Jay Fisher - Fine Custom Knives |
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"Andromeda" |
You might not know this, but music and sound is important in my work and in the knife studio. Because knifemaking may consist of many hours bent over a piece of steel, stone, and leather, it's important to me to experience the wonderful gift of sounds while I work. I'm very lucky to have a job where this can happen; I merrily sing or hum along to my favorite playlists, or listen to audio books, or learn from podcasts and others' experiences. I have a background in music and sound, and this has shaped my life in many ways. From singing in solo and ensemble and then being an "All-State" musician in my childhood, to being in a few garage bands, to working as an analog, distribution, and control electrician, a history of music and sound is paramount in my life.
When people ask what a professional knifemaker does for a hobby, I guess you could call it this: My wife and I volunteer in rebuilding, restoring, and creating a fully functional analog and digital high fidelity recording studio for our community in the Clovis/Curry County Chamber of Commerce, at the Norman and Vi Petty Rock n' Roll Museum.
I do this because I love the idea, the equipment, the people from my past that I can touch, and most of all, the sound of audio.
Why would I mention the sound? Because analog equipment clearly creates the finest rendition of vocal and musical performance possible. It does this because it works with one medium and technological process completely through from start to finish. That process is voltage variation.
Transistors mostly operate with current variation. There's nothing wrong with that, but they do not typically operate with electrical pressure or voltage. The easiest way to understand this is that the electrical circuit is a pipe filled with fluid, a hydraulic medium. The pressure in the fluid is voltage, the diameter of the pipe is the current, and a control valve is a resistance. Like hydraulics, pressure variations are immediate and extreme, and can change throughout the circuit instantaneously. Pressure changes can be very fast, and very accurate. Volume changes are not so quick and accurate. Transistors amplify by passing current through semiconductors at varying rates, and vacuum tubes continuously emit a stream of electrons, varied instantaneously by a bias control of a grid. They are fast, powerful, and responsive. of course, this is only a simple and basic layperson's description.
Vacuum tubes are also wasteful, heavy, hot and expensive. They use precious metals, glass, and require heavy physical connections. It's no wonder why they were replaced by the lighter, cheaper, and cooler transistor. But there was a cost for this. The cost was in responsiveness, accuracy, and wide frequency range of the entire circuit.
Guys my age saw all of this happen in the 60s and 70s. Vacuum tubes were gone, little transistors were in. We had all made kits of basic amplifiers, from Heathkit, Radio Shack, and hobbyist outlets, we bought Sams Photofacts to repair our simple equipment. Then digital came along. Transistors were made smaller, and smaller still, and we assembled our own computers, wrote our own programs, learned DOS and BASIC, and marveled at the new science. Meanwhile, the old science just sat there, waiting.
The crisp, clear sound of the productions of the 50s and 60s seemed to dry up. Gone were the tight and fluid treble hisses of a high-hat cymbal, you couldn't hear the space between instruments. You couldn't hear the click of the singer's teeth as he pronounced, or his lips coming together between the words. Oftentimes, you could not hear the difference in the instruments if they were in the same frequency. The fingertips touching the strings on the guitar were removed; there was no "room sound" to give a real feel to the performance.
Digital gave us clean, almost perfect music, without noise, with controlled distortion, and ultimately resulted in music being assembled at the keys and mouse of a Digital Audio Workstation. Heck, you didn't even need a band; you could putz up a tune on a midi player built right into the keyboard, and then work it and twist it and arrange it and repeat it. You could add echo, reverb, speed it up or slow it down. You could even take an out-of-tune niece crooning in her best shower-voice, and Auto-tune her voice to perfection.
With all this wonderful creation at everybody's fingertips, why has old music now outsold new music for the last several years? Why has vinyl doubled in sales every year for the last several years? Why has vacuum tube production increased ten percent a year for the last decade? Why is magnetic tape now a growth industry? Why are new manufacturers making magnetic tape reel-to-reel players and recorders? What in the world is this about?
It's all about the sound, that's what. Audiophiles—real, true listeners, aficionados of music and voice and sound—can clearly hear the difference between digital and analog And it's stunning. Sure, there are some very, very good digital renditions, but these are rare. Mostly, people want music to sound like live performance. They also want the clarity that comes with power, power and response that only vacuum tubes can supply.
This is why we (my wife Amy and I) volunteer our time in building a functional analog (and digital) recording studio. We're doing this in the basement museum at the Clovis and Curry County Chamber of Commerce building. We've named it the Clovis Sounds Studio.
