Elantric's bio

Started by Elantric-fgn, May 25, 2009, 10:13:37 AM

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Elantric-fgn

Grew up in both southern and northern California. At age 7, I was inspired to play guitar after watching the Chantays record the surf hit "Pipeline" at Wentzel's Music Town, 13117 Lakewood Blvd,  Downey California  - back in 1962. I lived around the corner on Woodruff, near Rio San Gabriel elementary school. - this was near Paul Bigsby's shop in Downey , California ( he was a motorcycle mechanic who invented the Bigsby Vibrato)  - also home of the Carpenters, and The Blasters, and North American Rockwell - who designed the Apollo command module that orbited the Moon. 
http://www.losangeles.com/nightlife/records.html

My Father worked for General Motor's Ball Bearing division, and he once visited Leo Fender in 1959, to sell him Ball Bearings for a guitar vibrato prototype that never left his R&D lab.
Been playing guitar since 1967, Performed in the Santa Cruz area in the late 1960s, ( I saw bulk of the San Francisco bands live in the park in their heyday) then I lived in Chicago in 1970 - 1978, - used to sit in and play blues at Kingston mines coffee house in Chicago)  after college  I moved back to Los Angeles.   I wrote and performed the incidental music for a cult SCI-FI film "LazerBlast", which aired a lot on Mystery Science Theatre 3000. At the same time I toured the southwest in a rock band called Rocket 88 - whose members went on to big time with Ratt, and Wang Chung.
http://www.jeffnaideau.com/inmemory.htm

Here's a site with  MP3 recordings  of that band at a live gig in Flagstaff , AZ from 1979:

http://www.lovedrums.com/audio/Rocket88/

A pic of me during that time





Eventually I became service manager at Valley Arts Guitar in Studio City, CA just off Laurel Canyon. I set up guitars for Stevie Ray Vaughan, Frank Zappa, Devo, Oingo Boingo - rewired their studios too.
http://www.valleyarts.com/shopnamm.htm

I worked with Midget Sloatman - Zappa's guitar tech (He's 6'5" !!) 

http://www.guitarplayer.com/article/guitars-frank-zappa/jul-06/21622

Many people worked on FZ's gear - While working at Valley Arts I worked on nearly Everybody's gear between years 1980 - 1986. I took over Paul Rivera's role at the shop, as he had left in 1979 to work for Pignose, then Yamaha, then Fender. It was a wonderful time, low pay, yet rewarding for being part of a great team with Mike McGuire, Al Carness, Martin Miranda, Stevie Freyette, Dudley Gimpel. 

I worked on Jimmie Vaughan's gear too, and when his brother came to LA to record his first demos at Jackson Browne's LA studio - I set up his '61 Strat.


Here's a video of David Bowie live 1983, I built the red Strat guitar played by Earl Slick:(though I would have tuned it a bit more had I been at that show) Begins at the 1:53 mark.

David Bowie - Cat People (Serious Moonlight)


Pic below is from 1981, the Valley Arts Guitar repair department located upstairs above the store below.  I'm on the right. Bob Kerr is on the left, filing frets on a Martin D-28. My '61 SG Special is on the bench in the foreground, The view is from the Client waiting area - a dutch door with a shelf. Around the corner to the right (out of view) was a complete guitar workshop and paint booth. A crew of 3 talented Luthiers from Michoacan  province Mexico did a lot of beautiful work.  Manuel Rios , Ramon, and Rujelio. Dudley Gimpel was there too. Building a custom 335 for Larry Carlton ( Dudley soon left to become principal luthier for Ernie Ball / Music Man , where he still works today, designing all the models for EVH, Steve Morse, John Petrucci, Luke, Albert Lee, etc).  Stevie Freyette worked right beside me in Amp repair in the early 1980's prior to moving over to MusicTech, then founding VHT amps in 1988 after an initial capitalization from Andy Brauer rentals.
Sadly the Valley Arts Store and shop was destroyed by a Fire in 1991. Samick had a contract to make import budget versions of VA Strats, the fine print in the contract stated Samick could make the whole VA line should production cease in the USA - which it did after the fire. Major bummer. 



I got married and left Valley Arts and music to work at NASA/Jet Propulsion Lab to focus on Electronics where I performed radiation testing on components for deep space probes (Galileo, Hubble Telescope, Mars Pathfinder) In the mid 90's I returned to music as the Technical Director at Machine Head Studios in Venice, CA

http://www.machinehead.com

This is major LA post production sound design studio that produced all the music and multichannel audio sound effects for TV commercials for Lexus, CocaCola, Budweiser Frogs. I played guitar on many of those. And I performed on the soundtracks for the trailer films for Batman & Robin (with our governor as "Mr. Freeze") , Multiplicity with Michael Keaton


I moved here to San Luis Obispo in 1999 to work for Ernie Ball / Music Man, to cultivate an electronics division and support instrument amplifiers.
I worked on several interesting projects there - Here's me with all the limited production Spinal Tap MusicMan Mr Horsepower guitars with working Tachometer to measure how fast you are playing - I designed the PC boards and personally hand wired each one.



