FROM THE TOP ERNIE BALL I BRIAN BALL
out of college and it changed my life. Being in that environ- ment got me excited to learn to play guitar and I’ve been playing ever since. I’ve been in a few bands over the years. My band now is called Eat The Wolf and we’ve released three albums. With three kids plus the responsibility of run- ning the company, I don’t perform as much as I’d like, but it’s still a huge part of my life and I love writing, playing and spending time with instruments. I don’t want to run a music company from a conference room. I want to experience the same excitements and frustrations and searches for the per- fect sound that our customers experience. That’s my north star in running the company. WHAT WAS THE LAST MUSIC YOU STREAMED?
next decade rather than the next quarter.
ARE YOU INCORPORATING AI INTO YOUR WORK AT ERNIE BALL? At heart, I’m pretty old school. And maybe to a fault, I haven’t adopted all of the strengths AI can offer. Certainly for reporting and some administrative tasks, it can be helpful, but I’m really more of an analog guy. There are drawbacks to using AI and some people get too attached to it. Like most executives, I’m going to use the most modern tools to sup- port the business, but I’ve resisted embedding it in my work
by design. Our work and our jobs are the opposite of AI. We make an emo- tive product. Playing guitar is one of the greatest forms of self-expression there is. The human creativity at the heart of that, for me, clashes with some of the direc- tions AI is going. TO YOU, WHAT MAKES YOUR PRODUCTS DIFFERENT? We’ve learned that the most endur- ing products begin with a real player problem, not a marketing calendar. What problem are we solving and how can we continue to improve things for
‘MY JOB ISN’T TO PRESERVE THE COMPANY EXACTLY AS I INHERITED IT. IT’S TO PRESERVE THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT THAT CREATED IT.’
Last night, I saw 311 with Dirty Heads in concert with my wife, and we streamed them on the way down. I saw 311 a ton live when I was in high school, so it felt like a blast from the past. WHERE DO YOU HOPE TO SEE THE COMPANY IN FIVE OR 10 YEARS? I hope that we continue to be recog- nized as a fearless company that’s one
of the world’s most innovative supporters of music creation — and still family-owned, still manufacturing in California and still leading in the string category. I want Music Man to remain a company that takes intelligent and exciting risks with design. I want Source Audio to become one of the de- fining premium effects brands in the world. I want the con - nection between string instruments, electronics, and effects to produce entirely new categories of products and create new ways for people to express themselves as musicians. I’m not interested in recreating the past. I’m interested in building on the legacies of what came before and innovating. FOR YOU, WHAT ARE THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES OF RUNNING A FAMILY BUSINESS THAT BEARS YOUR NAME? The biggest challenge is that everything is personal. Family history, ownership, business responsibility — it all overlaps. Our name is literally on every package, so we have to work harder to separate what is truly best for the business from habit, emotion and just sticking with what’s always been done for no good reason. I’m a third-generation leader and there’s also the danger of confusing stewardship with preservation. My job isn’t to preserve the company exactly as I inherited it. It’s to preserve the entrepreneurial spirit that created it. I’ve never been a status quo leader. It’d be easy to rest on the laurels of Slinkies and StingRays, but that’s not in my DNA. I want to enhance the heck out of a legacy that I’m deeply proud of. Family ownership gives us a long-term horizon and allows us to invest patiently, protect quality and make decisions for the
musicians by solving it? My grandfather saw that guitarists couldn’t bend strings, so he changed the product, rather than having guitarists change how they played. Music Man and Source Audio bring that same mentality and precision to what they do. The common thread is that we obsess over what musicians feel and hear. Are our products consistent and reli- able? How do they make it easier for musicians to express themselves? Another thing that makes Ernie Ball companies unique is that we have great sophistication in our engineer- ing and manufacturing so we are able to deliver products repeatedly at the very highest levels of quality, because it’s one thing to make a great guitar string, but another to be able to consistently make seventy thousand great guitar strings a day. But when your family’s name is on it, it’s not just selling a product. It’s selling a family legacy and future generations’ legacy. Finally, what makes our products different is that they truly create an emotional response. We want everything we make to sort of disappear into musicians’ hands and allow them to just play. IF YOU WEREN’T WORKING IN MI, WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’D BE DOING FOR WORK? I’d still be building something. I’m wired around products, brands, design and competition. I love taking an idea that may initially sound crazy and surrounding it with talented people to turn it into something real that people care about. If not music, I might be involved in sports or another consumer products category. I’d need it to be around creativity and passionate customers, for sure. MI
30 I MUSIC INC. I OCTOBER 2026
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