An engineer’s second company.

Stedman Corporation was founded in 1992 in Richland, Michigan, a small community in Kalamazoo County, by Bill Hannapel, the company says. Kalamazoo is where Gibson began making guitars, and Stedman’s own history places the company in that local tradition, alongside ProCo Sound and Heritage Guitars. The earliest surviving copy of its website, captured by the Internet Archive in January 1999, gives the same founding year: Stedman had been “designing and manufacturing microphones and accessories since 1992,” with its headquarters and manufacturing in Richland, more than 300 US and Canadian dealers and distribution in 22 countries.

Hannapel, a guitarist and electronics design engineer, had built a company before. The Stedman history says he founded Analog Control Technology, or ACT, which in 1983 began producing what the company calls the world’s first rackmount programmable analog guitar preamp, and that ACT was sold in 1988 to Rockford Corporation. He then spent about three years developing products for the music industry at Rockford’s Hafler division in Grand Rapids, Michigan, before starting Stedman.

Rockford had bought Hafler in 1987, according to English Wikipedia’s article on its founder, David Hafler; in 2014 the Hafler brand passed to the Canadian maker Radial Engineering.

From microphones to metal screens.

Stedman began as a microphone maker. Its first product, the company says, was the N90, a side-address microphone built around a large-diaphragm dynamic capsule so that it needed no phantom power, aimed at a fast-growing demand for an affordable studio microphone. The 1999 website lists it at $399 and describes a mylar diaphragm, an Alnico and iron magnet, a transformerless design rated above 155 dB and a machined, anodised aluminium body “hand built in the U.S.A.” By then the range ran to seven microphones, from the LD23 dynamic vocal microphone to the C15 and SC3 condensers and the 1100B tube condenser, which the company says listed at $4,500, plus GA12 and BA18 direct boxes for guitar and bass amplifiers, SM6500 near-field monitors and shock mounts.

The same 1999 catalogue already included two pop filters, the PS100 and the PS101 Proscreen, described as using a “unique patented polarized metal screen.” Instead of a stretched fabric that diffuses a burst of breath, the Proscreen is a perforated metal disc whose openings are angled to send the air downward, away from the capsule, while sound passes through. The company says fabric filters could not stop bursts without losing high frequencies and vocal detail, and calls its screens the world’s first patented metal pop filters. A reviewer for Pro Audio Review, quoted on Stedman’s website, noted the “downward slant to the metal screen material.”

As inexpensive imported microphones and electronics flooded the market, the company says, Stedman phased out its microphones and electronics and concentrated on the filters. It gives no date for that change, and the 1999 site shows both lines on sale together. The PS101 came through almost unaltered: in 1999 it had a 4.6-inch screen, a 13-inch gooseneck, a 20-inch length and a weight of 5.8 ounces at a list price of $59.00, and the PS101 sold on the website today has the same dimensions at $59.99.

The accessory trade.

The seven brands in this guide make the small tools that sit between a voice or instrument and the mixing desk. Two treat the sound before it reaches the microphone. Stedman, of Richland, Michigan, has made music products since 1992, chiefly Proscreen pop filters, and says it assembles them at its own Michigan factory. Kaotica, founded by Konrad Zukowski, makes the Eyeball, a ball-shaped acoustic shield that fits around a microphone, and says it launched in New York in 2014 and manufactures in the United States.

Rycote makes windshields and shock mounts. Its own timeline says the sound recordist John Gozzard founded it in 1969; Vitec, the British group now called Videndum, bought it in 2018, and in 2023 it moved from Stroud, Gloucestershire, to Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire, saying its manufacturing has stayed in Britain.

Two make inline preamps that add clean gain to quiet microphones. Triton Audio was started in the Netherlands in 2006 by Erwin Erkamp and Peter-Paul Wijte, launched its FetHead in 2008, and says its products are assembled there. Cloud Microphones, of Tucson, makes the Cloudlifter and says its products are made in Arizona.

The last two carry the signal to the desk. Radial Engineering, founded in Vancouver by Peter Janis, introduced its JDI direct box in 1996; Radial says Janis sold it to Regimen Equity Partners in 2018, and it is now based in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia. Whirlwind, founded in Rochester, New York, in 1975 by Michael Laiacona, makes snakes, cables and DI boxes, and says its Medusa snakes are still hand-made in Rochester.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Pop filters, cleaners and a lifetime warranty.

The current range is built around the Proscreen: the PS101; a second-generation PS101 V2 with a larger 4.75-inch screen and a clamp for boom arms up to 1.5 inches wide; the larger Proscreen XL V2; and the DT101, a desktop filter on a weighted steel base that the company calls the world’s first free-standing pop filter, aimed at podcast, broadcast and voice-over desks. Its instructions are specific — keep the screen at least two inches from the microphone and never bend it — and the company suggests the filter for kick drums and rotating Leslie speakers as well as voices. Headphone hangers and music clip holders complete the studio line.

In July 2018 Stedman added a second line, the PureConnect kits for cleaning quarter-inch and XLR connectors. Sound On Sound reviewed them in September 2019, describing Stedman as “chiefly known for their industry-standard pop filters”; the reviewer, Mike Crofts, found that the kits used DeOxit fluid from Caig Laboratories and were marked free of volatile organic compounds, and quoted $129.99 for the PK-3 Pro Kit and $29.99 for the GP-2 Gig Pack.

Stedman says it is privately owned, and that on 20 September 2020 its vice president, Scott Dana, signed an agreement to buy a major portion of the company’s stock. Its website says “proudly made in the USA,” that every accessory is assembled at its own factory in Michigan and that all products carry a lifetime warranty; we give those as the company’s claims, though the lifetime warranty and a “Made in U.S.A.” line already appear on its 1999 product pages.

For a design guide, Stedman shows how a small maker can build a reputation on a single, plainly engineered object and leave it largely unchanged for decades. Compare Shure, the American microphone maker, and Primacoustic, another studio-accessory brand. For this guide we use powder-coat black, steel grey and a lake blue with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Stedman’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.