GEKCO Labs, now GEKCO Inc, was started in 1990 when the founder Thomas Gould wrote an article about a television video color bar generator project was featured in Amateur Television Quarterly and later in Radio Electronics July 1991. The company name is an abbreviation for Gould Electronic Kit Company, since we started out providing electronic kits. From 1997 to 2006, we designed and manufactured a variety of analog video products, including test pattern generators, distribution amplifiers and some special test equipment. Since 2007 the company has been mostly a Electronics Engineering Consulting business until the latter part of 2018, but now we are transitioning back to designing and manufacturing our own products.
The founder and owner Thomas Gould started learning electronics while in elementary school, taking apart WW II surplus military electronics from many surplus dealers in the 60's. His father gave him a 1967 edition of the ARRL Radio Handbook and this sparked an interest in Amateur Radio. After a lot of self study, he obtained a novice license, WN6QAR in 1969 at age 15. In the 80s he upgraded to the general class license, WB6QAR and then shortly there after, took the amateur radio extra class exams, and the radio telephone first class exam at the FCC office in San Francisco and earned his FCC currenlty assigned call sign of WB6P.
His first station was a Allied Radio Knight Kit R55A receiver and a home built crystal controlled single tube 10 watt CW transmitter that was a project in a electronics book. He has been semi-active in amateur radio for almost 50 years now.
During those early years in the 70s and 80s he built many kit projects, from companies like Heathkit, and Allied Radio. He has fond memories of getting the kit of parts and turning them into a useful piece of equipment. It is unfortunate that due to the change in electroincs manufacturing, the kit business is not very profitable anymore and most if not all of the older kit suppliers are out of business. One big advantage of a kit product was you were provided all the documentation, schematics etc. He is disappointed that today, most equipment manufacturers do not provide the information necessary to really understand what is going on inside the box which makes it very difficult to modify or repair the equipment. The maker and open source movements are helping change the direction of this trend.
His interest in video electronics started while working at local television station, in Sacramento CA, where he worked as a Maintenance
Engineer, while obtaining his engineering degree at Sacramento State University.
Now he is able to be in a position to fullfill a life long passion of concentrating on the design of electronics he is interested in and hopefully you our customer, will be also.
Gould Electronic Kit Company (GEKCO Inc.) is trying to do their small part to bring the joy of kit building to a newer generation.