Shop: This is our biggest workbench. Greg Granieri has the left side and David’s area is on the right.
Interviewer: You’re so organized!
Shop: (Laughs) That’s what everyone says when they see me the first time. Kulka says that for each hour spent working on gear, there’s another hour handling parts, putting stuff in the right place, cleaning up and keeping the place shipshape. It’s a huge amount of background work.
Interviewer: No wonder your shop looks very neat.
Shop: Have you seen the shops in some of those audio dealers and studios? They’re atrocious. Old junk and parts strewn from here to breakfast, trash all around, client gear piled up in disarray. It’s a miracle they get anything done, and you really question the quality of the work. We’re a clean, well lighted sanctuary in the jungle of pro audio madness.
Interviewer: What’s the big gray panel with all the knobs?
Shop: That a big switch panel for test gear and monitoring that David designed and had built. It’s connected to a bunch of generators, analyzers, meters, and scopes along with the CD player and stereo system. It can switch between +4 balanced, +4 unbalanced, and RCA -10, and routes signals in every way that you could imagine. It also has AES and SPDIF in and out, DB-25 8-channel connectors with switching, and a powered interface box with adaptor cables for API, Neve, dbx, Harrison, MCI, and Aphex modules. You can plug just about anything in and test audio instantly.
Interviewer: Excuse me, did you say Harrison? Your people work on Harrison gear?
Shop: Well, occasionally. David grew up with it at United/Western and says he still has a soft spot for Harrison stuff. Did you know that before getting into getting into console design, Dave Harrison was at King Records in Cincinnati? He recorded Mother Popcorn and a bunch of other James Brown stuff.
Interviewer: (Yawns) Fascinating. Tell me more about these dials and gizmos we’re seeing.
Shop: Tucked away on the right are four 8 ohm 300 watt load resistors, both wirewound and non-inductive, for testing amps and power supplies. All the benches have varias for testing gear with short circuits, and for gradually powering up older gear that’s hasn’t run for a while.
Interviewer: David and crew must have spent a lot of time setting all this up!
Shop: It’s a unending process – I get tired just thinking about it. The 200 or so bench outlets are switched on and off by relays, controlled by a master switch near the door. The benches all have air hoses with nozzles. Steve Lange piped air all through the shop, with all sorts of filters and regulators. He also modified six HP 3310B function generators for the benches, with stepped attenuators and balanced outputs. David’s design. Of course, we have one or two Ethernet ports on each bench and all sorts of computer gear, including a big HP printer that does hi-res, oversize pages for patchbay labels and large schematics.
Hey, here’s our collection of schematics and manuals. We’ve got a lot of incredibly rare documents here. You wouldn’t believe what the guys went through to get some of this material!
Interviewer: Quite a setup. But so far I haven’t seen any people. How about a peek at your staff?
Shop: OK, here’s a look at everyone working at their benches.
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