Dan Flickinger was to me a very odd duck. He was two things at once: 1) a brilliant audio technician who was in some ways quite ahead of his time (or at least he had someone somewhere who was); and 2) a snake oil-selling con artist.
At least one of his consoles was installed at Stax for some period; I don't remember if it was more than one, and for how long it stayed. One may indeed have been at Fame, but I'm not actually sure about that. They did have a pretty decent sound, as I remember. But there was always something too showy and odd about them for me.
Then Dan came to our old, original Ardent Studio on National Street, probably in about '67-68 or so, and cornered me privately. He offered me a large bribe if I would go to John Fry and talk him into buying one of the Flickinger consoles to replace our SpectraSonics/Auditronics. I was quite taken aback by this; and it left a very bad taste in my system. Of course the money would have been great to have, especially back then as a very young, struggling musician/engineer/producer. But I threw him out, and went to tell John the whole story. This then "got around" in the Memphis community, and Dan's presence there diminished somewhat. I heard a few years later that he was sent to prison for some fraudulent activities. Now this whole offer thing may not have been as bad as I thought at the time; I guess a "finder's fee" bonus might not have been such a bad idea, if everyone knew all the facts, and made their decisions based upon them. But that wasn't how Dan approached it. He was secretive, and implored me to be so, and to lie if necessary for money.
So since then, I have kept the same thoughts; I don't care how good his equipment is, or was, I wouldn't use it.
Terry