# Old Timer



## Troutsqueezer

Greetings,

I'm not sure how much I will access this forum but I did run across some postings from it quite by accident. As luck would have it, the thread was about some audio history that I am intimate with, specifically, the audio company SoundStream and various amplifier engineers such as Wade Stewart and Nelson Pass. The information being passed on was slightly incorrect but not surprising since you would have needed to have been there to get it all straight. Not only was I there, but I was an integral part of the emerging high end home audio field as well as the emerging car audio field. 

Some History: 
I built my first audio amp at the age of thirteen. It was a kit from the local electronics outlet (yes, they sold kits then!) and was a 25W per ch. tube amp. From then on, I was hooked. That was 1963. 

In 1970, I hooked up with a startup company called ESS which at the time stood for Electrostatic Sound Systems. There we produced high-end hybrid elecrostatic speaker systems. Later, the name was dropped but the acronym was kept after we were approached by Dr. Oscar Heil who had a revolutionary idea about a new tweeter. One which would squeeze the air rather than push it (like a cone does). This was 5 times more efficient and had great sound at a full 360 degree angle. From then on, ESS became famous for the Heil Air Motion Transformer speaker system. 

I was also attending school at that time studying for my EE and hooked up in the R&D lab with a couple of young engineers there named Nelson Pass, who was in charge of speaker design and Peter Werback who was in charge of amplifier design. Other engineers floated in and out of ESS over the next few years including Bob Carver, of Carver Amps, Bob Bird from Altec Lansing and George Anderson. Also, an assistant to the president of ESS at that time was Donna Haas, later to become CEO of SoundStream after spending some time at Nakamichi. At Nakamichi, they purchased the brand name SoundStream. Previously, SoundStream became known as a developer of one of the first digital-to-vinyl recording processes and put out some of the first digitally-mastered LP's. After a few years, Pete Werback left and started his own car amplifier company called Linear Power in Auburn, CA. (he eventually married my ex-fiance Ruth, who ran the company after Pete was killed in an airplane crash). Then Nelson Pass left and started a high-end amplifier company in Sacramento called Threshold Corp along with Rene Besne and Joseph Samon (two ESS shareholders). I joined the Threshold team several weeks after they organized. 

At Threshold Corp. many famous faces and names in the high-end audio industry floated by. Dan Diagastino (sales rep for awhile) and Joe Samon went on to start Krell. Some of the junior engineers went on to start Coda. Most of the journalists of the day became aquaintances, Audio magazine, Stereophile, Audio Amatuer. People like Ike Isensen of Tube or not Tube in San Diego, Mike Wright of Dayton-Wright fame, etc. With my help, Nelson published several how-to articles in these magazines, some of which caught the ire of Mark Levenson because our article detailed how to build pure class A amps that out-performed his very expensive jobs at just a fraction of the cost. 

In fact, what caught my eye while surfing was someone in this forum stating that Nelson Pass designed the first SoundStream amp, the D50 I believe. In fact, Nelson assigned that task to one of his newly-hired junior engineer/technicians, Digger, from South Carolina. I don't think SoundStream ever did pay Nelson because he complained about it years later but then, that amp was a complete piece of junk. One of the worst I've ever seen. 

Later, I went to work for SoundStream as an engineer and had a hand in designing nearly all the car audio amps, soundstage equipment and home audio products, working for Wade Stewart at first and then for Donna Hass. Another misnomer is that Wade designed amplifiers. In fact, his engineers did that. Those engineers were Peter Bath, Steve Cullison, Kjell Steffensen, and myself. 

To summarize, I know the history of all the SoundStream amps which were actually made by Stewart Electronics, and might be pertinent to this forum, and a lot of the history of high end audio in general. 

The best time I ever had was spending a few weeks with Oscar Heil (truly a mad scientist, his brother invented epitaxy) in his laboratory in Belmont, CA. helping him to develop the air motion woofer. I might elaborate on that later. 

Also, I have designed sound systems back in the old days for Peter Frampton, The Almond Brothers, members of the Jefferson Airplane and for Steve Katz, then in charge of stadium sound for Bill Graham Presents. 

Anyway, enough typing. 

-Troutsqueezer.


----------



## knever3

Wow! Such history, I would have been honored to work alongside these guys!


----------

