Ron Meyer

Just a quick update to let everyone know that Hank is now home form the hospital. He is making good progress and is continuing with physical therapy several times a week. Hank appreciates everyone's support.

On Saturday, February 13th, Hank Garfield suffered a serious stroke and was taken to nearby Saint Joseph’s Medical center in Burbank, CA. Hank is in the Acute Recovery ward which is a state of the art stroke recovery center. He is undergoing many hours of daily physical, occupational and speech therapy and is on his way to making a long recovery from this serious event. I believe Hank will be in the hospital for another month or two as he pushes forward with his recovery. I know many of you older mixers and boom ops know Hank from his days as a cable man, boom operator and later as a film sound mixer. I have personally known Hank for 33 years. When Hank retired from film sound mixing about ten years ago he started the Garfield Company. The Garfield Company makes all of those Headphone Softies, Hush Lavs, Hush heels, and other products that many of you use daily. Hank invented them all and is always interested in knowing what the sound industry is currently up to. I have been in contact with Hank’s son Coby and I was discussing with him how I could help him with Hank’s recovery. Hank has never been a big user of social media, he has no Facebook page. He prefers to speak with people in person, shack your hand, give you hug, ask you how you how your day is going, etc. Hank has a long road to go and I think some encouragement, good will and thoughts from his brothers and sisters in sound would be helpful as Hank is working through the next few months of his physical therapy. I would like to ask anyone who knows Hank to step up and write him a few words of encouragement or maybe reflect back on a job you worked with him. If any of you write him something here, I will print it out and deliver it to him in the hospital. Of you can send him a note or card and mail it to my company. I will see that he gets anything anyone sends. Hank Garfield c/o Professional Sound Corp 28085 Smyth Drive Valencia, CA 91355 Thank you, Ron Meyer/PSC

Professional Sound Corp has begun production of our new Zeus power system. It is primarily designed for large power users such as those who use Yamaha mixers. You can find more details about this product here: http://www.professionalsound.com/specs/zeus.html

Indeed if you have an early model, they were problematic. Those units were built in 2012 and had serial numbers staring with the digits 12.xx.xxx All units built after January 1st, 2013 do not have this issue. The serial numbers on these units will start with 13, 14 or 15. Our serial numbers work as follows: YYMMxxx YY= year, MM = Month, xxx = serial number made that month. For example: 1501001 2015, January, 1st unit made that month. If you have any question about the performance of your RF Multi SMA, please feel free to send it to me at PSC and I will test its performance for you. Best regards Ron Meyer, PSC

Congrats to Mr. Chris Powell as the first winner of the PSC monthly contest. Chris has won a PSC/McDonald M5 Pro Shock Mount. Chris, please contact PSC with your shipping information so that I can ship out your shock mount. best regards Ron Meyer PSC

You should be using 12 AWG and keep the battery wires as short as possible. 3 feet or less is a good practice. Ron

It sounds like you have a bad battery. here are a few quick tests you can run to see what is going on with your system. If you have a volt meter, read the battery voltage directly at the battery terminals. Operate the unit without ac, powering your gear. Read the battery voltage and make a note of it. Then plug in the AC and read the battery voltage again, noting the difference in the two voltages. The battery voltage should jump up about 0.6 to 1.2 volts when the AC is plugged in. If it jumps up more than that, say 2 volts, then the battery is high internal resistance....bad battery....open cell. If the voltage does not jump up at all, then your PowerStar has a problem. Feel free to call me at PSC if you have any other questions or need help with the trouble shooting. Robert Sharman is correct that the Yellow Top battery is a better choice for your sound cart application. Though the Blue or Red Tops will work. Best regards Ron Meyer PSC

We will be drawing our first prize winner on Thursday, April 30th, 2015. Be sure to "like" us on Facebook before Thursday in order to be entered into our drawing. This months prize is a PSC/McDonald M5 Pro Shock Mount.

PSC is finally on Facebook. In celebration, we are hosting a monthly drawing for a PSC product prize. Simply "Like Us" on Facebook and you are automatically entered in our monthly drawing. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Professional-Sound-Corp/168385526511356?ref=aymt_homepage_panel

PSC was the first company to use the 8 pin Neutricon connectors for break-away connections in beta snakes. This happened sometime around 1989 which was before I took over running PSC from Al Kvist. Al was the president of PSC for the first five years the company was in existence and was in charge when the 8 pin Nuetricon connector became a standard. (before that time, PSC had used a connector that was somewhat similar to the 10 pin Hirose, but not exactly the same part #) I am not sure who decided on the pin-outs at that time. I think the reason they start with the tape returns rather than with the left audio channel is that the Nuetricon connectors at that time did not have any pin numbers on them. They just had a swirled line that runs from one end of the pins to the other. There was not even any marking for Pin 1 back then. PSC has used this same standard pin-out ever since that time period (1989). Later on, other companies used the same connector, but they all seem to pick their own pin-out standard. Concerning the 10 pin Hirose standard that is used on many ENG style mixers, that standard was created by Andy Copper at Cooper Sound for his CS104 ENG mixer. The 10 pin caught on and has been the standard ever since. I hope this clears up some of the confusion concerning these connectors and pin-outs. Ron Meyer PSC

Hi Everyone, Thank you for the kind feedback. As usual, I want to mention that many of the ideas for this product came form you, our customers. The "USB Power On Only" mode and the three position belt clip ideas came from Scott Farr. The bottom end housing power inputs idea came from Jason Hemmerlin.

