Josh, how did you meet Rupert?
Josh: I was working for a place in Chicago called Soundlink Audio with Howard Sonyacoff and Lewis Frisch. He got me passes to the AES show. I showed up and I was basically a kid from the Midwest in the big city of New York. Lewis said he wanted me to meet somebody; I turned around and he introduced me to Rupert Neve and Les Paul — three minutes in! [laughter] It hasn't gotten better than that since!
Rupert: It would've been '93.
J: It was the US launch of the Amek Medici [equalizer]. R: I joined Amek [Systems and Controls Ltd] in April of '89. In '90 and '91, there were several visits to the US to meet different dealers and distributers for Nick Franks, who was the owner of Amek.
When did you stop working for Amek?
R: When did Amek wind up? J: Harman [International Industries] didn't know what they were going to do with it, it seems. I think '05 is when they officially stopped trading.
Were you still under contract with themat that point, or had you moved on?
R: I was under contract. I think it was initially five years, but that just rolled on and on. Nick Franks and I had become good, personal friends. I don't remember that we had any formal renewal of the contract; we just continued as before. Nick had a number of problems on in the circuits and the sound. He wasn't an engineer or designer; but he could tell me about transformers and whatnot. I would make adjustments and then we would make comparisons between transformer-less circuits and ones that had transformers. I found that extremely helpful. You can measure and measure and you'll get results, but it's not definitive. You need to get the golden-eared person to supplement your own findings on the circuits. Billy had a lot of ideas and between us we pulled The Masterpiece into shape. Now, you came in on the scene shortly after that? used transformers. They've been very successful and they still are.
My feeling, as a recording engineer, is that you just grab the gear that works and you don't think about what's in the box. But it's also sales,preconceptions and hype.
R: It's a question of how you use them, like everything else. When it came to a console, I wanted a greater dynamic range. We just wanted something straight- down-the middle, the best there is. So, we developed his plate with the running of the company and various his plate with the running of the company and various financial problems, which had accrued from that. He had some very good people who joined him. When did John Oakley join?
J: John would've been 2001 or 2002.
R: Yes, yes. John had been with Soundcraft. He joined Amek as Managing Director. Unfortunately not long after he joined Amek he had a heart attack and was out of commission for some months. But he sailed back into the stormy seas and did a first class job. I was still generating new ideas and products.
Josh, did you work for Amek at some point?
J: I started working for Amek and also became friends with Nick Franks. When Harman exercised their right to purchase Amek, I was with them [Amek] for another two years — five or six years all together. I was there for the 9098i in-line console and the Channel In a Box [channel strip].
How did Rupert Neve designs come out of this? You also had your ARN Consultants Corporation at this time?
R: My wife [Evelyn] and I came over [to the US] in 1994. I was with Amek at the time and continued to work with them doing design work and a certain amount of representing — going to shows and meeting up with people. I was doing additional consulting and design work for various people. I met up with Taylor Guitars and did some design work for them [the acoustic K3 preamp and ES pickup].
What lead to Billy Stull's Legendary Audio and The Masterpiece Analog Mastering System in 2004?
R: I actually met Billy quite early on. He came to see me after I first arrived in Wimberley. He's a great guy. The thing that was so impressive to me was that Billy has the best pair of ears I've ever come across in many years. He could listen and tell you what was going on in the circuits and the sound. He wasn't an engineer or designer; but he could tell me about transformers and whatnot. I would make adjustments and then we would make comparisons between transformer-less circuits and ones that had transformers. I found that extremely helpful. You can measure and measure and you'll get results, but it's not definitive. You need to get the golden-eared person to supplement your own findings on the circuits. Billy had a lot of ideas and between us we pulled The Masterpiece into shape. Now, you came in on the scene shortly after that?
J: Yeah, right when he was trying to make a commercial go of it as a product. I'd just finished working with Amek. I'd helped with the Taylor guitar preamp/pickup just before this. Rupert and I'd kept in touch. We'd submitted a bunch of designs and ideas that Rupert had brainstormed to Amek. It became pretty clear that they were either uninterested or incapable of moving forward with the designs.
What became of The Masterpiece?
J: It was a tough product at the time because a lot of the mastering guys were transitioning "into the box," as it were. It has a lot of features from the master section of a console, so a lot of the mastering guys already had custom consoles from Manley and what not. But there are a number of them out there. R: I believe production was 25 units. I don't think we actually got as far as 25, but it was not insignificant.
