Kaatskit Radio Company

Our mission is to provide high quality low cost alternatives to the high priced broadcast equipment needed by low budget community radio stations.

We do this by offering kits, much like the electronic kits such as “Heathkit” that were popular around 1970.

Many electronic products are mass produced consumer products. They are made in high volume by robots. They use surface-mount parts, which are cheap but not repairable. We can't help on these. If a mass produced product meets your needs, buy it.

On the other hand, real broadcast equipment is made in short production runs in small shops. They don't have the economy of scale. The runs are too small to automate effectively. Like in the old days, they are really hand made, they can be repaired when they break, and that is why they are so expensive. For these products, we can save you a significant amount of money by offering a kit that you assemble.

If your station has a fully paid staff, and you would need to pay technicians to build the kit, a kit is probably not for you. We also offer our products fully assembled and tested. The price for our fully assembled products is competitive with other quality products.

If your station is mostly volunteer, and you can set up a “barn-raising” to build the kit, you can benefit by building the kit yourself. The cost is about half of the cost of a competitive fully assembled product. The time it takes to build the kit is small compared to the time it takes to build the rest of the studio.

The kit approach offers you flexibility that you can't get with factory produced products. You can customize with choices you make as you are building it, and can change those choices later.

The name “Kaatskit” comes from combining the old Dutch spelling of Catskill, the Catskill mountains of New York where we are based, with “kit”, reminiscent of “Heathkit”, “Knightkit”, “Dynakit” and other kit makers from the past.