Right away, it exploded into action and popularity. We've had visitors from all over the world come there and ask us when we can record, what we can offer, and what our directions are. This is why one of the first things we were asked to do was (humorously) build a digital podcasting system. What? We had to have a way to communicate and update those who wanted to be a part of this experience. So we built it.
We do a podcast called Clovis Connections Podcast, available on all the main platforms (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, etc.) Just put the name Clovis Connections Podcast into any platform or search engine and you'll get there. You can also visit the Clovis/Curry County Chamber of Commerce website and link to the podcasts there.
What's this got to do with knifemaking? Join us there, and find out!
Strangely, with my father on a northern island in Japan...
The very first job I had was working with my father. Dad was an astounding electrician, a radio, audio, and broadcast genius. Trained in the United States Air Force in the 2040th Communications Squadron, he served from 1954 to 1964.
When I was one year old, Dad was stationed at Misawa Air Force Base in Northern Japan, for about 2 years. While there, he learned and taught electronics, specifically radio science. He also volunteered as a teacher, repaired other electronic equipment and even built a "radio room" onto a house he had bought there. As a toddler, I remember little from that time, apart from firecrackers and Japanese parades with scary paper maché dragons.
The photos below are of my father, SSgt Gerald Fisher, at Misawa.
Dad was stationed at Canon Air Force Base in Clovis, NM, when he got out of the Air Force. He started his own business, armed with a prestigious First Class FCC license. The "First Phone" (Class) license was required in order to be a chief engineer at a broadcast station and to work on television transmitters. At one time or another, Dad worked on nearly every radio and television transmitter station in Eastern New Mexico where I grew up. This included broadcast equipment, transponders, transmitters, and receivers. He repaired televisions, radios, and was an active Amateur Radio Operator. He helped families contact their loved ones with the HAM radio network during the Mexico City earthquake in 1985 that killed over 5000 people.
Dad loved audio equipment as well as radio, and met and started working with Norman Petty in the 1960s. Norman owned and operated Norman Petty Studio, in Clovis, my home town, and had gained notoriety recording early Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, The Fireballs, and countless lesser known groups and individuals in the music field. Dad worked with and for Norman, as an engineer, audio electrician, and on specialty projects involving the Norman Petty Studio. Norman and his wife Vi (Violet), working with personal assistant and secretary Norma Jean Berry, became very close family friends. Growing up, we never realized that Norman would become our area's most famous person.
Norman and Vi had no children of their own, and my sisters and I were proud to know these great people as fine example adults. We shared many meals, holidays, and grew precious memories of these family friends, who lived in the same "West Side" neighborhood of our little cow town in Eastern New Mexico. We named our dogs for Norman, he always got a kick out of it. "Lester Norman" was a dachshund mutt, and my first dog, an my AKC registered Great Dane was named Eugene, Norman's middle name. All the while growing up, Norman and Vi loved my Mom's cooking, especially her coffee cake, dumplings, and kolaches. Dad continually worked with Norman on recording studio and specialized audio broadcast equipment, and Norman called him "my boy genius."
In the colored photo below, I've added annotation. Vi Petty, who often wore colorful turbans sits in a chair above my mother, Jean, who is sitting on the steps. At her knee is my sister Lynda, and Lynne, her twin sits next to Norman. Behind Norman is Norma Jean Berry, their personal secretary and close family friend. You can see my dad's crossed legs, with shoes off, behind my Great Dane, Eugene. If you look close at the enlargement, you can see the top of my little blonde head between Eugene and Dad's red chair handle. We look like we're all just relaxing, no doubt after one of Mom's great meals.
Below is also a photo of a print from the studio, showing Norman in the studio sitting among several Ampex tape machines. Norman always loved to wear a jumpsuit (when he wasn't wearing a suit) and you can see him wearing these in many of the photos. This was popular at the time, since you didn't want to get solder and oil and other electrical stain from cleaners and lubes on your clothes. The best thing about that photo is his warm smile. He was a kind, considerate, and caring man who was a good role model for all of us kids.
As a kid, Dad paid me ten cents an hour to help him—mostly being his gopher, but also disassembling equipment, sorting resistors and capacitors, wire, lights, and components. Being with him was naturally a learning experience, and as I reached adulthood, I considered building a career in electronics. Family responsibilities left me looking for jobs in electricity, and those employment opportunities were some of my first. Power production, motor, valve, and equipment controls were easy for me, and only occasionally would I dance back into the audio or radio field. I did get plenty of work on analog controllers, boiler controls, vibration equipment and analog logic systems in fire protection and equipment controls. I was working as an industrial electrician when I eased into knifemaking, as detailed on my bio page.
