built to last, easy on the planet

The brands we carry are made to run for thirty, forty, fifty years — not to be landfilled after a season. We repair and reuse what we can, recycle our packaging, and the store itself draws on passive-solar design. Buying the right equipment once saves you money and waste.