Moog Music announced it had been acquired by inMusic, a Cumberland, Rhode Island-based company that owns various brands in DJ and professional audio equipment. In a statement announcing the merger, Moog Music President Joe Richardson wrote that Moog will still engineer, design, and build instruments at their headquarters in Asheville, North Carolina, and long-time Moog engineer Steve Dunnington—a former student of Bob Moog—will continue to lead product development.
Moog joins a roster at inMusic that includes the Akai, Alesis, Denon, M-Audio, Marantz, and Numark brands. CEO Jack O’Donnell has been acquiring professional audio electronics companies since he purchased Numark in 1992. He founded the consumer electronics brand ION Audio in 2002.
Last April, Moog released a new Etherwave Theremin, an update to the company’s original Etherwave circuitry and aesthetic designed by Bob Moog in 1996. In December Herb Deutsch, who co-invented the Moog synthesizer with Moog, died at 90.
Moog faced multiple lawsuits in 2021. One suit was brought by a former employee who alleged she was harassed and discriminated against because of her gender. Others were related to the cancellation of the 2020 edition of the company’s music festival Moogfest, which was called off well before the COVID-19-related lockdowns that paused the live music industry.
