Mar 11, 2024
We delve into the legacy of Bob Heil, a titan in the pro audio
industry whose influence reverberates through the echoes of rock
and roll history. From his early days wielding the organ to
revolutionizing live sound with his groundbreaking work alongside
legends like The Who and Grateful Dead, Heil's journey is one of
innovation, passion, and an indelible mark on music technology.
We’re treated to an exclusive clip from a memorable interview,
uncovering the story behind the iconic talk box and its role in
Peter Frampton’s electrifying performances. Alongside reflections
from our hosts and the fond recollections of interactions with
Heil, this episode serves as a tribute to a man whose work
amplified the soul of music.
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Celebrating the Legacy of Bob Heil: A Look Back at the remarkable career of an audio industry pioneer, from his beginnings as an organ player to his revolutionary contributions to pro audio and live sound.
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Exclusive Insights: Featuring a clip from a 2017 interview with Bob Heil at the NAMM show, shedding light on his history, innovations, and the creation of the iconic talk box.
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The Birth of Rock and Roll Sound: How Bob Heil's innovative sound systems changed the game for artists like The Who and Grateful Dead, setting new standards for live music performances.
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Remembering a Legend: Personal anecdotes and reflections on Bob Heil’s impact, his approach to sound engineering, and his legacy within the music and audio production communities.
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Tribute to a Visionary: Acknowledging Heil's vast contributions, from his early work with organs and sound systems to his influence on modern podcasting and amateur radio.
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And if you're in the market for a new Mic or killer pair of headphones, check out Austrian Audio. They've got a great range of top-shelf gear..
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“When the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.”
Hunter S Thompson
Summary
In this episode of The Pro Audio Suite, sponsored by Tribooth and
Austrian Audio, the team pays homage to the late Bob Heil, a
revered figure in the pro audio industry. Hosted by Robert
Marshall, Andrew Peters, George "the tech" Wittam, and Darren
Robertson, they reflect on Heil's influential career, from his
beginnings playing the organ to revolutionizing the sound systems
for rock and roll, particularly for the legendary rock opera
"Quadrophenia."
Heil, also a dedicated ham radio operator and a friend of Joe Walsh, leaves behind a remarkable legacy. His prowess is exemplified by his creation of the PR 40 microphone, considered the gold standard in podcast mics due to its distinctive tone.
The episode concludes with a remembrance of Bob Heil's innovation, good-natured enthusiasm, and his considerable contributions to pro-audio technology.
#RockAndRollLegacy #ProAudioInnovators #PR40MicMagic
Timestamps
(00:00:00) Introduction - Tribooth Sponsorship
(00:04:34) Bob's Ham Radio and Microphone Endeavors
(00:10:02) Evolution of Microphone Brightness
(00:10:55) Pro Audio Suite Recording Setup
Transcript
Speaker A: Y'all ready? Be history.
Speaker B: Get started.
Speaker A: Welcome.
Speaker B: Hi. Hi. Hello, everyone to the pro audio suite.
Speaker C: These guys are professional. They're motivated.
Speaker A: Thanks to Tribooth, the best vocal booth for home or on
the road. Voice recordings and austrian audio making passion heard.
Introducing Robert Marshall from source elements and someone audio
post Chicago, Darren. Robert Robertson from Voodoo Radio Imaging,
Sydney, to the Vo stars, George the tech Wittam from LA, and me,
Andrew Peters, voiceover talent and home studio guy.
Speaker B: Here we go.
Speaker A: And don't forget the code.
: Trip a P 200. That will get you $200 off your triboof. And
austrian audio making passion heard. Unfortunately, someone won't
be heard anymore, which is a sad loss to the industry is Bob Heil,
who's had an illustrious career kicking off playing the mighty
organ and then becoming a pro audio guy. And George, you had the
privilege of catching up with him on numerous occasions, I'm
gathering.
Speaker C: Yeah, I think more than once. There's just one
particular interview from the NAm music trade show here in Anaheim
from 2017, where I had a good, long interview, I mean, pretty long
for a trade show interview. It was like nine minutes. And he really
got a lot into his history. And at the time, I think I was
remembering. Let's get onto the topic at hand, you know what I
mean? He was giving me a lot of his backstory. And now I look back
and I'm like, sure. I'm glad I had that chance. And to really hear
it straight from him. I'm sure he's told those stories a thousand
times. Right. But it was really cool hearing it from him. I mean,
he literally created the sound system and envisioned the sound for
quadrophenia.