Norman would often pay Dad in equipment and also give him discarded equipment. Norman was constantly upgrading, improving, and refining his studios. Yes, I said studios, since he had several. Norman would also give used equipment, amplifiers, speakers, microphones and other gear to local churches for use in their sanctuaries and for public address and choir amplification. Over the years, much of this equipment became obsolete itself, and would find its way to auctions. We were really big on auctions here in the Eastern New Mexico area. Dad would send us kids into the auction hordes of stuff looking for equipment. I remember him saying, "Keep an eye out for Altec green; that's good stuff!" We were little scroungers.
Dad and my sister Lynda were heavily involved in giving tours and presentations after Norman passed. Vi had asked him to help with the Music Festival that evolved in Norman's name. So, for years, Dad gave tours, described and played the music in the original 7th Street Studio, presented, and displayed, answering so many questions of the excited visitors as they listened to analog audio.
In his later years, Dad used many of the pieces of equipment he had acquired and built many projects, notably a high fidelity recording studio, which he built into a modified surplus Sears moving and delivery van. His idea was that he could back the van up to a concert venue, roll out the mic cables, and record a high quality recording of the music. He could also take the van to the wilderness and record nature at its most pristine. Unfortunately, he never got the chance to bring the van into its highest purpose, passing away in 1999.
My father left a legacy of this equipment and experiences. He had moved into another field in his later years, getting his Masters in teaching, and working in counseling and psychological research. He never forgot his audio and broadcast roots.
In 2007, when the local Clovis and Curry County Chamber of Commerce secured a grant to build a museum to the Norman and Vi Petty musical legacy here in Eastern New Mexico, they asked for my Mom's help to fill the museum with equipment and memories. Dad had been very careful and watchful of all the audio and broadcast equipment that became available in the area, and owned many pieces that were discarded by Norman, given up for salvage by local radio and television stations, and sold at auction by broadcast and audio entities, churches, and auditoriums. Dad knew that as transistor technology and then digital technology took over the audio scene, there would be immense value in these old analog audio processes and equipment. Dad made sure they were preserved and operating, and constructed additional equipment that would finely tune those existing gems of audio circuitry.
I can't say enough about my mother. Mom was, and is still, the steadfast anchor of our small family. She worked tirelessly for over 35 years as a Licensed Practical Nurse, and in our largest nursing home in the area, got to know just about everybody locally through their families. She made sure the equipment and legacy is safe, is the source of a tremendous amount of information and history, and has believed in me and my rather unique artist's lifestyle for all the decades of my life. Mothers... they are really so... tolerant and loving.
The Norman and Vi Petty Rock 'N' Roll Museum was built and our family helped place the equipment (and the 200+ fully operable antique radios) that came from our family through Mom, into display and storage.
There, the equipment sat idle for about 15 years. The museum was built as a teaching, display, and preservation environment dedicated to the legacy of Norman and Vi Petty and the many musicians they fostered and encouraged throughout their decades.
The Control Room had some of the pieces of equipment in the original racks, partial racks, and on mobile bases. This was created as a display to reflect the actual studio which is still located on 7th Street here in Clovis. That studio is owned by a private group, and is open for scheduled tours, but is largely inoperable.
None of the equipment in the museum studio was functional; it hadn't been operated in many years. It was a visual arrangement only, with some records, photos, and display pieces. Much more of the equipment was in storage, but well-preserved. There were massive piles of cable, patch boxes, connectors, and old radios out of sight. Someone had tried to do some reconnecting of audio cables, ruining them by splicing. There were nests of messy, knotted bundles, unmarked and unknown wiring, and none of it worked. There were even a few mummifying corpses drying out...(see photos below).
In mid-2021, I started talks with Chase Gentry (photos above), at that time head of the Clovis Industrial Development Corporation, who housed the equipment. Along with Ernie Kos, the head of the Chamber of Commerce, we decided to see if we could get the equipment operating.
I reached back to my early roots and dug my hands into the old tape machines, circuit boards, and vacuum tubes that Dad (and Norman) had made operable and useful. There was considerable time- and age-related damage: corrosion, decay, rust, and plain old dirt, that stopped these pieces from properly operating. I started replacing bearings, bushings, calibrating brakes, tuning and testing circuits. I started patch field layouts, wiring between the live performance studio, museum, and control room, constructing a recording studio that actually works.
