To begin with, how did you get started in designing audio gear?
Thirty-two years ago I was working for a guy that built hi-fi equipment. His trick was to take Dynaco gear, hot rod it and sell it. He would buy the raw kits from Dynaco, hire me and a couple of friends and we'd put them together and install the mods and stuff. He'd pay us by the kit we assembled. I could build a PAT-5 in about an hour, a Stereo 400 power amp in an hour and half. I was making pretty decent money doing real simple solder and assembly work. I was doing that and kind of learning electronics as I went. I went from building hi-fi stuff and crossed over to the rock and roll field. There was a company in town building a large mixing console, which was not really available at that time commercially. The [Yamaha] PM1000s and 2000s were just starting to be on the scene then, but they were very expensive and didn't have the capabilities [the company] wanted. So they were building their own 32-input, 8-bus live sound console. The guy that did the original design work bailed on them, so they brought me in to finish it. I went from hi-fi and occasionally a garage band to working on the road, doing a fair amount of national acts in a touring PA company. I was about 22, so I was cocky. I have a habit of picking companies that don't work out. They went belly up. I went from there to the recording studio scene, 'cause I was tired of carrying big PA crap around. There was an active scene and a necessity for techs in the recording studio market. Again, still being young and cocky and knowing everything, I started diving right into everything and learned as I went — tape machines, consoles, synchronizers and automation systems. [I] got a real job and worked in the electronics industry for ten or fifteen years, learned a lot more electronics and low level signal handling. I was halfway through that and the audio came back, with people asking me to build these preamps I had been building. It started getting in the way of the industrial stuff, so we decided to make it a product here rather than just something I did at home. It just took off.
I'm convinced that being "young and cocky" can be great fuel for innovation. Who were you working with during this phase of your career?
