Tolar A.V.L., Incorporated is a California S-Corp. The company was founded in 1990 by Robert Tolar, a 21 year old college student at Chico State University and musician. Bob began purchasing sound gear to cut long term costs of renting PA's for his classic rock cover band, Monkey Business, that was touring the Northern California club circuit and performing for corporate events in the Bay Area. After two years of throwing every red cent he found into gear, Bob had possession of the finest sound system in town, among the many local bands. "Hey man! If your not playing Friday night, how much would you charge to bring out your PA and do sound for our band? and Tolar Sounds Audio Services was born.

When Bob graduated in 1995 with a Bachelors Degree in Marketing and a minor in Recording Arts he obtained a business loan for $40,000 and made his first big purchase. He also obtained a half time position as a Studio Technician for CSU, Chico's Recording Arts Program and began teaching audio classes on the university level. The internship program with CSUC was also launched that year. Using the income from the college to pay for living expenses, Bob Tolar reinvested all the revenues from the sound company back into equipment. Today the company owns over $1 Million in assets with annual investments increasing by 30% each year.

Using the very well equipped scene shop at Chico State's performing arts center, Tolar Sounds began building speaker enclosures and road cases in 1997. Equipped with a considerable welding facility, the shop also allowed the development of custom fly hardware, mounting brackets and framework to be designed and custom built. Tolar Sounds began to develop a positive reputation for innovative designs and extremely meticulous engineering.

In the year 2000, Tolar Sounds began designing and installing sound systems for local venues. One of the first jobs we did was The Sierra Nevada Brewing Company's beautiful concert showroom, which has grown to become one of Northern California's key hotspots. We designed and installed the equipment for this venue and have done several upgrades since. It includes a full concert sound system, elaborate lighting system and corporate video projection and switching. We still handle all the lighting and A/V needs for this venue today. You can check out some of these shows Friday nights on PBS. The venue has seen some great artists over the years. Huey Lewis filmed his 25 anniversary DVD in High Definition at this venue. Come see a show some time, but be sure to buy your tickets early. Every show they do sells out a half hour after tickets go on sale.

Between September 11th, 2001 and the over saturation of concerts offered by the emerging Indian Casinos, local long time concert promoters began losing money on their shows and the concert industry, outside the casino market, took a dive which drove down prices. We duked it out with other regional companies for market share and thankfully faired well, but the experience drove us to diversify the company for further stability. For this reason, we added Disk Jockey Services and sound reinforcement for weddings and began offering video services and renting projectors and screens, a segment of the business that has grown significantly each year since then. Unfortunately in this business if you want a larger piece of pie, you have to take someone elses...and we like pie!

So also in 2001, Tolar Sounds became a reseller of professional audio equipment, obtaining dealerships for the high end lines that the company had been relying on for years. The company obtained a C7 California State Contractors Licence the following year and began aggressively designing, selling and installing sound systems for churches, schools, clubs and restaurants. In 2003 the company began providing lighting and video sales and service as well, installing projectors, screens and video cameras and offering AV services for business seminars and meetings at hotels and rental halls throughout Northern California. Currently our contracting division is managed by Chuck Mahar, former proprietor of the Sound Source music retailer in Chico, and he has diversified it dramatically, providing unique and advanced systems integration solutions for a wide range of clients from sound masking white noise systems for the county courthouses to SMART Class Rooms for our local schools.

In 2004, Tolar Sounds Audio Services was incorporated and the name was changed to Tolar A.V.L., Inc. (for audio, video & lighting). This last six years has brought exciting new additions to the portfolio of services we offer, allowing us to integrate all the areas of technical event production into one service. With the addition of "themed decorative theatrical lighting" and "live television production", we can now provide a corporate client with the sound system, video screens and projectors, several live camera angles with fades and transitions, decorative lighting to create a themed look and stage lighting to illuminate the presentation area. This combination of services has allowed Tolar A.V.L. to create a much more polished and integrated end result than would be possible with several separate companies as well as save the client considerable money by combining expenses such as transportation, labor, insurance, etc...Economies of Scale Baby!

As 2007 closed, Tolar A.V.L. sold our DJ division and backed out of the wedding industry. The same year we obtained a C-10 full voltage electrical contractors license, making us one of the only companies in the state that can actually tie in our own power legally! Of coarse, they do it anyway...

A brief stint with our own mini sprint race car proved to be a total waste of money, but was fun for a while. You might have seen us getting our ass kicked at Cycle Land Speedway one Saturday night. 

Finally in 2009, we embarked into full scale concert lighting, with 40 foot trusses, chain motors and the works. A far less complicated aspect of concert production than sound, large scale lighting offers a higher return on investment and a client pool that is already available to us. 2010's investments featured 6 full scale concert moving lights, 4 mini-movers, 2 stadium level spotlights, lots of unique trussing pieces to expand the structures we can create, Motion Labs distros, upgrades to our vehicles and 4 dozen LED lights allowing us to provide up-lights, truss warmers, specials and even a full concert truss rig using one measly circuit of power. Gone Green!

With the addition of Benjamin Johnson as our head LD, we have been performing lighting work that exceeds anything we've previously seen in our area and we are very proud of what we currently have to offer.

We expect our employees to maintain not only the highest standard of professionalism and skill at the gig, but to make personal choices that reflect a morality and character that is congruent with the companies reputation and the expectations of our clients. It has not been easy finding such individuals, but presently we have 18 stellar individuals in our employ and we are very pleased that during the recent economic decline, we have only moved forward and have retained and supported them without interruption.

2010 is seeing a huge increase in business and we are very excited about the future of our company. We hope you are also doing well! Thank you for taking the time to learn about the history of Tolar AVL, Inc...