Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[bob schwarz]

John, if you still had, and sold the WE amp, you could have enough money to make a substantial down payment on a house.
Bob

[John Roberts {JR}]

John, if you still had, and sold the WE amp, you could have enough money to make a substantial down payment on a house.
Bob

I've heard that before but this was not in working condition even going back to my earliest memories. My dad had mounted it to a wooden support beam in the basement and may have had it working back before i was born, but when me and my brothers pulled it out to refinish the basement it was a rusty pile of spider webs etc.

For more blasphemy back in the early '70s I gutted the bottom PS section that was 2' tall by itself. I built in a 4x200W per channel audio amp into it. It was a heavy sucker, the power transformer that I added weighed 65# by itself. I used to joke that if anybody tried to steal it I would hold the door for them, they wouldn't get far. I still have that hifi amp and it still works. I used the old school 3 position power switch that would let you turn on the tube heaters before applying full power, to limit inrush current, and not connect the speaker relays until you switch to the second on position. 

My dad worked at WE back in the day so for him it was just tired old gear, that he replaced with a modern for the '50s tube amp that took up a tiny fraction of the space. Small enough to stick in a nook in the living room, and not hide in the basement.

My dad died before i was old enough to ask him intelligent questions. I have fond memories of one saturday morning that he took mini-me into work with him. He was a recording engineer for RCA in NYC at the time. I'm sure I pestered his techs that were trying to work. As I recall they were melting wax onto microscope slides that morning presumably so they could later look at the condition of the lathe cutting heads by cutting some actual wax.

I recall a full size statue of nipper in the recording studio entrance. That might be worth a few bucks today too...

JR

[Mark Cadwallader]

How times have changes -- theaters used to be designed to (try to) have good acoustics, and performers how to project. Some audiences used to know how listen to the performances, too....

(Hurumph!  Whippersnappers! Damn kids these days.....)

Mark C.

[lindsay Dean]

How times have changes -- theaters used to be designed to (try to) have good acoustics, and performers how to project. Some audiences used to know how listen to the performances, too....

(Hurumph!  Whippersnappers! Damn kids these days.....)

Mark C.

40 years from now the whipper snappers will
be saying the same thing, ah sweet vintage

[Bob Charest]

...My dad died before i was old enough to ask him intelligent questions. I have fond memories of one saturday morning that he took mini-me into work with him. He was a recording engineer for RCA in NYC at the time. I'm sure I pestered his techs that were trying to work. As I recall they were melting wax onto microscope slides that morning presumably so they could later look at the condition of the lathe cutting heads by cutting some actual wax.

I recall a full size statue of nipper in the recording studio entrance. That might be worth a few bucks today too...

JR

Hi John,
What a wonderful memory! Although My recollections of my dad aren't related to audio (he was a surgeon,) but I was always amazed by the ability he had to craft things (Good hands, right?) and learned basic workshop skills from him. I still love to solve things, and most love solving physical problems... like how to stage something correctly, etc.

Thanks for sharing that one...

Best regards,
Bob

[John Roberts {JR}]

I have my dads old work notebooks from WE and many pages are filled with things we take for granted today like stable speed control for motors and the like. He also worked for Vitaphone Corp the joint venture between WE and Warner Brothers to make the first talking pictures...

One of his early gigs was to record the coronation of King George (1937) for the newsreels. Back then he made the trip across the pond by boat.

A few weeks before he died (cancer) I recall him getting a case of wine as a christmas gift from Perry Como, apparently one of the recording artists he worked with for RCA. Somewhere I had (and lost) a lacquer out-take of Toscanini cursing out the NBC orchestra in italian when they blew the take while recording some classical piece.

My dad was also a jazz drummer and my mom posed as a nude model for a mannequin company before meeting dad. It appears both my parents were way cooler than me. 

JR       

[Bob Leonard]

Those memories are priceless John, hold on tight.

My dad started his career at the Watertown Arsenal as an all around machinist while going to Wentworth nights. He ended his career at Hanscom AFB as a model maker, many of his designs and prototypes ending up in space or in war. When I was a little shit I would often ask him to show me his tools. These were the gauges, indicators and micrometers he made while at Wentworth in his final year, and which were 90% of his final grade.

After high school I started my own journey, eventually ending up in the same lab he had just retired from. I eventually left that lab to work in my current field for an increase in pay of $15K, substantial at the time. Today I still have those tools which rest preserved along with my own. I still check the tools to this day and hold his tools thinking of those times from long ago. He's gone now, but I still hear every word and feel his hands on mine as he shows me what each tool can do. Today would have been his birthday. Damn I miss my dad.

[ProSoundWeb Community]