But also, over the last decade, I’ve learnt a huge amount – and I’m continuing to learn. If I don’t learn something on every single job it’s kind of disappointing, because it means I haven’t been pushing, I haven’t been exploring, to get the best possible result for my client. It means I’m not learning about new products, or new ways to use products: learning is absolutely key.
RG. What’s your history and background in the audio industry?
ST. I started off at Bradford’s High-Fidelity in Eugene, Oregon, when I was in college. I started as a counter guy, a box guy. Then they got me doing stuff on the floor, setting stuff up. The owner, Jeff Vander Velden, taught me about turntable set-up and how to listen to music – how to listen to systems making music (or not). He had one of those Yamaha PX-1s and they were a Grado house – Signature 3, Signature 7, all those. He had Magneplanar MG IIs at the time, all classic Audio Research stuff – an SP6B and D52. He taught me a huge amount about hi-fi and the importance of set-up, even that early. Not at the sort of serious level we are discussing today, but I’d go to his house and we’d work on his turntable, his speaker placement – really just playing with it. But it made me realise the relationship between input and output – that this wasn’t just about gear. What the gear did depended on what you did to the gear.
RG. So, set-up became a central part of the process?
ST. Exactly. This was in 1980 or ’81, so the turntable really was the key source. Each ‘table needed assembly, set-up and installation – and I did a lot of ‘tables.
Then CD happened and suddenly, it was possible (or people started to believe that it was possible) to get good sound without all the fuss that went with a turntable. You could just put the thing down, pop in a disc and get perfect sound – forever.
RG. So, you could just hand the customer a box?
ST. Yes – and with that, at least in my experience, came a laziness. People (dealers and customers) stopped making the effort necessary to get good sound, not just from the turntable, but from the system as a whole. The result was a big change in the role of the audio dealer and how a store would function. By that time, I’d started thinking I was pretty hot shit and convinced myself that, if I moved to Seattle I could get a job at Magnolia Hi-Fi. They. Were the regional power house at the time. So, I went up and interviewed – I actually moved there, on the assumption I’d get a job – and they didn’t hire me. When I did eventually get a job there, it was a counter person for tape rentals in their video store. That’s when reality really bites! I never did work for Magnolia on audio sales, only video.
Then I moved back home to Petaluma, Ca, working for Doug Blackwell at DB Audio, and they were a big SOTA house. The company was local: Fletcher and Becker were friends of the owner; Fletcher was always coming into the store and we sold a lot of their turntables. I set up over 30 Star Sapphire turntables in one month. It was a really intense learning experience, but the sort of experience it’s almost impossible to get now.
