Well, here I go on the second tale of the path to the Manhattan. This time I am listening to a little light Devin Townsend on my DIY transport, which at least gives me 60-70min between changes, twice that of the turntable. The problem is that my CD collection is not perfectly alphabetized as of yet, which requires that I have my next CD at the ready. That would be Mahler Symphony #2 Klemperer/Philharmonia Orchestra with the incomparable Elisabeth Schwarzkopf recorded in the earlier days of stereophonic recordings.
So I returned from Vietnam and finished school, went to work at Douglas Aircraft, went to South America, and finally got back in 1976. This is when I became interested in Stereo and Audio reproduction gear. I went to reclaim my Banjo from my folks, uncrated it and was devastated to find its neck broken, right behind the nut! Fawwwwk!!! That Banjo was a lot of good memories and money to me. My buddy, Jeff Simpson, was the owner of McCabe’s Long Beach and he put it back together for me. Most of his business was Martin and Martin wannabe guitars, with a few Gibson Banjos, Mandolins and their wannabes thrown in. McCabes was a acoustic shop only, nothing electric allowed. Back then, such a shop could still survive. Musical librarian that Jeff was, he had a few drawings/sketches of old prewar necks which he gave to me to copy for my reference. At the time, I remember comparing the dimensions on the fretwork which were slightly different than my much newer neck, which I subconsciously stuffed until a few years later.
So I started to practice again, sometimes in the good company of various members of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band who would hang out (usually individually) at McCabes from time to time. In their earliest of days, Jackson Browne was there singing with them, but that is another story. Anyway, back then my main interest was building various prototypes for what would become the first Theta gear. That is exactly what I did.
Theta Electronics was born and my Banjo was bugging me, as post repair the action was never what it had been in the old days. I decided to have a new neck made and found a Luthier in Muscle Shoals, Alabama who took the job. His name was Randy Wood, and he was doing work for a fairly obscure guy back then named Johnny Cash. It took a hundred years or so, and the Banjo finally came back. The action was fixed – it played like butter. But wait – God it was harmonically true. It sounded tonally perfect. It lacked the warm richness of the prewar banjos (like tubes) but it was note for note perfect, all up and down the neck. I went back and tried new banjos again, and not only was the warmness not there, but they were tonally messed up. (As were the newer guitars when I ran scales)
Hey, but genius that I was, I had it all reasoned out. The missing warmness was of course due to the not yet aged and seasoned wood in the post WW2 banjo pot. Further, the action and tonally perfect neck was due to the genius of a luthier who knew exactly What he was doing building a new, custom, neck. Easy as it would have been, it took me almost 40 years to compare the fret positions/dimensions of the fretboard on Randy’s neck to the original neck and more significantly to the prewar print copies that Jeff Simpson gave me. Not that the measurement differences would have done me any good at that time when I was living in two compartmentalized universes – Music and Hi Fi. The lesson for me all these years later is the futility of audio equipment design with no understanding of the engineering inherent in music theory.
The close relation between audio gear design and (at least some) knowledge of music theory is very rare. That's why I think that an unique combination of right factors, people, knowledge and events like the one happening at Schiit right now could achieve what others weren't even able to conceive.
