Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[compasspnt]

OK, we are going to have a fun feature this month.  The inimitable Mr. Bob Heil is going to be here to answer your questions!

For those few who may not know, Bob has recorded or mixed, usually in live situations, such groups as The Grateful Dead, The Who, Humble Pie, ZZ Top etc, etc.

He also was the creator of the famous Heil Talk Box, and is an innovator in live sound system and studio microphone design philosophy.

Believe me, Bob has some of the most amazing road stories you have never heard as well!

Of course, Bob is also the creator of the great new Heil dynamic microphones.

However, we do want to keep this feature from becoming an advertisement, so please keep your questions, for the most part, on the topics of live sound, band stories, equipment design, etc.  I will try my best to edit anything that veers off topic.


OK, let's get started...whattayawannaknow???

[littlehat]

Bob...

What's Rick Turner REALLY like?
Didn't you guys work together on the wall of sound?

I only ask because I play a guitar he made and record it with a mic with your name on it.

Also, have you considered making an omni dynamic?

[Gabriel F]

Joe barresi said in an interview that he asked you tips about how to record the talk box sounds in the last Tool record. What were those tips?.

Any info about zz top would be great specially about guitar sounds.

Gabriel Fonts.

[CHANCE]

Bob.
Back in the early 70's my band was playing (I believe) in College Park Md. or somewhere in that area and my bands PA mixer got stolen. You GAVE us a small purple 8 ch laptop mixer that was AWESOME. It had big rotary pots and got us thru our tour. That gesture of your kindness has never been forgotten. I want to take this opportunity to publicly thank you.

[compasspnt]

Good start guys.

Bob will be here shortly to answer these and other questions, and regale us with great road stories.

Keep the questions coming!

[Bill Mueller]

CHANCE wrote on Tue, 03 June 2008 11:53

Bob. Back in the early 70's my band was playing (I believe) in College Park Md. or somewhere in that area and my bands PA mixer got stolen. You GAVE us a small purple 8 ch laptop mixer that was AWESOME. It had big rotary pots and got us thru our tour. That gesture of your kindness has never been forgotten. I want to take this opportunity to publicly thank you.

Chance,

I may have wired one of the pots on that mixer!

Bob had some of us from the road crew work in the Heil Sound factory in between tours. Feast or famine. Some people worked out better than others.   Soldering mixers was not my cup of tea, but building fiberglass speaker cabinets for the touring systems and bands like J Geils did turn out to be fun. Those grey/white/black cabinets used for The Who, Humble Pie and others were finished in my little shop.

Marissa Illinois had a population of only about 1000 people back then. Heil Sound was the biggest company except for Peabody coal company and the farms. It was really a pretty bizarre situation to see real rock stars fly into St. Louis and then find their way out into the middle of hundreds of miles of corn fields to come to see Bob. Hippies and farmers, dogs and cats living together, fire and brimstone, real wrath of God stuff. Good times.

Best Regards,

Bill

[leonardo valvassori]

This forum is too much.
Gonna go and think up some good ones.
Too cool.

[Bob Heil]

Ross:

Thank you, Terry and Bill for the invitation to come aboard and
meet some great people as well as talk about this great industry
we all love and admire.....wouldn't be here if we didn't !

Looking forward to some great conversations.

BOB HEIL

[Bob Heil]

I never got to work wtih Rick.   JG and I had many conversations about the design and buidling of the wall but I was called off onto the 'Who's Next' tour and was there for 6 years so I missed all of the 'wall' experiment.

We have been working with one of the amateur radio buddies who is  an engineer for FOX in Chicago and we have built several prototypes of our Omni microphone that he is wanting to use for TV interviews.  Who knows where this will land but it does work very well.  Keeping the pattern Omni, while adding the all importnat articulation has been challenging.  Works really well, tho.

[Brian Kehew]

1) Tell us about the big Grateful Dead speaker cabinet...

2) What color are your shoes? I can guess; "p....."