The List price is $365.00 It will begin shipping this week, not March Ron.

We are pleased to announce our New PowerStar Mini Triple Play. This new power distribution system is perfect for bag use and small cart setups alike. http://www.professionalsound.com/specs/pwrStarMiniTriple.htm Thank you for your consideration. Ron Meyer PSC

They are built, packaged and available as of today. We will begin shipping to our dealers on Wednesday, February 4th. Ron

Hi John, I guess I am busted. I kept telling Randy 12.685 Lbs was a bit too heavy! Sorry about the mistake. I will correct it. Ron

14 months ago, I sat down with Randy at a local breakfast joint near his house. We started talking about areas of the original shock mount design that we felt we could improve on. As we sat there, we both started sketching ideas on paper napkins. Our sketches are always completely different looking. Randy looks at everything like an artist and I look at everything like an engineer. He is thinking that a particular curve or bend would look nice, and I am thinking how do we manufacture that curve or bend. We are both very different, but we seem to compliment each other. That first meeting led to another and another. Hundreds of emails, phone calls, sketches and prototypes later we were both satisfied that we had something pretty special. I hope all of you like the results.

Boom Op Randy McDonald and I have been working on an updated version of his universal shock mount that has been in use world-wide since 1985. I think you will like the results: You can information about this product on our website at: http://professionalsound.com/specs/m5shock.htm Thanks to JW Sound for providing this website Best regards Ron Meyer PSC

You try calling Mr. Mike Paul at Location Sound Corp. He has quite a collection of early audio gear in his office. I am not sure if he wants to part with any of it, but its worth asking.

Sorry, no word on what happened. Just a small announcement on FaceBook page: "1013 Intergrated"

I just received word that John Reynolds has passed. He was a long time sound mixer and boom op in the state of Hawaii. He was such a great guy. One of the nicest sound mixers I have ever met. John specialized in ocean/surfing/Hawaii type work. It was common for him to be booming from a surf board or one of his own floatation device designs. John was a regular at the NAB show every year and the RAMPS party too. RIP John

That bottom machined part and rubber base sure look like one of my boom parts. Ron M. PSC

Most any "Regulated" 12Vdc power supply that is rated at 2 amps or more will work just fine. The Solice Mini will operate from 10 to 15Vdc. It nominally draws about 575mA at 12.8Vdc. Slightly more with the meters peaking and the meter brightness turned up. One amp would be about the most it would ever draw (peak conditions). We recommend regulated power supplies for all audio applications as they help keep the noise (ac hum) floor down. Ron Meyer PSC

Hi Mathew, I do not know if it would help you or not, but there is a sound mixer who is making a product called "The Dash Board" that is basically a very nice machined mechanical mount. It is a machined aluminum mounting plate that you bolt your slot receivers to and then it bolts to your SD recorder. It does not contain any electronics, RF or Power distribution, just a nice way of mounting the slot receivers. I am sorry I do not have a link to their website, but I am sure someone here will chime in with their contact information. best regards Ron Meyer PSC

Sean is absolutely correct in saying our headphone amps are on the anemic side. All of our mixers have been designed this way. We try to stay within the 8 hour SPL hearing limits as set forth by Cal OHSA and more importantly, the House Ear Institute. As our owners manuals say "Your ears are your livelihood, turn it down" We have on occasion modified our headphone amplifiers for greater output level. It is an easy change to make. We do require that our customers sign a liability release for this kind of modification. We seem to be the only mixer manufacture that worries about excessive SPL and hearing loss. I have had many customers call me up over the years asking about increasing their headphone amplifier output levels. When I explain why we build ours the way we do, they generally change their minds and keep the original levels. I fully understand that there are times when more level would be helpful, but listener ear fatigue causes most of us to keep turning up the volume as the day goes on and this practice is dangerous if that volume can go to high levels. Your ears get "tired" and you don't really notice how high a SPL you are listening to. Now back to the original topic. Ron Meyer PSC

Hi Phil, Back in the day at ASC, (about 1983 or 1984) I used to replace damaged rubber outer coverings on LTM poles with large (1.5" maybe?) rubber heat shrink tubing. It was a job for sure. You had to start at on end of the pole and shrink and pull and stretch the tubing until you got it all smooth and nice. I think either Rich Topham or Mike Riner taught me how to repair the LTM poles. We used to re-rivet them all the time too. I will say, I have not repaired an LTM pole since about 1986 when PSC started selling VDB poles. The VDB poles ate LTM's lunch as soon as they came out. As a side note, back in that time period, Dick Topham who owned ASC back then used to have a monthly suggestion box contest for his employees. The ideas was generate product improvements, new ideas, etc. 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners were paid $25, $15 and $10 respectively. Mike Riner (now at Warner Bros) and I came up with custom made foam donuts to install around the cable in the first section of boom poles to quiet the cable noise. This was not the first use of foam to quiet cables in poles, but I believe it was the first commercial use of this (first company to install the foam as a standard practice) If I remember correctly, we won 2nd place that month and spilt the $15. That might have paid for lunch in 1983. Ron Meyer PSC