The day I got to hang with EVH.

Achilles

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Actually a good chunk of a work day with him, Alex, and his gear tech at that time - I forget the name.

I worked for an engineering OEM - meaning you'd never find my company's name on any product at a store,
but there's a chance something you buy was designed and developed, and maybe even manufactured by us.

We'd been working with a customer doing smaller specialty products for mall kiosk, checkout aisle type sales
and we'd come up with a concept for a small tabletop powered speaker that looked like a guitar amp and
was geared towards the (at the time) newly exploding digital/modeling sector.

The customer said it was a bit much for their market but they would pass along the idea to some friends.
One of whom ended up being this guy:


This was around the time that Eddie and co. was really getting the EVH brand going and Evan thought they might be
interested in the concept. The target sell price was in the $99 to $149 range - a consumer product as opposed to MI.

Even came down for a day first to check out the product as well as scope our capabilities. Really nice guy and a cool hang.

Next up was him bringing down Eddie. There were rules: no handshakes, no pictures, no fawning - he was there for business.

Did a nice slow tour of our place - we had full on mechanical, electrical, and acoustical engineering offices and labs, including
a small, but fully walk-in anechoic chamber. Then about 10 of us total did the conference room thing for a few hours - lunch
was brought in and we worked through it.

My memory is hazy and we're talking at least 15 years ago so I don't remember too much about the afternoon.
This is what stuck:

Eddie was a pretty small guy. I'd always thought Alex was linebacker big but he's just normal. Mike, Sammy, and DLR
are all just smaller guys.

The grinning charm from all the pictures and videos never showed up. VERY much business and the guy had some strong
ideas about what made an amp sound good - and he nailed it. Transformers and Filter caps were #1 before anything else,
including tubes, in his mind. This is where I got to really interact with him and make lots of eye contact - which was surreal.

Very cool afternoon!


RIP
 
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The grinning charm from all the pictures and videos never showed up. VERY much business and the guy had some strong
ideas about what made an amp sound good - and he nailed it. Transformers and Filter caps were #1 before anything else,
including tubes, in his mind. This is where I got to really interact with him and make lots of eye contact - which was surreal.

Just to clarify this, once they saw our full capabilities a good portion of the meeting deviated from the speaker
we were pitching to us possibly getting in on the EVH amplifier business. :oops:




Got a polite thanks but no thanks a couple weeks later.
Third hand.....

:LOL:
 
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That’s how stuff like that goes. It’s cool you got to meet Ed and interact with him a little bit on some gear stuff. I would have loved to had the chance to pick his brain about his guitars. Thankfully we still have his music.
 
Pretty cool :beer . Ya seeing a pic of him next to warren DeMartini you can see he is pretty small. Also the necks on his guitars which I love =built for small hands which I have too
 
Epic! :beer

I am working my way through the Tonechaser boook authouried by Steven Rosen.
 
@LeftyLoungeLizard

A lot of our work was for installed audio - which is one of many divisions in the industry: auto, marine, consumer, installed, MI, etc.
Installed is product for commercial jobs like movie theaters, studios, stadiums, airports, retail stores, etc.

Wife and I went out for breakfast a couple weeks back at a place where one section had a suspended tile ceiling while the other was
fully open to the rafters. The tile side had a bunch of these:


While the open area had these:


Company I worked for designed and developed both lines.
The JBL is easily recognizable by the small (yellowing in most cases) rectangular logo on the grill.

s-l1200.webp


Hanging speakers are identifiable because each brand has a unique shape and/or a cosmetic feature.
 
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