: Oh, really?
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker C: In fact, I have a clip here I can play from that
interview where he talks about the birth of what he called the
birth of rock and roll sound. I think that's what he called it.
Here, take a listen.
: Just go into the Internet, put in the night. Rock and roll sound
was born. It's a true story. It really was the first night. And it
was with the Grateful Dead. It's quite a story. They wrote the song
trucking about it because they're selling all the gear. Yeah, well,
their soundman got confiscated the night before because he wasn't
supposed to be out of the state of California. We won't get into
that. You can go figure it all out. But they come to St. Louis with
no pa, ironically. To where? The Fox theater.
Speaker C: The perfect place.
: Well, there again, the stage manager calls you. You still have
all those speakers? And I said, yeah, talk to this guy, handed the
telephone to Garcia. And then we hit the front page of billboard
because we went on tour with them out of there. And at that time,
nobody had ever played through anything like that. I didn't know
that. I'm like, this is pretty good, right? Because I had a
longevity board that I had gotten and recording board. I had
Macintosh amps. It was a big hi fi. That's what I looked and
listened. It was beautiful. It wasn't just a loud pa. It was a
beautiful sounding pa. That's new.
Speaker C: That was new then.
: Well, because of the pipe work. And I learned to listen. I had to
voice and tune that as at the age of 15, we started in
harmonically. Nobody realizes about the harmonics that are so
important. I learned that as a young kid, and it's carried through
everything I do. But then I was on the road. We hit the front page
of billboard and everybody was calling us. One of them was the who.
We ended up with them for six years. And from there it was humble
pie. Jay Giles, on and on and on. But then they took Frampton out.
He was a star of humble pie. They took him out as a solo act. And
his little gal penny was married in my home when they were 18. She
called me shortly after. She said, I need a Christmas present for
Peter. And I sent her a talk box. You can write the rest of Peter
Frampton's history, and it's well defined. You go to our
website.
: Wow. Yeah, I remember the talk box. Frampton comes alive. And
that came out. It was like such a feature, and it was so weird.
Like, you'd never heard anything like it before. What a story,
though.
Speaker C: Yeah. I'd love to get into his brain as to how he
actually even came up with that idea. I'm thinking he was hanging a
lot with the Grateful Dead when he came.
: Up with that idea. I think I know what you're getting at.
Speaker C: There was some serious psychotropic stuff activity going
on there. But, yeah, I mean, the fact that he started. I didn't get
that part of the interview, but he started as an organist, so
that's a very high level of musicianship required to play an organ.
And then he would set up the organs. He would tune the organs.
: He was aware of the organs sound. And those organs have just to
know how the PA sounds, because the organ's a big sound. You're
aware of loud instruments.
Speaker C: Yeah, with a lot of sources. Every pipe, every thousands
of pipes. So, yeah, what an incredible background he had. And the.
Then, you know, he's out there selling mics at know, which is.
That's one of the neatest reasons to get to go to a nam show, is
you did get to know a, you know, and you got to talk to him and
interact with, you know, Wes Dooley from AEA microphones. Grew up
repairing RCA microphones.
: He's a trip. Wes Dooley is great.
Speaker C: Totally.
: Just another booth at Nam.
Speaker C: Actually, a living historian. Right. And you get to talk
to these folks face to face. It's amazing. But, yeah. I met Bob's
daughter, who still works for Heil and still goes out to trade
shows and does the beat, and she was very nice, and there's just a
heck of a legacy there. So he will be missed for sure. And he was a
huge ham radio operator. Amateur radio, as they call, playing
organ.
: Over the ham radio station like he has his own station. That was
just like organ playing, I think, or something.
Speaker C: Yeah, it was over.
: He was also friends because he's actually from. Well, he died in
Illinois.
Speaker C: Yeah, he's from St. Louis.
: Right. But he was friends with Thomas Holman.
Speaker C: Wait a minute.
: Thomas Holman started, did the THX protocol.
Speaker C: Oh, he's the th and thx, yeah. Oh, wow.
