Line 6 (company)
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| Pro Audio | |
| Industry |
Amplification Musical instrument manufacturing |
| Founded | 1996 |
| Founder | Justin Wolf, Marcus Ryle and Michel Doidic |
| Headquarters | Calabasas, California, United States |
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Area served
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United States |
| Products |
electric and acoustic guitars basses amplifiers effects processors USB audio interfaces guitar/bass wireless systems |
| Owner | Yamaha |
| Website | line6 |
Line 6 is a manufacturer of digital modeling guitars, amplifiers (amplifier modeling) and related electronic equipment. Their product lines include electric and acoustic guitars, basses, guitar and bass amplifiers, effects processors, USB audio interfaces and guitar/bass wireless systems. The company was founded in 1996. Headquartered in Calabasas, California, the company imports its products primarily from China. Since December 2013, it has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Yamaha Corporation.
Marcus Ryle and Michel Doidic (two former Oberheim designers) co-founded Fast-Forward Designs, where they helped develop several notable pro audio products such as the Alesis ADAT, Quadraverbs and QuadraSynth, and Digidesign SampleCell. As digital signal processing became more and more powerful and affordable during the 1980s, they began developing DSP-based products for guitarists. As Ryle tells the story, the name "Line 6" came about because the phone system at Fast-Forward Designs only had 5 lines. Because the new guitar-related products were developed in secrecy, the receptionist used "Line 6" as a code word of sorts, and paging them for a call on Line 6 meant to stop any guitar or amp-related sounds so that they wouldn't be overheard by other Fast-Forward clients or callers.
Line 6 launched in 1996, with their first digital modeling guitar amplifier, the original Flextone—a single 12, 60 watt, combo amp. Within six months or so, the AxSys 212 was released. The company underwent a rapid expansion in the early 2000s (decade) due to the success of their Pod product line, which isolated modeling circuitry from the AxSys amplifier.
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