This wouldn't be a studio like most modern studios, with all digital equipment, interfaces, converters, and computers; this would be an analog studio, with reel-to-reel magnetic tape players and recorders, vacuum tube amplifiers, antique ribbon microphones, vacuum tube mixers, equalizers, compressors, and handmade and vintage speaker monitors.
I started by building a large rack for the patch cables. I built it in my knife studio, out of square steel tube and oak hangers. This would turn out to be one of the most important items; I could have whatever cable I needed, labeled, hung, available, and store neatly out of the way. It rolls around on casters, of course. Equipment cables, patches, adapters, mic cords, it's all there.
You'll also see the patch panel wiring between Studio A live performance room and the Control Room in the photos below. These are XLR and TS instrument jacks for microphones or instruments. All I've hardwired, and this is just the beginning, with more Studio rooms and more patch connections to come.
One of the first things I set up was the best pair of monitors I could find. When you think of the word "monitor," you may be thinking of your computer monitor. In a recording studio, a monitor is a speaker or speaker system used to monitor the recordings. You may have a simple pair, or several pairs, to listen to, depending on your task. The main monitors needed to be the best sounding pair I could find.
The original setup had Altec monitors, big gray 605A models. These were industry standards, though there is a lot of confusing misinformation about them on the internet. We found a pair of large, black plywood boxes in the storage room and I immediately recognized them as speakers that my father had made and used. He had copper screen shields, acoustical chambers and reflectors, and piezoelectrical tweeters, dampers and absorptive paddings. Dragging them into the control room was tough, but when they were set up and compared with the Altecs, they won in sound quality—hands down. More on speaker monitors to come; as we later discovered the Altec 605A speakers had some internal issues.
The location and configuration for the Altecs was also wrong. When the mock-up studio was built, they simply hung the speaker where it was convenient, near the single rack. This worked for that purpose, and you can see that arrangement in the photos above. They were too close together, and that wasn't ideal either. So I got into the ceiling and built a large custom frame mounted to the concrete joists of the floor above.
There were no grills for Dad's (Fisher-made) speaker monitors, so I constructed those as well, making the frames from red oak, ebonized, in my wood shop. I made the grill cloth frames from Douglas fir, with gray burlap stretched over with nylon screen. The two materials created an interesting interference pattern like wood grain in two directions, neat. I made the mounting hardware in my machine shop as well.
You'll notice the engraved plates and "Fisher Audio Science." This is my name for those items and equipment that was created by my father and adapted or changed or modified and put into use in the studio. The reflective name is my way of honoring my father and our legacy together. Audio Science is what it's all about.
Amy helped me cut and bend sheet metal corner guards and mount them in the studio, to hide the beaten corners. The monitors turned out to be a focal point of the studio; so many fantastic sounds are coming from them continually. Pictures below.
In the 1950s, the reel to reel tape recorder was king. High fidelity was only possible with these units, and we have a good assortment of them to work with. Unfortunately, some of them are in poor shape. Most of them need rebuilding, but I'm up for the task! They are all electromechanical, and all have particular needs and uses. I look forward to bringing these online one at a time, putting them in their best operating condition. Below are photos of some of them, and more will follow.
The first piece of recording equipment I tackled was a reel-to-reel tape recorder/player, an Ampex Model 351. It was in the original rack that dad had in his recording studio truck, so I figured it worked, at least about twenty years previous. It had a few issues, mainly corrosion from time and exposure. Any exposed aluminum was covered with aluminum oxide, and there was plenty of that, mainly on the Amphenol-type connectors. The potentiometers were dry and dirty, the bearings on the tape transport system and motors were worn and noisy. It was difficult to find some of these ball bearings; companies that made them went out of business long ago. I was able to get some help networking with old bearing salesmen who knew the crossovers or offered suitable replacements. I took apart everything I could, within reason, on the machine to affect repairs. This even included the turntable pads and motor start capacitors. These were shot, of course; I'm finding all of our Ampex motor capacitors are bad on every unit. We have 11 Ampex units, so far, so this will be a repeating effort.
There were better Ampex recorders made, but that doesn't matter at this point; this is what Norman Petty used in his studio to record Buddy Holly, and one of these recorders may be the very one that did those recordings. They were certainly period and appropriate. Below are some of the photos of these repairs. Cleaning, servicing, tuning, and amplifier repairs were in order.
