Crest Audio Scrap Book
Crest Audio was a leading pro-audio manufacturing company that made the professional power amplifiers and mixing consoles during the late 70's, the 80's and into the late 90's. In 1998 the compnay was purchased by Hartley Peavey and the company, as I knew it, came to an end. This page is devoted to my years at Crest Audio. Those were some great years... my years at Crest gave me experiences and opportunities that eventually led to what I'm doing now. I worked with so many great people during those years, including many industry icons and all-around great people including John Lee, Jim Gamble, Russ Bonagura, Dennis Fink, Don Pearson, John Petrucelli, Chuck Augustowski, Rich Spina, Rich Mirasolo, Mark Yeck, Greg McVeigh, the list goes on and on...(I'll keep adding names as I think of them)
I worked for Crest Audio from November of 1984 to December of 1998. In 1999 I worked for a pro-audio rental company called Promix. After getting sick of Promix, I returned to Crest Audio in February of 2000. Over the next year I re-started Foxrox and finally split from Crest in April of 2001.
This page is a work in progress. I'm going through more old photos, so if you find this stuff interesting feel free to check back for more in the future.
It's 1986, and I'm walking through the Crest Audio factory in Hawthorne NJ, with a cup of coffee and a danish in my hand. It was morning break time and I had food in my mouth. On the right you can see stacks of Crest amplifiers.
In March of 1996 I took a trip to Barcelona, Spain, to spend time with Crest's Spanish distributor. Here I am posing in front of a Crest GT mixing console.
In January of 1996 I attended the NAMM show in Anaheim, CA. I got to meet one of my idols, the great Allan Holdsworth. He took the time to chat with me for a few minutes and he signed my copy of 'Iggenbottom's Wrench", the very first album he ever appeared on. When I handed him the CD liner to sign, he made it clear that it was a musical outing that he'd rather forget.. he wrote "oh no!" on it. He wasn't yet aware that it was out on CD.
Here I am some time around 1992 with Dave Basedow (left). Dave worked with me assembling the legendary Gamble EX56 mixing consoles. Somewhere along the line I gave him the nickname "Gunther". Gunther was the greatest - I don't know where he is these days, but I wish he worked for me.
From 1984 to 1989 I built and service Kelsey mixing boards. Here is a Kelsey "Soundprism" that I built. I think this is from 1988.
In December of 1995 I was featured in the Crest Audio newsletter. If your eyeballs can handle reading the text, you'll get a little history on Fox courtesy of Jason Frenchman, king of all things media and marketing related.
For a few years we pumped out Gamble EX56 Mixing consoles. This picture is from 1991. Here we have three of them being built, one on the left, one in the middle that's all done, and one coming together on the right. That's Gunther wiring up the patch bay. The underbelly of a Gamble EX56 is quite a sight - lots of wires and ribbon cables and a full patch bay.
Here's a picture I took at an AES show (audio engineering society) around 1994. ON the far right we have sales rep Carl Schwartz sitting talking to someone. The big guy behind the mixing board is none other than Jim Gamble himself. Left of him is Kevin Korecky, the ultimate live sound tech, and on the far left we have recording studio owner Vic Stephens. And front center is an absolutely beautiful Gamble EX56 mixing console.
In February of 1996 I made a three day excursion to the Paradise Island resort in the Bahamas. It was common for me to jump on an airplane and fly around the world fixing things. Here I am in the sound booth of a Casino nightclub working on a Crest GTx mixing board. The other guy in the picture was a sound engineer name Kelly.
I used to go to a lot of industry trade shows, which meant a lot of late night partying followed by early mornings. And during the day I would have to get dressed in a suite and tie and I'd have to talk to people all day. Here I am in 1994 catching some zzzz's, ready to fall out of my chair.
Lot's more coming