Art speaks in Douglaston workshop

By Ayala Ben-Yehuda

Scott Gramlich was looking for perfect audio speaker sound quality. He found it in cornucopias, coffins and gigantic ice-cream sundaes.

Gramlich, 34, has been building speakers for 20 years, spending the last 11 of them in his SG Custom Sound workshop just outside the Douglaston railroad station.

About five years ago he began looking for an alternative to the traditional square or rectangular speaker casings, which Gramlich said are convenient as furniture but whose shape causes sound waves to vibrate inside the panels.

By experimenting with round and cylindrical shapes, he came up with his first quirky speaker casing — the cornucopia, made out of surprisingly durable papier-mache.

“I was looking for a perfect speaker,” said Gramlich, whose cornucopia speakers are being patented. “I wasn’t thinking of aesthetics then.”

Pleased with the result both acoustically and visually, Gramlich recruited a group of artists to help him expand the range of designs in his shop.

He now sells speakers in giant cylinders painted with underwater scenes or covered in paisley fabric, amplifiers in “spaceships” and even has what he calls an art nouveau-style speaker sculpture topped with an aluminum bird feeder.

“If we make a work of art out of a speaker, we not only improve its sound quality but also have no need to hide it anymore,” Gramlich said. “It’s really a perfect marriage between art and science.”

Curious passersby have been drawn into the store lately by what looks like a 3-foot-high ice-cream sundae in the window, complete with whipped cream and cherry, only to find that it contains a speaker.

Gramlich used a special spray foam, which he says poses no detriment to sound quality, around the speaker and painted the dried sculpture.

“I sprayed it and let it sit here, and about a month later I decided it was an ice-cream sundae,” Gramlich said of his serendipitous discovery.

Gramlich said his creations draw curious stares from at least 20 onlookers a day.

A pair of cornucopias sells for $1,250, but Gramlich is offering two smaller speakers housed in flower vases for $650 to $700.

He is in the process of marketing his designs in hopes of shifting his business from audio repair and installation to the art of sound.

The ice-cream speaker could go into an ice-cream parlor, and he is selling coffin-shaped speakers covered with spider webs to gothic-themed nightclubs in Manhattan.In addition to aesthetic sound machines, Gramlich has designed a special belt with small speakers for pregnant women to play music for their unborn babies.

The “womb speakers” are being used in a research study at the University of California at Irvine about the effect of prenatal music exposure on brain development of infants.

SG Custom Sound is at 40-33 235th St. in Douglaston. For more information, call 718-224-5083.

Reach reporter Ayala Ben-Yehuda by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 146.