Ted Fletcher: Behind the Gear with TF Pro

Ted Fletcher can't get away from music. Originally trained as a civil engineer, he started taking gigs as a session singer at local studios. Before long, the gigs became full-time and he was working with legendary producer Joe Meek [ Tape Op #100 ]. Combining his technical aptitude and love of audio, Mr. Fletcher began building his own gear. He started the Alice mixer manufacturing company, which became a prominent maker of audio desks. After a while he decided to get away from the music industry. He spent several lucrative years building custom technology for the financial services industry. In 1991 he tried a partial retirement — but you can only run from yourself for so long. Before he knew it, he was building a new compressor out of available parts and started the Joemeek series of audio products. Ted no longer runs the Joemeek line, and is now the man behind TF Pro — luckily for us, he's still going strong and is still really enthusiastic about audio. I was fortunate to catch up with Ted Fletcher at TapeOpCon 2006. I had so many questions I was dying to ask him — especially about that choice of green.

You fell in love with compression...

...from the origins really. I started in the mid-'60s. I got into the music business as a session singer, but I was always interested in equipment. I had always been an electronic hobbyist. But in the 1960s, recording gear was in its infancy (by modern standards). It was extremely simple and extremely expensive. The young guys, which included me at the time, would have to make do with what we could find in film studios and radio broadcast studios, or design and manufacture our own stuff. That's where I got into it. I'd worked with a number of producers, most notably Joe Meek. I was part of his regular backing vocal group. In fact, we were on almost every song he made from 1962 up to sometime in 1965, which probably amounted to two to three hundred singles. So, in addition to spending a lot of time in the studio, it happened to be a time of enormous expansion of technique — and gear, too.

Could you walk me through that evolution?

We started out working in mono. We developed techniques of tracking (in the old sense) where we would record the backing track on a full track of quarter-inch tape. Then, we would erase half of the track and record on that half. Then, we would mix the two together while recording a new track. So, you ended up with three tracks, without the generational loss of having bounced numerous times. So that was where I really got interested in gear.

Was it the gear or working with Meek or both? He was a notorious experimenter!

Well, Joe Meek was really a fiend about compression. He played around with some existing American equipment that was available at the time from Fairchild. We also played around with photoelectric compression, but it was in a very simple capacity. We used conventional tungsten filament lamps and cadmium sulfide cells. There was a little power amp to drive the lamp, which was really a terrible way to go about things — but it worked.

Where did you source parts at that time? There was no audio electronics mega store or chains like Radio Shack on every block.

It was mostly military surplus stores. And we would strip parts out of old military radios. Bear in mind that everything was tube. As the industry grew, parts started to become available. Eventually in Europe, some suppliers started to pop up.

When did you decide to start making gear to sell?

It kind of just came about. By 1969 there were a bunch of studios in the vicinity of Denmark Street and the owners would come in and ask how we got a sound or an effect. Of course, it would be one of our homemade equalizers or compressors. They would borrow that, but they would never give it back. Then I would have to go make another one. Eventually, it transpired that it became economical to start a company to make equipment. The first was the Alice Mixer Company in 1969. Alice went on to develop quite large mixer consoles for movie companies in the U.K. And then we moved on to production desks for broadcast, which included the BBC and commercial radio stations.

So, how did you make the transition from large format and specialized consoles to the various compressor and rack gear designs?

I didn't really get involved in esoteric designs for compressors and things during the Alice days. I mean, they were part of the console and there were designs around, but I got disenchanted with it in the 1980s and wanted a break from consoles. At that point someone had approached me to use my expertise in other areas. In particular, I was asked to design a system for the financial industry that allowed people around the world to communicate simultaneously using speakers and microphones. Now, this was right up my alley, because I had been doing something similar for the BBC for radio phone-in programs. So, for a time I moved out kind of sideways from the conventional audio business.

Did that use telephone lines?

Yes, exactly. It was for instant trading. The important thing was the speed at which the deal was made — literally a fraction of a second. A person would call out a price and someone around the world would yell, "Mine!" and that would be a deal. By 1992 I wanted to get out of the banking industry. I moved to the southwest of England. I bought a cottage and a small boat and tried to semi-retire. But I missed the audio industry. So, I started working with some musical artists in the west country. We started putting together some tracks for a Christian music project and I lacked a suitable compressor. Now, in 1992 there wasn't much available in terms of a compressor that was at a sensible price.

Well, you would have had the dbx 160, the Alesis 3630. . .

And I didn't fancy most of those compressors. The others would have been older models that were tube based. There were Altecs or Westrex or Fairchilds — if you could find them.

That was the time where people were throwing gear away — these new digital boxes were coming out that were going to replace all of our old gear with new, digital models.

And I really try not to think about that. I was recording choral sections and I thought I could really use a something optical in terms of compression. So, I built an optical stereo compressor. It worked and it sounded pretty nice. My brother who is a songwriter heard it, and suggested I bring it to London for a session that was going on. But this was a Friday, and I had built the prototype in a very scratched up aluminum box. It just looked disgusting. It was awful. So, there I was, late on a Friday afternoon. I got into my car and drove into the local town, and there was an auto accessory shop. I got there right as he was trying to close up for the evening. And I inquired if he had any good gloss paint that would go on in one coat and will look good. And he kind of reached behind his back — and without even looking he handed me a can of spray paint. And it was bright green!

