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[Ivan Beaver]

I also have White Instruments octal socket based filters to plug into BGW amps. Prior to DSP I thought it might be cool to have power amps that handled band restricted program material.

I have a rack mount chassis that used the white eq filters.

I like to show it to people as how it used to be done.

You figure out what freq you need cut-how wide etc, then ORDER IT and wait for it to arrive.

Stick it in, then figure out if you need another filter and so forth until you get the system eqed weeks later

[MikeHarris]

IIRC...the White notch filter tuning master was Dr Boner

[duane massey]

Here's a pic from 1975. This was the album cover of our first release, and we used a pic of an older console built by our small company, Amphion, (probably 1973-4) instead of conventional artwork because (a) it tied in with the album title, "Ruff Mix", and (b) we couldn't afford real artwork.

At the top of the console partially visible were the 7-band eq's on the outputs. There were also provisions (although not installed on this unit) for a three-way (tri-amp) send from the console. Unit had a spring reverb and a mil-spec connector for a 16ch snake.

Lots and lots of hand wiring. No IC's, all transistors, built mostly out of ignorance because we truly didn't know better.

[Steve M Smith]

built mostly out of ignorance because we truly didn't know better.

You can learn a lot with that technique.


Steve.

[Ivan Beaver]

You can learn a lot with that technique.


Steve.

That is where I got most of my sound education.  Trial and error.  LOTS of error.

[Steve M Smith]

That is where I got most of my sound education.  Trial and error.  LOTS of error.

Me too.  I think it's the best way.

Managers at work are always going on about 'right first time' as if it's some sort of mark of great competence, but probably because it looks good on a spreadsheet.

I am always telling them about one of my heroes, Edwin Land, inventor of Polaroid photography.  He absolutely hated getting a solution straight away as it didn't teach him the parameters of the process.  If you get it wrong many times, changing one thing at a time by a small amount until you narrow down the process, you will know what's going on.  If you hit a working solution straight away, you don't know if you are in the middle of its tolerance or at one of the edges.


Steve.

[Ivan Beaver]

Me too.  I think it's the best way.

Managers at work are always going on about 'right first time' as if it's some sort of mark of great competence, but probably because it looks good on a spreadsheet.

I am always telling them about one of my heroes, Edwin Land, inventor of Polaroid photography.  He absolutely hated getting a solution straight away as it didn't teach him the parameters of the process.  If you get it wrong many times, changing one thing at a time by a small amount until you narrow down the process, you will know what's going on.  If you hit a working solution straight away, you don't know if you are in the middle of its tolerance or at one of the edges.


Steve.

But to many people-simply "working" is just fine.

But they never realize how good it "could be".  Or they have never experienced better and think that "everything" is like that.

[Stephen Kirby]

Me too.  I think it's the best way.

Managers at work are always going on about 'right first time' as if it's some sort of mark of great competence, but probably because it looks good on a spreadsheet.

I am always telling them about one of my heroes, Edwin Land, inventor of Polaroid photography.  He absolutely hated getting a solution straight away as it didn't teach him the parameters of the process.  If you get it wrong many times, changing one thing at a time by a small amount until you narrow down the process, you will know what's going on.  If you hit a working solution straight away, you don't know if you are in the middle of its tolerance or at one of the edges.


Steve.

Characterizing something and zeroing in on a solution are wonderful.  These days the "fail fast, fail hard" credo is used to excuse random flailing rather than trying to understand something.

Back in the days of modular synths I worked in a music store and tried to teach people how to use them.  Someone would yank a patch cord out of one socket and stick it into another and it would stop making any sound at all.  I would ask them why they did that.  If they replied that they thought that the output of this would modulate that and maybe sound like this, then I would help them trace back the signal path and see where their inventively went astray and then help them see what the sound they were after could do.  But all too often I would get a blank "I wanted to see what it sounded like." with no idea what they had done.  I'd send them home with some basic patch diagrams and wait for them to come trade it in over the next couple months.

These days Silicon Valley seems to have two parallel paths.  Throw everything against the wall and see what sticks.  And, once something sort of sticks, mitigate every risk possible so that nobody can be blamed for it not staying up there.

[Ike Zimbel]

Certainly not bizarre or goofy but with the sad death of Neil Muncy I will mention using one of his creations, the SS ( Suburban Sound ) 3 mixer.  A band I knew named Grits back in the day had built their own 1" eight track studio ( I'm talking early to mid 70s back in the day here ) and the mixer was an SS3 supplemented by a pair of API compressors and EQ modules. They brought the mixer out for their live gigs as well. My own system was still at the Tapco mixer level so being able to get the use of the SS3 occasionally was a real treat.  Melcor potted op amps, sealed Allen Bradley pots, that thing was built like a tank. 

It also gave me a life long appreciation for the idea that audio equipment does NOT have to have dead black control surfaces to be worthwhile.

Neil Muncy and I became good friends over the last few years of his life. He was a great guy and very smart...our industry owes him a lot just for identifying and correcting the Pin-1 Problem.
I ended up servicing at least four SS-3 mixers which are still in use in studios here in Toronto. The folks that own them still swear by them. Here's the original sales brochure for them.

[Dan Mortensen]

Neil Muncy and I became good friends over the last few years of his life. He was a great guy and very smart...our industry owes him a lot just for identifying and correcting the Pin-1 Problem.

As someone essentially said earlier in this vintage thread after there'd been no replies for a couple years, it exists as a history repository so periodic revival is probably OK.

That's cool you got to know him. He came and gave a presentation to our AES Section (Pacific Northwest -Seattle-) in about 1989 or so about the Pin 1 problem. He needed some RFI sources, and I took my Spectrum Controls lighting dimmer, which put out huge RFI even after installation of some chokes, and I was proud/humiliated that he was quite impressed at how much BS it was putting out.

I will actually never forget the awesomeness of that meeting. He started just after 7:30pm with his presentation, and it was completely riveting to everyone in the room. We went from one thing to another to another to another, and were all on the same page in being fascinated by what he was telling us. And he seemed to enjoy being with us and was eager to share his knowledge, which, as you suggest, was ground-breaking at the time and is now accepted practice.

We got to a place where it seemed like it might be a good time to stop for a break and looked at the clock, and it was 12:30AM!

We've never had another meeting like that.

I took his words to heart, and that week went into my 25+ Carver PM-whatever-they were (1250? 2.0? some mixture of those) and put in little jumpers from pin 1 to chassis and never had any more hum/buzz problems with them.

I always wished we have him back again, but it wasn't to be. You're lucky in getting to know him.

Edit: Oh, hey, this is in the History of Concert Sound thread. Of course it can be added to years later.