I've made my share along the way. Not all in audio.
Yeah, I'm basically still in diapers.
I caught the audio bug ~1992 when I realized I intuitively understood how to set up the PA and run the mixer for the high school talent show. Of course, the contracted sound guy wasn't quite ready to let some random 15-year-old kid mess up the production. He was right and I had backstage duties, anyway, but that's basically when it started. Same year I started playing guitar.
My collection of recording magazines started a few years later and ended when Stephen St. Croix died.
In college I discovered REP magazine and managed to collect some back issues. Still have them in a garage somewhere.
That's not too far off of my story. I already had the audio bug and was a ham radio operator at 10. I fixed up a pair of old Magnavox mono amps out of a console stereo with some two ways that my Dad was kind enough to lend his amazing woodworking skill and of course overdid it with gorgeous joinery and taught me how to paint it correctly. The sounded amazing for random bits I collected for nothing. I did save up my pennies for a Technics turntable and a Stanton cartridge. That was a heck of a system for a child. The preamp was passive and I built the phone preamp from a design out of a magazine. My amateur mentor showed me how to put another set of transistors in the output stage of the phone preamp and get another 9db so the passive preamp was amazing. That system served me until I was 16 I only added an Akai open reel and a Kenwood cassette.
Back to the live sound, something happened to the sound guy and church and I had been shadowing him so at 13 years old I mixed a Methodist service for about 400 on a Bogen amp and speakers hung live every 6 feet. I did that until I was 15 and the church had a "new member" that thought a child should not be doing sound. Mind you I asked him if he could repair XLR's, troubleshoot the 70v system, he had no clue. What he did have was the money for a Vocalmaster. Since I basically told everyone that the speakers mounted in the Transept at about 7 feet was not going to cover the back of the room and be too loud for the people in Transept. I mentioned the only thing this guy has that we need is money and he was an idiot. I got a good lesson in adult politics and I was fired. Yes the system sucked and he could not mix so it was feedback city until I went off to college. It didn't really matter as I had already been mixing on the high school auditorium in middle school, a stack of the old Shure 4 input rotary dial mixers (they sounded great) with Bose 802's I believe they were in a custom flown cabinet, 4 of them) It was a powerful system for the day and I could use the 2 band parametric EQ and get some real gain out of the lavs so I had biggey toys to play with including 16 dimmer channels on a 2 scene preset Scirpan (I think that is the spelling) and two follow spots outside the "booth". So by the time I graduated high school I was doing some cover band work, a little theatre and some political stuff for a friend of my Dad's. Amateur radio piddled away as I was working after school at a Motorola MSO fixing and installing 2 way radios that weighed 70lbs in filthy garbage trucks etc. I was working a flow bench at a racing shop on the weekends so my college fund was well stocked.
That is the next chapter. I was in the theater on my 2nd day of college. They were on deck to get a Strand Century pallet and had a Yamaha audio console and VoT's with BGW. Started working in clubs and took a semester off to do my one and only tour. A waffed in and out of autio my whole life including a 3 years stint at First Baptist Jacksonville. We had around 6000 in main service. I was brought in because they had just rented an hour of time on a local VHF station and I came in to setup the STL. I knew how to work with master control and get the link switched over and the Grass Valley switcher was cake. I sub'd in audio occasionally too.
About 12 years ago I started doing sound for a cover band in Cleveland as I had the itch. That's when these fine people started helping me and getting my head around new processes. I ended up buying a QSC rig and the first x32 that I know of in Cleveland and started working with my business partner Shawn Casper (hence the Ghost AV name). He had contacts my day job and empty nester provided plenty of capital. We have screamed up in the last 5 years buying out another competitor that took us to the next level. I am about ready to retire from my day job and run the audio company full time until I can't work and hopefully find a nice young person that wants to learn the business and take it over as I have no kids so it's either that our flat sell out.
So yeppers geek from 10 to 58 and still going strong. Nice to hear someone else's story. I tried to condense that I hope it didn't sound like the ramblings of a lunatic.