Hutch: I was incredibly impressed. I was building mastering consoles that had almost no features. [at Manley Labs]
R: Legendary Audio was Billy's company. I can't even remember the arrangement; it kept changing. He was trying to sell The Masterpieces and do it all himself, which was a big mistake that he made. It is the worst thing in the world for a designer to try and sell his own design. He would spend huge amounts of time on the phone telling people how wonderful The Masterpiece was. It was quite good, from a marketing standpoint, but he could never get around to closing the deal. So Josh appeared on the horizon and started to bring some order into that chaos. Billy was short of capital. Who everhas enough capital? [laughter] He was trying to buy components on a one on one basis for the next unit and was always short of this or that. He had a very good subcontractor, who we still use ourselves. They went through and somehow managed to get things working to the standards they should work. As Hutch was just saying, it wasn't the simplest of units. It needed capital for promotion and sales. It would've been a lot more successful if it'd had those things behind it. But the ones that have sold [are to] satisfied customers. We continue to get reports of what people have done with it. I suppose it's fair to say that the unit was top-quality ICs [integrated circuits], but it was not discrete. There was a huge amount of features in that — a lot of the things like sensitivity switching and EQ switching were all solid-state, which worked extremely well. We still go back and look at some of those circuits when we want to do something similar on present designs. I think the Portico range came out of discussions that Josh and I had. Again, they were sort of hybrid; though they were mostly ICs but there is quite a lot of discrete stuff. We used transformers. They've been very successful and they still are.
My feeling, as a recording engineer, is that you just grab the gear that works and you don't think about what's in the box. But it's also sales,preconceptions and hype.
R: It's a question of how you use them, like everything else. When it came to a console, I wanted a greater dynamic range. We just wanted something straight- down-the middle, the best there is. So, we developed our own discrete op-amp. We used high-voltage rails, which you can't do with ICs. You're limited. We went up to plus and minus 45 volts. The result is the 5088. I don't think there's any other piece of equipment on which I'll blow my own trumpet! [laughter] We're still on the same track. Not everything we're doing is 90 volts — it doesn't have to be. We've established the Portico range and there's no backing down from that. The components are more readily available. Capacitors that can handle 90 volts are in limited supply. Bring it down a few volts and the prices drop quite dramatically.
Were you nervous to start a new company with Rupert Neve Designs?
R: I was always wanting, and always wanted to have, the necessary vehicle to manufacture the designs that were coming out. You've got to set up some sort of company. Josh and I have known each other for a considerable amount of time and it seemed natural that we would join forces. Originally it was just my wife and myself. Bit by bit we expanded the company. I wasn't nervous, no.
One thing that would streamline producing the Portico range is using a similar form factor.
J: We had six products out within two years. I've never seen that with any other company that I've worked with.
Hutch, when did you come on board? You had a distinguished run at Manley.
H: Just a little over four years ago. J: Rupert went from working out of a spare room in his house to having half of this building. Rupert Neve Designs was growing at such a rate that it was obvious that we needed help. The trajectory of the business made that obvious.
People knew of you more as a tube person. Was it fun to comeover here and think of some different problems to solve?
H: The whole tube thing is actually something I picked up at Manley and I carried that theme [over here]. My background before that wasn't really tubes — it was consoles and a whole range of studio equipment. R: I first met Hutch at Electric Lady Studios. The first Focusrite console went in there. He was very much into high-grade ICs.
H: Rupert probably has more experience with tubes than I do! [laughter] But yeah, I took that pretty much as far as I could. Then this opportunity came up and I considered it an honor. I had to do it. The bulk of what I'm doing is helping the engineering team. When they stumble on something, or need a fresh approach or a starting point for a schematic — Rupert does that, I do that. It's a teamwork thing. The most important thing I do is teaching engineers how to listen.
R: We have a good team of people. But I find, in this day and age, we don't easily find the kind of designer that used to be readily available. This is no reflection on the people we have here, but an engineer used to know what a decibel was and would be able to understand basic physics. What is 3 dB? What does that mean to you in terms of sound pressure and whatnot? This is a problem we have today — very intelligent people that want to learn but haven't been taught. It's like kids reading without knowing what the alphabet looks like! H: Back in the '80s when I was a working in studios, it seemed to me there was a lot of shaky, questionable gear going on, particularly in that decade. But there were consistently good pieces coming from smaller manufacturers: George Massenburg, Rupert... and then the list gets pretty small! [laughter] But I thought, "How are those two guys consistently producing great sounding gear?" Then it occurred to me that they were listening. They were listening to what they were building and the other guys weren't. Whatever pressure we may feel, from whatever direction, it's got to be high-quality.
Where's the company at now?
J: It's real simple — we just have to sell things. And we need happy customers, like yourself. It's not easy, but it's fun. We've got a great group of people. We're doing things now that I think 20 years from now people will look back on and say that it's been meaningful.
BONUS CONTENT BELOW:
One thing I think our readers would be surprised about is that at this level, Rupert is not designing the entire circuit on his own. There are actually teams of engineers that subdivide the work.
H: It’s usually a combination of things.
J: Someone will mention something at a trade show. Rupert will mention something to me. And I’ll say, “What if it did this?”
H: And then there will be a page description, a front panel sketch and a block diagram. From there, Rupert might draw a preliminary schematic. I might draw one. And then we hand it off to the team.
I assume front panel switching and power supplies are easy things to hand off.
H: There’s still a fair amount of detail work before it can be drawn up in its official form. It takes time.
J: It takes far too long! [laughter]
H: Then it gets handed off to the person who does the circuit board design and we do a lot of communication back and forth.
Where are the components going to sit? How wide are the traces?
