Who is Bob Heil and where did he come from?
I started in 1955 as the pipe organist at the Fox Theater in St. Louis. I was fortunate to learn how to voice and tune that pipe organ as a teenager. That's where I learned to listen — listening is a real art. I played for twelve years professionally in restaurants, theaters and concert halls — theater organ, not church organ. I started a little music shop in late '66 — Ye Olde Music Shop. Through HAM radio I was learning how to build and design at the same time all this was happening. My music shop career started out with Hammond organs. I was renting them to groups because none of the traditional Steinway piano dealers would do that. I'd be into these groups and find out, "Wow, their PA is terrible!" They're using little columns and playing twenty-thousand seat halls. That's what started Heil Sound. I built this monster PA out of some old speakers that they threw out at the Fox Theater — A4 Altecs. Big stuff — nobody was doing that. I got a call from the Fox one day for this group that didn't have a PA. Well, the group was The Grateful Dead and their gear had been confiscated in New Orleans the night before! That was when Owsley [Stanley] got busted for being out of the state — the police took him and his PA. The band didn't know what had happened. The theater called me, handed the phone to [Jerry] Garcia and he said, "What do you got, man?" I told him I had Macintosh amps, all A4 Altecs and multi-cell horns. That was big-time for 1971. Nobody was doing that. They took us on tour. I realized from that experience that there was a need to package gear.
John Baccigaluppi said he just saw an old Heil console come through his studio.
We started building them around 1969 through to about 1980.
Who designed those?
Me. We built everything in-house. We built the circuit boards. We stuffed the circuit boards. We tested each one. They're all modular. The reason I did that — what if you're a group out in the field and channel six dies? What are you going to do? "I've got to send the board back." Just unplug channel six and send it to me. You're still working. You're down one channel but you're not down ten channels. Pretty ingenious for 1971.
How many of those consoles were there?
Oh, thousands. They're on eBay all the time.
So other sound companies or bands could purchase systems from you?
