26th August, 2022

The music products industry received the sad news during the week that James Young, much respected founder of the British microphone company Aston had died from a heart attack. Aston Microphones are famous for their high quality audio products such as the Aston Stealth microphone, which won a NAMM TEC Award in 2020 for Best Microphone.

For many years Aston was distributed in Australia by Link Audio, who enjoyed a great business relationship with the company and its leader James Young. Link Audio Managing Director and AMA Treasurer Michael Jago paid tribute to James in a Facebook post this week.

“It’s a sad day for us at Link Audio Australia, as we learned of the passing of James Young. James helped us get started in 2015 with his new UK microphone brand Aston Microphones. He was a force of nature with a huge zest for life, unwavering drive and a talented muso to boot.  Our thoughts go out to his family at this time. We have great memories of his numerous trips to Australia and he will be sadly missed.”

Michael Jago gave us this pic of James, snapped at the Philip Island Moto GP in 2016

Around 14 months ago James Young sold the Aston company to Uli Behringer and consequently Aston Microphones are now distributed in Australia by Australis Music Group. For the last 12 months James had been living in Malta with his family, taking a break from the industry. However those close to him just knew that he’d be thinking about new projects, such was the drive and passion of the guy for the industry.

Australian Musician enjoyed James Young’s company when we caught up with him at a few NAMM shows too. We always found him to be friendly and funny but most of all passionate about the quality of his products. Vale James Young.