Microphones are a critical part of the recording studio, and these are very special pieces of equipment. At the studio, we have a variety of period and modern mics, ribbon, condenser, and dynamic. The period mics are ribbon, mainly RCA models. These need service and repair as well. I found horrible solder joints, bad wiring and connectors, and general cleaning needed. They also have to be set up for the right impedances to match the preamps and mixers they will be connected to.
Amplifiers are an important part of the whole system, and they vary tremendously. In an effort to use what we have, and to make sure the variety are available, I'll have to rack them into a common rack, and install patch bays so they may be changed at any time. In the photos below, I've started arranging some of them for installation and testing.
Mixers are a critical part of the studio, and we have a good group of them. Some are rack mounted, several are consoles that sit on the control room desk. One of them is the original mixer that Norman Petty recorded Buddy Holly's "That'll be the day" on. Yes, that song. The original Altec mixer built in the 1940s, four channel, gray and stamped metal. Dad found it in a surplus room at KFDA television studio back in the 1970s and paid a scrap few dollars for it. Value? Priceless.
In the first photo below, you can see the photo of Norman Petty above the actual mixer, both in the photo and sitting on the bench below.
We won't be using that mixer, we have others that are better. We'll probably use several but one I'm very fond of is one my father built from Altec parts, mainly two Altec mixers and two microphone preamps. The entire arrangement is built into a console, and dad installed passive attenuation devices, impedance matching patches, patch-throughs, and tuned impedance matching attenuating transformers. What are these and what makes them special? You'll have to listen to our podcast to find out. The first group of pictures below shows my effort to blueprint and schematic the whole affair. What a piece of work!
The Control Room is the most important part of the recording studio. From a simple display component in the Museum to a fully functional analog/digital recording studio central processing station is quite a feat, and it will surely be years in the making. But we've got a good start, and I'm excited about where it's going. Here are some photos of different periods of work, and you can see how it's progressing.
Early on, the control room was just for display and the Altec monitors were hooked to the museum sound system. Nothing else worked. I repurposed my father's HAM radio station tall rack for the equipment, and started gathering and mounting all of the various equipment that was in storage and in piles. Of course, the inventory was important and so is my workbench in the control room.
I decided to make the studio a sign, an acrylic engraved lighted sign that flashes to the music. Clovis Sounds Studio is on the grow!
I'll go over the equipment on the podcast and here as I progress.
Amy and I began to frequently give tours of the museum and specifically the studio. I helped write a grant for the expansion of the studio to four live performance rooms. Though the Capital Outlay Grant was approved, and is a matter of public record, we do not know how the funding will be applied.
More visitors and music industry professionals started contacting us, and things really started to take off. Nearly every time we were at the Clovis Sounds Studio, we were asked to give a tour, explain it, describe what we were doing. There have been some pretty "big hitters" in our tours, including leaders and representatives of our state agencies and international groups. Every single one of them asked us to "keep them informed" and many asked how they could be of help.
There is simply no way to carry on a one-on-one conversation with all of them, and if you're someone I'm describing, this is important to you, too.
In the original proposal I wrote for the Clovis Sounds Studio, I had mentioned podcasting as one of the opportunities available with a live performance recording studio. We were asked to help advise on equipment and podcasting by our chamber director, Ernie Kos. Amy and I went to work and set up a complete podcasting studio arrangement in less than three days. That's all of the equipment, microphones, interface computers, headphones, mixers, computer Digital Audio Workstation, and memory and storage devices. We brought it completely into operation.
We thought we should show by learning, and realized that the Clovis Connections Podcast would be a way to keep those important and interested people informed as to our progress and directions in the Clovis Sounds Studio. It's our way to "Connect" with everyone on this community effort. And the word connections fits with our local brand: Heartfelt Connections and Endless Horizons.
We also have offered to record podcasts of others in the studio, so stay tuned for those! And maybe narration, audiobooks, advertisements, etc.
Of course, we realize that this had to be done in digital... sigh, but as we bring the analog equipment online, we'll incorporate some of it into the effort, perhaps demonstrating and testing it in the process. I can't think of a better way to reach others in this effort.
If you're interested in our effort, please listen to our podcast, and please mark it as one of your favorites, even referring it to others. Any help or input is appreciated. As I've mentioned, this is a volunteer effort and a unique way that my wife and I can contribute and help our community. Join us.
Email me about the podcast and the studio at jayfisher@jayfisher.com