Bob Heil

On February 2, 1970, jam band the Grateful Dead were scheduled to play a concert at the Fox Theater in St. Louis. For the tour they were using a sound system run and developed by "Bear" Augustus Owsley Stanley III. Owsley, who had a pending drug charge for producing copious amounts of LSD, was under orders not to leave the state of California. Owsley had been arrested on February 1 for leaving the state while at a Grateful Dead show in New Orleans, with police detaining most of the Dead's sound system as well.[2]

George Bales, a stage hand at Fox Theater gave Jerry Garcia Heil's phone number, and Heil remembers Garcia calling to say "Hey man, I heard you have a really big PA." Heil had been toying and tinkering with the large speakers that the Fox had replaced months earlier with a new system. Heil, one of the two organists at the Mighty Wurlitzer in the Fox (dating back to 1956) was given their old speakers which Heil built into his new sound system using the massive Altec Lansing A-4 speaker cabinets. Heil replaced the 15-inch speakers with JBL D140s, and added an array of four radial horns and ring tweeters all driven by McIntosh amplifiers. He has stated "That made a huge difference. It was like a big 'hi-fi' system. Except for Bill Hanley of Hanley Sound (Medford, MA) no one was putting radial horns into PA systems; they were just doing speakers in columns, like the Vocalmaster. The horns are what give the system intelligibility — you can actually understand the lyrics." His stack riggings resulted in an unusual frequency range from below 200 Hz to well over 15 kHz.[2]

Heil also brought in a modified Langevin studio recording console, uniquely adapted for live work. Heil's friend Tomlinson Holman, then a young student at the University of Illinois, had helped with the rewiring. (Holman would go on to create the THX theater sound protocol.) Heil himself created an electronic crossover in the console to control speaker output. Beyond the PA system that night, Heil also supplied the mixers, saying "My two roadies, Peter Kimble and John Lloyd, knew all the Dead songs — they were big fans. So that night they moved the PA, set it up and mixed the show."[2]

Heil also had a unique technique to handle the feedback problems; a small second microphone taped behind each main microphone. He stated, "We would run the microphones out of phase from the monitors, something that nobody had been doing yet. Since they were out of phase with the microphones and the FOH system, anything that leaked in from the monitors would be canceled out. As a result, we could get these things incredibly loud before they would feed back. That's one of the things that Jerry Garcia really loved."[2]

The show was a success, and the Grateful Dead asked Heil, his crew, and his sound system to join them on the road. Heil's setup would later become a template for the modern concert touring sound system.[2]

The Who

After touring with the Dead, Billboard reported publicly that a small Midwest sound system purveyor had snagged the position. Shortly after the article Heil received a call from the management of The Who. They had been experiencing a bumpy start to their US tour, and Heil brought a more refined and powerful version of his sound system to their shows. He's stated, "We did the Who's Next tour for a year and a half, across the US, to Europe and back here again." The tour created a bond between Heil and Who guitarist Pete Townshend, who commissioned Heil to create the quadraphonic sound system he had envisioned for the live tour after the release of their Quadrophenia LP. According to Heil, "We set up two 15-channel Midas consoles together, put speakers in four corners and we were able to fly Roger's [Daltrey] voice around the room. When we did Madison Square Garden with Quadrophenia, the PA was enormous. I think we had on each side six to eight 15-inch speaker bins, six to eight radial horns, and about a dozen tweeters. We could get about 110dB to 115dB on that stage before feedback. And the Who loved it, man, because it was loud, and they loved loud."[2]

Heil toured with multiple other major acts of the 1970s, including Joe Walsh, Peter Frampton, and Jeff Beck.[1][4]

Heil's company Heil Sound is based in Fairview Heights, Illinois, and manufactures a variety of microphones for professional use.

Heil Talk Box

Peter Frampton's Heil Talk Box from 1973

The Heil Talk Box was made famous after being used by Joe Walsh, Peter Frampton, and Richie Sambora.[4] It was the first high-powered Talk Box on the market, which could reliably be used on high-level rock stages. The first Heil Talk Box was built for Joe Walsh's Barnstorm Tour. It was developed in 1973. Heil later sold the rights to Dunlop Manufacturing, Inc.. Frampton frequently used a Heil Talk Box after receiving one as a Christmas present from Heil in 1974, and it can be prominently heard on his 1975 album Frampton.[3]

Amateur radio

Bob Heil's amateur radio QSL card

In the late 1970s Heil Sound entered the amateur radio market, with Heil ostensibly working to fix his perception of problems in the industry involving poorly transmitted and received audio. He applied science he had learned from Paul Klipsch, Don Leslie, Martin Wick, and the Bell Labs Fletcher-Munson curves. He developed his HC series microphones, intended for amateur radio communication.[4] Heil Sound was also an early installer of large satellite dishes for radio.[5]

Netcast

In May 2011, Heil became the host of a live weekly Ham Radio Netcast "Ham Nation" on Leo Laporte's podcasting network, TWiT.

Home theaters

In the late 1980s, Heil Sound entered the home theater movement becoming popular in the United States. His company became one of the first to design and install Custom Home theater systems and nationally,[5] with over 3,000 audio/video systems as of 2010.[4][6] Heil installed the very first DSS System, which he placed at the St. Louis office of Bob Costas.[5] He was also on the original test team for the RCA DirecTV dish system.[5]