[Bob Heil]

Gabriel: Joe was working on the TOOL's latest album.  He and Adam Jones were not happy with the sound they had been getting.  Adam wanted a certain warm sound.  It wasn't happening, so I grabbed my soldering iron some microphones and headed for the studio to see if I could help.   The situation -as so many that try to use the Heil Talk Box - they were trying to drive it with a monster amplifier which didn't sound very well.  LOUD - but didn't sound good into the Talk Box driver.  I spotted one of Adam's small tune amplifier.  Wired a cable direct from it's output to the Talk Box - Terrific!  The amplifier,  at about 3/4 open had that great warm sound Adam was looking for.  We then tried several microphones.  Joe and Adam both agreed the PR 30 was THE answer and what you hear on the last Tool album.  Having worked with hundreds of guitarist since my introduction of the Talk Box back in 1972, I have to say Adam has the most beautiful tone.  It almost sounds like a cello on some protions.  Great sound - on the CD as well as live.  That little tune amp and the PR 30.  

A little side note....as I was getting ready to solder some cabling onto Adam's tune amp, I dialed Joe Walsh and ask Joe to speak with Adam and give him some pointers about how to use the 'Box'.  Truly the beginning of a great friendship with Adam, all of Tool and of course Joe Barresi.  

[Bob Heil]

Chance:  Hey, glad I was happy to be able to help.  After all, we ARE in this together - hopefully having fun. I assume the little Purple mixer is still with you.  Gosh, I see those things on EBAY bringing much more than they cost then but I guess now some have sorted them into the 'vintage' catalog!  I was deeply touched and very honored to have one of those selected by the curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame museum in Cleveland to be a part of a major display of our early work.  It was one of  - if not the first modular mixers. My reasons behind the design was that 'if' you blew channel 6 in  your mixer, what woudl you do - send it back to the factory but that meant you had no sound system for a few weeks or more. So, using a mother-daughter board concept I came up with a mixer that - first, you could purchase only four channels if you couldn't afford all of it at the purchase time. As you played more gigs, you coudl add channels to it but the most important part was 'if' somethign went wrong, you unplugged the bad channel and sent it to Marissa, Il  for repair.....but YOU still have the system up and running, only down a channel.   I appreciate your note and hope that the mixer helped you through the tough times of your stolen equipment.

[Bob Heil]

Brian....before I respond to  your question...I want to know where you got that picutre of Karla Pandit and did you KNOW that was Karla?   AH Ha....told you this was going to be fun !

NOw...I assume you are talking about the 30" EV.  This was such a great project.  After 12 years of playing the theatre  pipe organ 6 nights a week in the largest Holiday Inn (at the time) in their chain - St Louis ariport - I started a small music store in Marissa, Il. I became a Hammond organ dealer and began renting them to groups that would come through the Midwest.  I came up with this idea of building the 30" speaker and had placed my store name  'Ye Olde Music' so it was visable from the back of most halls.  What a great marketing idea....When I would rent a B3, the 30" with a Sunn 200S top would "tag along".  That soon became a prominent thing to appear on so many stages. From Noel Redding (Jimi Hendrix) to JG, the Dead and hundreds in between.  The speaker was built by EV and we built the cabinet to their specs using 1" plywood.  It is now in the Fender Museum in Corona, California.  If you have never been there - GO !  

And, today - they were Purple.   Tomorrow....Blue  

[Bob Heil]

Gabriel
I forgot to answer your quesiton about ZZ.  I did the sound for one of their very first tours....heck - they didn't even have beards, yet!  True.  They would come through St Louis for the KSHE  'Pig Party' at Ronnie's 66 Drive In.  Their manager loved the monster sound system we provided and away we went....well it was the very one that we did the WHO'S NEXT tour with so I guarantee it was LOUD enough and most certainly GOOD enough.

That has always been one of my bottom line criteria.  I learned it from one of my Theatre organ teachers  - George Wright.  George told me that 'anyone can play these monster LOUD...I am going to teach you how to play it GOOD and LOUD'.  Stuck with me all these years and the Who system was no exception.  ZZ loved it, too.

Their guitar and bass sounds are very much custom.  Far from an amplifier plugged into a stack.  First off, their stack was built for them by Ted Kornblum of St Louis Music Supply, the creator of the CRATE system.  HUGE cabinets with the amplifiers being in special racks on each wing - bass, stage right, guitar - stage left.  LOTS of energy, let me tell you.  If you have never experienced them live, please do so.

 

[Brian Kehew]

I knew Korla Pandit well, he was a good friend and we did several records together. He was brilliant.

Yes, the 30" speaker... I have only heard of 30" woofers now and then...