It sure was!

And this is absolutely true. I stood there wondering if I should argue with the guy or make him go see what he had out back? Or should I go for it and maybe this was this meant to be? So, I decided to keep quiet and pay the man and go home. So, I got back and painted the unit and I took it to London the next day.

What the people say?

The guys in the studio looked at it and laughed. But they plugged it in, used it and liked it. They asked if they could have it, and I could tell this whole thing was starting again.

Where did the Joemeek brand come from?

Well, my brother asked what I was going to call the new company. Now, he was one of the original group that always worked with Joe Meek in '60s. He said, "You know, Joe Meek has been dead for over 28 years. Why don't you call it Joe Meek?" So, again I was about to disagree. But like the paint I decided, "Why not? And just to be safe we'll elide the words and call it Joemeek. You know, just to be safe." We didn't want to upset anyone or cause any trouble.

Was it easy to source parts at that point?

Oh, yes. There were many sources available. Plus, I had experience from the past, and we had connections and experience from our years in manufacturing. So, we were up and running in a matter of months. Pretty soon I was designing a new piece of gear every few months. Unfortunately, the economics of the industry were changing. There was pressure to bring new products that were cheaper or to make existing products for less money. Pretty soon I got disenchanted with the whole experience and I decided I didn't want to go through it all again. I didn't think that was the part of the industry that I wanted [to be] working on. And that brings us up to date pretty quickly with the TF Pro line. I would rather work on the things that I want to work on and focus on quality. I wanted to go back to doing things the way I think they should be done.

That doesn't mean some of the Joemeek line wasn't quality gear — especially the SC2.

That's right. The SC2 was the first compressor. One of the first things we did was alter the case construction to make it lighter. It was cheaper to ship. That became the SC2.2. And there were various alterations from there where we experimented with digital outputs, et cetera. But it's important that the equipment should look right — it should feel right, it should make the user feel right. It should stand up to years of use and it should feel right when you pick it up. For example, on the TF Pro line I don't use skeleton pots. We used good sealed pots, and they are well bolted and grounded to the front panel. The whole thing has a solid feel. Also, I've moved completely away from surface mount construction.

Was the Joemeek line surface mounted?

Only the later stuff was. There are reasons to use surface mounts, but to me there is more reliability using conventional construction. And once you get used to it, it's not any more effort to test or to surface. We use brushed aluminum knobs that are not inexpensive.

Your knobs look familiar.

Well, one of my good friends in the industry is "Hutch" [Craig Hutchison] of Manley Labs. And we joke because we use the same knobs from the same factory. They are a different color, but they are the same knobs.

What about some of your latest designs?

The current stereo compressor started out as a unit I would want in my studio. But it was also going to be "IT." I wasn't going to build another compressor again. The first thing I did was add sum and difference. I did this to ensure an absolutely stable stereo image. If you use sum and difference, any errors you have will cancel out and appear as width errors. Human ears are much less sensitive to width errors than to shifts in the center image.

Do you think issues with the center image are recent developments? If so, do you attribute it to anything going on with digital recording?

Well, I think it's become prominent due to near-field monitoring. I mean it's more noticeable now than in the old days when we used a big pair of Tannoys, you know, 15 feet away. Now, with near-field speakers everything is directly there and you can really hear problems with the center image. So, it's more important to make equipment that allows you to correct for that. Anyway, this compressor also uses some new optical devices. These are very fast, faster than things we've had before. I actually had to make significant adjustments to the circuit to actually slow it down and make it behave more like a traditional photoelectric device.

Is that why you have options for "character" on the new unit?

Once I realized I had this much range of speed, I wondered if I could make it sound like an 1176, which isn't an optical compressor at all — it's an FET. Or could I make it sound like an LA-2A, or an old Altec 436C? I borrowed a load of old gear from other people. I just kept trying things out and listening and measuring the old equipment to measure what its parameters really were, especially in terms of what I know about compressors now. It's amazing what I found out in these tests. I was able to capture the speed, the attack and release of these classic compressors, and to really make it sound like those older units. So, I got some four-way switches, and of course we could make the compressor sound like a VCA, like an 1176, an LA-2A, and the easiest of all, the original SC2. It's a bit of a chameleon. But, then we go to the box and the issue of color came up again. My production manager pushed for bright red. So, this new compressor which I called the P8 came out bright red. And a number of people bought them immediately. That was nice. But as time passed, I got some feedback that the metering could be improved and I thought the suggestions were good. And with these revisions I thought I wanted to make the unit look different. You know, to further separate it from the old Joemeek line. After all, it's a new business and new designs and we want to keep separated. That's where those aluminum knobs came in, the metering changes, the sum and difference-based balance control. So, a re-design. This was quick, as the P8 had been out for only a few months. Not to mention, there were a few people who did not like the red at all. So, I renamed this compressor the P38 and changed the color.

What would you call it?

It's actually a two-tone blue. It's a dark blue and a darker blue. Then, an interesting thing is the printing is actually a pale gray. It looks white, but it's not. We found that when we used regular white against the blue it looked creaky. It just looks no good at all. So, we used a slightly pale grey and that takes the edge off of it. So, that brings us up to date. There are other pieces in the line, and it's being used not just for tracking, but mastering as well. It's used a lot on the latest Red Hot Chili Peppers CD.

That's a band that can use any gear they want. I hope more follow suit.

So do I!