About

Owner/Chief Mad Scientist: Wavley Groves

Wavley M Groves III has spent his entire life behind the scenes in the music industry, from taking his first steps in the Virginia Beach radio station where his father was a DJ, growing up in record stores, loading crates of records for gigs, and fixing DJ equipment in the garage in which he started his first band.  Working in record stores and guitar shops in his 20s all the while repairing gear on the side and building equipment for himself.  After a car accident crushed his hip he was making ends meet repairing gear for friends when Diversified Audio, Inc in Tampa heard about him and offered a job in pro audio repair where he learned from very knowledgeable mentors.  When he moved to Staunton, VA there was a short period manufacturing ultrasound radiometers and avionics before joining the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Central Development Laboratory in 2007 as a Senior Technician in the Low Noise Amplifier Laboratory where he learned to build the lowest noise cryogenic microwave amplifiers in the world for not only NRAO, but many leading radio telescopes, universities, and NASA.  It was during this time that he finally finished his Associate Degree in Electronics Technology and moved to Integrated Receiver Development joined in 2012 where he is involved in the design, prototyping, and troubleshooting of instrumentation and refining it to become the next generation of reliable radio astronomy instrumentation.  During this time he designed amplifiers for the FLAG project on the Green Bank Telescope for which he became a full member of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the published lead author of “A Cryogenic SiGe Low-noise Amplifier Optimized for Phased-array Feeds” (Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific) and coauthor of: “Performance of a Highly Sensitive, 19-element, Dual-polarization, Cryogenic L-band Phased-array Feed on the Green Bank Telescope” (The Astronomical Journal), “Reflectionless Filter Topologies Supporting Arbitrary Low-Pass Ladder Prototypes” (IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers), “Compact cm-Wave and mm-Wave integrated receivers” (General Assembly and Scientific Symposium of the International Union of Radio Science).

Wavley’s true love is sound and electronics that make sound possible.  All of the academic and research achievements are nothing compared to working on vintage amps in a shop full of friends.  The community of music is really where his heart is.  His most important achievements are in the friends he has made in bands like: Darlington Pair, Modern, Explorer 1, Hankshaw, Bean, Michael Furey, Terra Firma Soundsystem, and many other projects including being a member of both Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham’s 100 and 200 guitar orchestras.  The best things in life are the equipment that brought back to life making music and the records recorded for friends like: Candybars, the Findells, Vault, 23 Skidoo, Magic Honkytonk Band, Immersion Blender and many more.  The most important lesson in his life is the one learned playing punk rock… Do It Yourself, this means also facilitating other people’s artistic endeavors when you have a unique skill set to help them find their sound.

Co-pilot: Matt Bailie



Matthew Bailie - Service Technician - Assistant audio engineer Matt has been intrigued by music and technology since he was a child. Growing up he could be categorized as a computer nerd and music enthusiast. Matt started, and played in several bands growing up, ranging from CCR covers at 13, to hardcore albums in his early 20's. Matt is is a life long drummer and currently plays in Darlington Pair, along with Wavley Groves and Josh Smith. Matt has a diverse career background, he started his professional career in Information Technology. He worked as a teacher and an analyst for a health services firm. After experiencing the "corporate world" he quickly decided to take a job working for a small electronics repair shop in Charlottesville. Matt now splits his time between the IT department at ACPS and Eccohollow.

Operations Manager: Piper Groves

Piper is Wavley’s wife. She’s in charge of systems and accounting at Eccohollow.

Tiny Boss of Everything: