Chapter 3 on the MP Saga. I went to school, began working at Douglas Aircraft in Long Beach on solenoid design, hated it, and began working for Texas Instruments on field testing of early digital multi-channel tape recorders. I went first, and briefly, to Saudi Arabia (you guessed – hated it) and ended up in Peru, working in jungle sites which I actually loved. The problem was there was no place for either Music or Hi-Fi traveling from site to site. I stayed down there traveling around and working for five years or so, ended up drunk in my favorite bar in Lima (Johann Sebastian Bar) listening to some Mahler and decided that I missed music, hi-fi, and redheads enough to get back to the good old USA. (I hadn’t been to Ireland yet.)
Back I came, hooked up with an old acquaintance who was opening a stereo store, and started building tube amps for that store. They were designed specifically for Quad ESL speakers. This was 1976 or so, the era of the last of the great, old-time analog audio. It wasn’t long before another old audio buddy approached me to co-found (with him) the original Theta Electronics. This was the 6DJ8, no feedback, passive EQ preamp which was ice water dumped on the early solid state electronics (which would knock the fillings out of your teeth while generating the noise background a loud stuck, noisy, toilet) and old classic 12AX7 tube designs (which had the bass of a refried beans fart through a couple of layers of diaper, while retaining all of the stuck toilet noise). The feedbackless 6DJ8 was a completely different sound, quiet,open and not harsh at all. I was so engaged in this company, I was not involved in music at all.
At least until I went back to McCabe’s in the early 1980’s and got back into it, practicing frequently until one night late I was coming home to my second floor apartment and tripped on the stairs going up and used my hand to break the fall, which also broke my little finger metacarpal. Ugh!