Meet the Team: Jim Schwenzer, Director of Service & Technical Support
Since 1995, Jim Schwenzer has been one of the people customers can count on when they need answers, guidance, or help solving a problem.
As Ashly Audio’s Director of Service & Technical Support, Jim spends his days answering technical questions, troubleshooting systems, repairing equipment, supporting service technicians, and tracking recurring issues that can help inform future product and quality improvements.
In short, he helps people fix things.
“I have a hat that says, ‘I fix stuff and I know things, that’s what I do,’” Jim says. “Kind of sums it up really.”
Decades of Hands-On Experience
Jim’s background combines electronics, live sound, and musicianship. He holds an associate degree in electronics, has 40 years of real-world bench technician experience, has played music since the age of 12, and has spent decades working in bands and running live sound as a Front of House and Monitor Engineer.
That experience gives him an unusually broad perspective when helping customers troubleshoot a system.
One of his favorite parts of the job is solving problems that do not seem to have an obvious answer.
“I enjoy figuring out ways to achieve a functional system design using something that, in theory, should not be able to accommodate the specified requirements.”
That problem-solving mindset is also why he has a soft spot for Ashly’s PEMA series, which he describes as a “Swiss Army Knife” for smaller systems.
“You can do really big things with a little PEMA, and that intrigues me.”
Sharing What Experience Teaches You
For Jim, technical support is about more than fixing equipment. It is also about passing along lessons learned over decades in professional audio.
“Sharing knowledge that can only be learned through decades of experience with people who may be encountering things for the very first time really makes me feel good as a person.”
Those years of experience have also sharpened his ear. Jim can often identify feedback frequencies by ear and says he can frequently diagnose the root cause of a problem from a detailed description of the symptoms.
He jokes that this makes him “borderline psychic.”
The People Behind the Products
After more than three decades at Ashly, Jim says the people are still one of the biggest reasons he enjoys coming to work.
“I honestly think of everyone here as a close personal friend,” he says. “It is a comfortable, friendly place filled with genuinely good people who share a love for what we do.”
That shared pride carries through to the customer experience, from building reliable products to helping integrators choose the right gear, program systems correctly, and achieve the results they are looking for.
For Jim, audio matters because it is everywhere.
“Music stimulates the mind, soothes the soul, alters the mood, enhances the experience,” he says. “Audio is literally everywhere you go, whether you realize it or not.”
His advice for anyone considering a career in professional audio is simple:
“Do it. If you enjoy what you do for a living, you will never work a day in your life.”
Quick Facts
Favorite genre: Rock & Roll
Go-to artist: The Beatles
Favorite piece of gear: Fender Telecaster
Outside of work: Cooking, fishing, and spending time with his dog
Early bird or night owl: Night owl
Coffee or tea: Coffee, all day long
Mac or PC: PC
Analog or digital: Analog consoles, digital processing, and tube guitar amps
Headphones or speakers: Big speakers, preferably very big speakers