: And Thomas Holman ended up, I believe, over with connections to
Skywalker Sound and another audio luminary or whatever.
Speaker C: So cool. And then Bob also picked up, they picked up Bob
to be a host on a podcast called this week in Tech Twit TV, which
was the show that influenced me to start my own show 1512 years
ago. And he did his own show over there about ham radio. And they
did it for quite a long time, actually, until they had to end the
show. But they still have his rig that he had built for that show.
It's still at the Twitch studios in one corner of the know, a
memory of really cool.
Speaker B: Really, really cool.
: The quirkiest thing, I thought, with Bob was his friendship with
Joe Walsh, who was also a ham radio.
: Didn't Joe Walsh also use the talk box a bit?
Speaker B: Did he?
Speaker C: He did. He said later in that interview that Joe Walsh
really kind of had it mastered. He really clearly, in hearing his
interviews and reading his interviews, how he had an extremely. He
was extremely tight with Joe. They were best buddies, and they
spent a lot of time talking ham amateur radio together.
: Did they go driving in Joe's maserati?
Speaker C: Probably. And it was actually Joe who was experimenting
with using the mics that Bob had made for doing amateur radio
because.
: For doing studio work.
Speaker C: Yeah. Bob hated the crappy mics. That amateur radio
operators were stuck using. So he made a better mic. And then Joe
was like, yo, plug this thing into your studio console. And Bob's
like, I never would have thought of that. He's like, I'm telling
you, it sounds better than an SM 57 or a 58. And he's like, yeah,
you're right, it does. And a brand of microphones was born from
there. His most well known podcast mic, the one that's kind of the
gold standard, is called the PR 40. And it has a distinct tone to
it. It has a distinct voice.
: Is it kind of big sounding?
Speaker C: It's big, and it has a lot of cut, like mid range.
: It's like a combo of like an SM seven and a 416 or something.
Speaker C: Kind of almost. It doesn't have the top end of a 416,
but it definitely has more of a cut. So if you ever listen to Leo
Laporte on this week in tech, or any of the shows that Leo does,
you'll hear the distinct sound of that mic. It's not a flat or a hi
fi mic, it's a broadcast mic.
: But it's a dynamic sounding mic.
Speaker C: Yes, it's a dynamic mic, and its voicing is designed for
being heard. Let's just put it that way.
: Yes.
Speaker C: The PR 30 and the PR 20, to me, sound a little bit
smoother. I like the voicing of them better, personally. But the
bottom line is Bob tuned his mics by ear. And he said that
specifically later in the interview. I wasn't curious about
response curves and all this stuff. I would just go by what I
thought sounded right. So those mics are tuned by Bob's ear. And
the guy had a good ear, but probably by the time he got into his
fifty s, sixty s, seventy s, didn't hear everything.
: Did all the mics as he made them throughout the years just get
brighter and brighter?
Speaker B: It's a good question.
Speaker C: It's a good question. I mean, I'm sure he wasn't the
only one that put his ears on the mics after quite a while. Joking,
but yeah, no, it's true. The sound systems I listened to growing up
that were often not eqed well, unfortunately, were often helmed by
a gentleman of an older generation. Yeah, I was like, no, too much
two k and 4k. My ears are bleeding.
: You're accelerating their progression towards mixing.
Speaker B: Like you.
Speaker C: Anyway, rest in peace, Bob, thank you for all your
innovation and your good natured enthusiasm. Enthusiasm towards
audio, and we really appreciate it.
: Absolutely.
Speaker B: Yeah. Well, that was fun. Is it over?
Speaker A: The pro audio suite with thanks to tribut and austrian
audio recorded using source Connect, edited by Andrew Peters and
mixed by Voodoo Radio imaging with tech support from George the
tech Wittam. Don't forget to subscribe to the show and join in the
conversation on our Facebook group. To leave a comment, suggest a
topic, or just say good day, drop us a note at our website,
theproaudiosuite.com.
- #BobHeilLegacy
- #ProAudioSuite
- #AudioInnovation
- #RockAndRollSound
- #TalkBoxMagic
- #AustrianAudio
- #TriBooth
- #ProAudioLegends
- #SoundEngineering
- #MusicHistory