About Sowter
SOWTER Audio TRANSFORMERS
About Us
Sowter Audio Transformer’s classic range of audio transformers and inductors are world-renowned and integral to many prominent professional pre-amp and mixer manufacturers. Over 80 years of design and manufacturing experience makes us the first choice for standard & custom-built audio transformers.
We offer various ranges of transformer designs including pro-audio/vintage, pre/line amp, attenuators, EQ inductors, DAC, headphone, chokes, interstage, PP and SE output, and many more audio transformers.
Our philosophy has always been to design for the best possible bandwidth. We believe that a high frequency cut-off of up to 100 kHz improves sound quality. We use Mumetal cores – this gives minimal harmonic distortion, and also allows us to get a high inductance, necessary for good low frequency response. For high power products we use cold-rolled silicon iron cores which can handle higher power with lower inductance potential and have low distortion. We have chosen the most popular designs from our work over the last 80 years to be in our online shop and we try to deliver these from stock.
Why Choose Sowter Audio Transformers?
Design – Quality – Audio Excellence – Experience – Support
Breath-Taking Sound Quality
We delight customers with 'golden ears', our components reproducing transient sounds above the audible range.
High-Quality Materials & Manufacturing
We have modern winding machines and only use the best available materials and a strict quality-control regime.
Application Optimised Designs
Sowter transformers are optimised for the application they are used in, rather than 'generic' products. Having a quality transformer is not good enough – it has to be designed for the conditions it sees in-circuit.
Custom Design
We have made thousands of custom designs for almost every audio application, with a huge database of sample measurements which we feed into new designs.
Simulation Systems
Our simulation tools were the result of the combined skills in magnetic materials behaviour, circuit design and measurement techniques.
Customer Collaboration
Collaboration with customers, many of whom are recording engineers, musicians and product designers, have further optimised and broadened our product lines.
Extensive Product Documentation & Archives
Our website contains full technical specifications for all our current products, and we have an archive section to help you identify products made over 50 years ago.
Vintage Product Support
Products optimised for applications in vintage recording products, providing a very special service to the music production, recording and reproduction industries.
Reference Documentation
An extensive list of reference documentation and support articles are available online.
Our History
Sowter Transformers was founded by GAV Sowter, chair of the IEE and a Fellow of the Audio Engineering Society. Gavs, as he was affectionally known, graduated as an electrical engineer in 1922, starting work at Telcon working on a project to develop a transatlantic submarine cable, wrapping a conventional cable with a nickel-iron alloy to increase the frequency response and bandwidth. It subsequently became known as mu-metal, which is central to the design of Sowter products.
Brian Sowter graduated as an Electrical Engineer in 1961, working for 30 years in the IBM British Laboratory as a circuit designer and later in their product assurance laboratory. Brian Sowter holds 5 patents and 7 publications in the field of circuit and system design, and was awarded Fellowship of the Institution of Electrical Engineers for his work on colour data displays. He took early retirement in 1991 to work for EASowter Ltd and collaborated with Gavs to develop software simulation tools for transformer design.
Classic Audio
Sowter provides a wide range of equivalent transformers for classic audio equipment. We offer a large range of products for recording, broadcasting, public address, instrumentation and original equipment manufacturers (OEM’s), as well as for replacement or maintenance.
We design our replica transformers based on our long experience going back nearly 75 years, and our own criteria for what results in the optimum design for the particular application. Our target is always to have a performance as good as or better than the original component particularly with regards to bandwidth and distortion performance.
SOWTER Audio TRANSFORMERS
Quality – Job #1
With Sowter Group’s UK-based design and production facilities, our aim is to supply you with the best value and highest quality audio transformers, chokes and inductors. Customer service is our primary focus, providing high-quality and reliability components at competitive prices. We operate using quality management systems and are ISO-certified.
CUSTOMER SERVICE
100%
TECHNOLOGY
100%
VALUE
100%
Get In Touch
Please get in touch with us to find out more, Sowter Audio Transformers offer a wide range of products to suit your requirements – if you have any questions, please feel free to contact us via our online form or telephone us for more information, and your inquiry will go straight to the best sales, service or support team member.
To find out more, please contact Sowter Transformers sales at sales@carnhill.co.uk, or call us on +44 (0)1480 462978.