was a t a friends and picked this peice of coffee table literature up
http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:3JpektOujhQJ:www.mesaboogie.com/catalog/acrobats06/History-6pgs.pdf+mesa+boogie+randy+smith+history+stillson&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=nzHe had a studio quality turntable
with a futuristic tone arm all mounted to a
slab of exotic hardwood, and supported by
four old beer cans …Hamms, as I recall. He
gave me some of his older pieces, hand-built
on the kitchen table, which I experimented
with until I was 11 or 12.
Then, at this impressionable age, I met
Stan Stillson, a guy whose business was build-
ing industrial control systems in his garage
shop. (His father had invented the Stillson
wrench.) His son Dave, a little older than
me, was into building hi-fi and ham radio
gear as a hobby. I originally went to his father
as part of a Boy Scout merit
badge, which I thought would
be real easy. Was I ever wrong!
The requirement for the
badge seemed simple: Carve
Three Items. Well, when I took
my carvings over, I started worrying as soon
as the guy opened the door. He was a Marine
Combat veteran and looked like Clint
Eastwood on a bad day …tough as nails. I
handed him my carvings and he gave me
this look. He said, “Follow me.” We crossed
his shop floor. “This is a band saw,” he said,
turning it on. Then he stacked my three carv-
ings in a pile, and ran them through –first
one way, then the other. He looked right
at me as he tossed the pieces into the trash.
“That’s what I think of your projects. And
that’s what I think of you.”
See, his theory was that when a person
makes something, he is leaving behind an
artifact that records his values at that time.
He knew I hadn’t put much effort into the
carvings and he wasn’t about to offer any false
praise to “build up my self-esteem”. No, they
weren’t very good
and I was busted.
But, severely hum-
bled, I hung around.
It seems like I was in
his shop for weeks,
carving things, learning how to handle and
sharpen his tools and how to work in a seri-
ous shop with a real craftsman. At that time
he was building a control console for the
Nautilus, the first nuclear submarine. Right
in his garage shop. That’s how heavy he was.
Anyway, the things he built just floored me,
they were so cool. They exuded artistry, far
beyond their primary, functional purpose and
inspired me to want to do the same. From
then on his son and I spent all our time in
the old man’s shop, learning to hand-build
amplifiers, transmitters and modulators from
scratch. All using vacuum tubes.
A few years later my interests ...
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