I have been involved in electronics, with an emphasis on audio, for over thirty years. Over those three decades I have designed, built, operated, and sometimes even sold nearly every type of audio device imaginable.
I began with building guitar amplifiers in my mid-teens, accidently hitting upon a circuit topology and a sound eerily similar to that of a much more famous British amplifier (ripping canvas and infinite sustain anyone?). Had I known then what I know now.
I moved to Toronto in the 1980s and began a long stint with EMI Music (Capitol Records) where I built, installed, and maintained a wide variety of equipment ranging from mastering facilities to pure manufacturing hardware. A rich learning experience for which I owe a debt of gratitude to Dan Middleton who was my very tolerant boss.
In '94 I moved to Sony Music Canada where I had the opportunity to participate in some of the best days of that organization's existence.
With the contraction of the music business in the early days of the 21st century I lit out for alternate pastures and toiled in the industrial automation trenches for several years before returning to my true interests by joining Aercoustics Engineering.
Opportunity presented itself once again and I joined IMAX Corporation as an audio systems designer just in time to participate in the development and launch of IMAX's new digital projection system. There are few opportunities like that in any lifetime.
Since then I have become the Senior Audio Systems Designer at IMAX - a dream job by any standards.
In the background of various day jobs I designed and built customized studio monitor loudspeakers (being among the first to build-in signal processing and power amplification), servo subwoofers, and of course, more guitar amplifiers.
In among all those activities I have also been Chairman of the Toronto AES section and served in several board positions for the section.
I have recently re-discovered the guitar after at least a decade of estrangement and have been smiling away many hours wearing down the frets on my Telly and it's cousin Lester. And, yes, I built my own amplifier.
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