R: Yes, we spend a lot of time working very carefully on the layout. The old enemy of audio is forms of interference from power supplies or whatever. In the old days, it was AC 60 hertz, or 120 hertz, and today it’s more high-frequency stuff due to the switching modes of [power] supplies. You’ve got to keep the circuits from talking to each other. It’s a hard job. It really comes back to experience. You get to know components and how a power supply is going to radiate in a certain way. So, the last thing you want is a helpful assembler to say, “There’s a better way to do this. Why don’t we put them side by side to save space?”
There are many details. Rupert has a pretty important legacy to maintain.
H: I think we all feel that we’re doing the best work we’ve ever done.
J: Yes. If we get that bit right, the money will fall into place.
R: We have today a huge advantage. We don’t give any credit. People have to pull out a credit card and put the money down. That wasn’t so back in the day. The first console I did, we came to the conclusion that we needed £100 worth of components. We were selling it for £300, which I thought was sheer robbery! But my wife was the businessperson and she said we had to make some money out of it – otherwise we wouldn’t be able to make the next console. We didn’t have any money and I didn’t know how we were going to get the parts. I called the customer and said, “It’s company policy that we get one-third of the payment up front with the order. We need £100 from you.” The guy said, “Okay. Do you want check or cash?” I said I’d come pick it up from him. I was going straight from his place to the place to get supplies! [laughter] The same thing happened the next time. We came to the conclusion that it was the way to run the business. When we didn’t do that, it seemed something went wrong or the relationship was sour. It was a good business practice, as well as a guiding principle. It worked until we started to export. In those days, all the European companies had export and exchange controls. You couldn’t get any money out of Spain without the goods, for example. Spanish banks weren’t allowed to send money out of the country without proof of invoice. If something went wrong, you had to renegotiate the whole damn thing. You spent more time on paperwork than building consoles. We started to run into company problems. We really needed to find a way. We allowed ourselves to be taken over by a small, private company who came to us with a wonderful formula. They said to us, “Our money and your brains and we’ll really have a wonderful package here!” Well, that was all fine. We had our brains, but unfortunately they had no money! [laughter] So, it was limping along. Every small console manufacturer that I’ve ever spoke to has been through this. Amek went through the same thing. You need to have enough of a down payment to make the console. It was always a struggle.
J: I think we’d all seen enough ways that it didn’t work. We have a number of advantages. Martin Arthurs puts the consoles together – he’s put together hundreds and hundreds. I knew right away who to get. If he says a console is good to go, I know it’s not coming back. We’ve got a great subcontractor who’s just down the road. In many ways, it’s easier now to do production than it’s ever been before.
When you guys prototype something, do you take it around to studios and other people you know to try it out?
J: Yes.
H: We just sent a prototype to a studio on Saturday. They got the debut – the first listen. But that won’t hit production and hit the streets until AES.
J: We’re always listening here.
H: It’s essentially ready.
R: There are advantages of present production. Everything is done on the computer. We can show you a panel, or a complete unit. You can put it up on the screen and rotate it. Every dimension is down to meticulous accuracy. The program won’t let you enter wrong values. When you take that to your sheet metal worker, he can slide that disc into his computer. His machine can orientate to our drawings. You get parts that just flow together. There’s no question.
J: We’ve got a great set of companies we’re able to work with, all based here in Texas.
You could be manufacturing in China.
R: There’s an advantage both ways. But, broadly speaking, the same principles are used in China as they’re used around the corner here. But the whole process of manufacturing has totally changed from the old days. I remember when I started using printed circuits. I argued about the quality and ended up going right back to basics. One thing a person has to learn the hard way is reliable connections and how to solder. And that applies if it’s a printed circuit board or just two bits of wire put together. Printed circuit technology got itself a bad name back in the day; it was not reliable. When we first started putting it together, I had circuit boards made by a firm up in the Midlands. These were not even plated because I couldn’t trust the quality of the plating. They were just copper on the board. They were very large pads, compared to what we have today. I had every one of those joints checked by me personally, or someone I could trust. The first time we started putting a module together, one of my interns asked me, “Is it going to corrode, Mr. Neve?” I said, “Yes, it might corrode. How are we going to stop it from corroding?” Well, I put the intern on his bike and sent him to the local hardware store. We sprayed all of them with a clear varnish. There are boards that were done in those few weeks that are still in service today.
J: They’re probably still showing up on eBay today! [laughter]
They’re probably more valuable now! One last question: how did the sE RNR1 [active ribbon microphone] come about?
R: I like ribbon microphones. I knew some of the designers way back. Michael Gayford was the first designer of the ribbon microphone. He died a few years ago. He and I used to talk about microphones. I just got to like the sound quality. The other thing was that a ribbon mic requires a lot of low-noise gain. His problem was he couldn’t find anyone to give him the amplifiers that he needed. So I played around with amplifiers for some time until we got that rolling. Several years ago, we had a visit from the people who are now our Chinese colleagues. Siwei Zou has a wonderful pair of ears. For one thing, he listens. He’s the conductor of the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra. He really knows what he’s doing. We’ve talked about these things and the idea of a ribbon mic with an extended high-frequency response and which had an amplifier so you didn’t have to depend on the mic pre to run it. The ribbon itself is a very high-quality unit. So, that’s really where it started. But there’s a whole range of microphones coming along now.
