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Pastimes : Where the GIT's are going -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Augustus Gloop who wrote (138449)	3/23/2007 6:55:10 PM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 225578

you left out Tiny Tim

To: Augustus Gloop who wrote (138449)	3/23/2007 6:59:39 PM
From: Carolyn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 225578

Gosh! Music, football. Nicholas is stuck!

To: Augustus Gloop who wrote (138449)	3/24/2007 12:29:36 PM
From: Augustus Gloop	Respond to of 225578

The Engineers Who Changed Recording Fathers Of Invention Tom Scholz: The Rockman Painfully thin and angular in the consumptive manner of Romantic poets, Tom Scholz is what all musical geeks aspire to be. He graduated at the head of his classes in Mechanical Engineering degrees (bachelors and masters) at MIT in Boston, the city he would name his band after. For someone legendary in the music industry for procrastinative perfectionism — Epic Records sued Scholz and Boston for $20 million to get the band to release their third record, one of only three they would release over 11 years on the label — Scholz generated a prodigious output when it comes to invention. Scholz Research & Development (SRD) is built upon Scholz's inherent scientific nature and the experience he gained working as a design engineer at Polaroid in the early 1970s. In 1980, in between the second and third Boston albums, SRD released the Power Soak, which, using a series of resistors between the output of a 100 Watt tube amp and a speaker cabinet, allowed for big sounds at low volumes and was an instant hit with guitarists (and SPL-stunned engineers). In 1982 came the Rockman, a belt-worn solid-state headphone amp which reproduced the guitar sounds he astounded the world with on the debut Boston album. The company went on to release numerous related products, and Scholz personally was awarded over two dozen design patents before he sold SRD to Dunlop in 1995. Photo courtesy of Universal Audio As well as designing much of the equipment that went into his studios, Bill Putnam also planned and built the studios themselves. Scholz's musical background was more classical than pop — he played piano as a child and didn't pick up the guitar, which would become his trademark, till he was 21. The same ability to synthesize science and music that made Boston's records so unique-sounding also helped Scholz create products that helped feed the niche being carved by Tascam's Portastudio: he was taking what previously had required large amounts of space, technical adroitness and volume (not to mention money) and putting it into a simple, affordable box. Like Bill Putnam, Scholz recognised the need to acknowledge a market, not just solve a studio challenge. "I was a fixer, a builder — an inventor — ever since I can remember," Scholz once told writer Larry Lange in an interview. John Boylan, who produced Boston's debut record, which has sold over 16 million units, recalls that Scholz's engineering foundation was critical to the music, and provides insight into how Scholz created the Rockman. "When the first album was a huge success, and he had some money, [Tom] bought a special oscilloscope which would freeze-frame the waveform of an audio signal," Boylan explains. "He would play the guitar sound into the 'scope, freeze the waveform, then take a picture of it with a special Polaroid camera that he had acquired when he worked there. He used this method to be sure that he was always getting the same guitar sound. Photo: Ron Pownall, courtesy Boston Tom Scholz, with his wall of Rockman gear. "To me, Tom Scholz is interesting because he got his start with engineering that had nothing to do with audio. He helped [Polaroid chief] Ed Land perfect the ill-fated instant movie camera. The two technical achievements that he had worked out on his own that impressed me were his use of analogue, bucket-brigade delay on guitars, and his use of a variable resistor between the Marshall 100 Watt head and the cabinet, which he later marketed as the Power Soak." Still Boylan contends, "I'd venture a guess that the two domains of inventor and engineer are in separate compartments of his thinking process." Business was definitely compartmentalised. "I hated it," Scholz told Larry Lange of his brief career as an entrepreneur, despite selling tens of thousands of products. He continues to use analogue recording techniques and technologies — he still has a stash of Scotch 226 tape — and live Boston performances continue to haul with them a ton of studio-level gear connected in complex ways. One can wear more than one hat, but not all of them always look good on you.