Since 2002, I've been at Ultra Stereo Labs Inc. www.USLINC.COM I'm an electronic design engineer, creating DSP digital audio processing equipment for the Cinema industry. We are a rival to Dolby. Our company has designed equipment which has won Academy Awards in Technical Achievement. http://www.uslinc.com/about_us.html#3 I have a passion for creative invention, and feel quite fortunate to be able to be employed at an innovative local company, as well as reactivate my music career on the side here on the central california coast - perforing as lead guitarist in a local Surf Band "The Dentures".


My day gig I design this stuff:

http://www.uslinc.com/products-feature_ramdom.html

and we sell versions to other manufacturers, like DTS




Steve Conrad

http://www.myspace.com/elantric

(here's a pic of my College Band in 1974- thats me on the right (airborne) playing my '61 SG into my Plush (twin reverb) clone.
. . . the future ain't what it used to be . . .

Spindrift-fgn

Waouw!!!

At 25 years old I still have a lot of things to do!!But steeve you have a unique life I think. Congratulations!Really
Without control, Power is nothing!

Pirelli

Sympodius

Wow, Steve. You sound like you've had a really interesting start. I look forward to the forthcoming chapters.
Time is not now; space is not here;
thoughts are not existence; and life not always clear ...


Gibson SG Voodoo (Serial: 00294552)
Gibson Les Paul Dark Fire (Serial: DF 0683)

malteby

Dude your life really seem to rock!!!
You have basically done everything that I only dream about!!!
I have done a lot of things, but they are mostly just to "earn my daily bread" and to earn my daily guitar!  :)
I will put as much ideas etc. as I can in my thread and Im really looking forward to you reading it and commenting on it!

Rock on!!!
Mattias Malteby
Equippo HB
mattias@equippo.se
www.equippo.se

Elantric-fgn

#4
Thanks Mattias,

At least you seem passionate about the guitar.

It does possess magical abilities in the right hands.

Youthful energy, passion, lust for knowledge, and discipline are all good things to have when embarking on living your dreams.

But the best education will come from your failure

I suggest you read this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Utter-Failure-Neil-Steinberg/dp/0385479700

Complete and Utter Failure
by Neil Steinberg

From the Publisher
So you've got these fond hopes for blissful love, professional glory, fame, and fortune. But in the back of your mind there's that nagging fear. The woman of your dreams will laugh in your face. Your hated office rival will come up with some whizbang marketing idea and get promoted, while you'll be asked to "help out with the phones." Steven Spielberg will buy the rights to your screenplay, spend $40 million producing it, and the critics will savage the film, mercilessly singling out your work for especially contemptuous, poisonous derision. But hey, everybody fails sometime. It's inevitable. So don't fear failure. Embrace it. In Complete And Utter Failure, Neil Steinberg joyfully explores the many fascinating facets of failure, from pointless failure (a brief history of several very dumb attempts to climb Mount Everest) to product failure (Reddi-Bacon, smokeless cigarettes, and Baby Jesus dolls) to institutionalized failure (the horrifying Dickensian spectacle of the National Spelling Bee, in which 8,999,999 children out of 9,000,000 fail in an excruciatingly public and humiliating fashion). This delightful book is filled with surprising and useless arcana--who really invented the telephone, what turned on Isaac Newton--guaranteed to help you annoy people at cocktail parties. Along the way Steinberg meditates on his own myriad miscues and disappointments, beginning with his failure to perform a magic trick in front of the neighborhood kids at age four (he blames Captain Kangaroo). Complete And Utter Failure is a wonderfully literate, witty book.



My point with recommending this book, is to promote the idea to "embrace failure"  - because you can only experience failure after you muster up the guts to attempt to accomplish something.
If you have an invention - build it, observe it, document it, improve it. If it fails, then the steps are easy - you observe it, document it, improve it - research for answers, use google and scribd

Repeat as Necessary!

My parents taught me that if I set my sights on my passions, I could accomplish anything in this world.

i guess I'm living proof they were right.

and John Lennon said "Life is what happens while you are planning something else".

Which is also true.

Its also key to constantly be acquiring a new set of skills,  to be self taught - and always be learning something new each day for the rest of your life. Don't be afraid to reinvent yourself - and be aware that at different stages in this life - you will be changing your current daily agenda, priorities,  "operating procedure" and routine daily activities. 


. . . the future ain't what it used to be . . .

notafraid-fgn

Now I know who NOT to 2nd guess....

Elboy

Wow, reading your bio made me smile big time.  You must had had a ball! hat off to you, you seem to have been one of lifes fortunate people that gets to do a job they want to do.  Well done
Gibson Dark Fire DF 2053 (currently very healthy, although the paint on the pickups is coming off!!!)
Epiphone LP custom EMGs
Eastwood Airline
Gretch projet
Ibanez AELL40SERLV
Hughes and Ketner 25 anniversary 20watt tube amp

big_jan-fgn

Well done Steve! Looking forward to the next lengthy chapter or rather the in between details of failures, mishaps and funny experiences that have made what you are today!

Again looking forward to see you and your inspiration Craig Anderton on a band stand or even a casual picture together here on the web!

Cheers!

Elantric-fgn

#8
Quote
Again looking forward to see you and your inspiration Craig Anderton on a band stand or even a casual picture together here on the web!

here ya go! I'm on the far left - with the Tronical Team and Craig Anderton in the Gibson Bus at 2009 Winter NAMM.

. . . the future ain't what it used to be . . .