Bob Heil To Speak To FDL Amateur Radio Club

The Fond du Lac Amateur Radio Club will be holding their next meeting on Monday, at 7:00 PM at the Moraine Park Technical College in Fond du Lac. This meeting will be held in room O104, on the Fond du Lac Moraine Park campus.  Our guest speaker for the event will be the incredible Bob Heil. The meeting is free and open to the public.

“Mr. Ham Radio” himself, Bob Heil will be our guest speaker. Heil is a world renowned pioneer in electronics and Ham Radio. Highly opinionated and fiercely independent in his views about pro sound, Bob Heil designs and builds microphones and Ham Radio accessories, and possesses a professional resume to back up his often out-of-the-box attitude. It was Bob who invented one of the most memorable guitar effects of all time: the Heil Talk Box that made Peter Frampton a fixture on ‘70s album charts.

One of Peter Frampton’s most famous songs is “Show Me The Way”, featuring Frampton using the Heil Talk Box. Heil explains how he developed one of the most famous pieces of musicians gear in history. “Joe Walsh had recorded “Rocky Mountain Way” using an 8″ speaker and a funnel, a device used in Nashville by the steel guitar players. Well, it wasn’t very loud so you couldn’t use it live. So here we are, two ham radio operators on a Sunday afternoon out in my plant. We grabbed a 250-watt JBL, built a low-pass filter, got all the plumbing together, and voila—the Talk Box. That’s how it started. After that, everybody’s going nuts! “What’s this thing he’s got?” So I put together a commercial unit called the Heil Talk Box. Then Peter Frampton’s girlfriend, Penny, called me wanting a Christmas present for Peter. So I sent a Talk Box. The rest of the story writes itself from there.”  Bob Heil has designed some of the very best microphones used by many professional artists. Heil said “We have blown the lid off that dynamic microphone market, all because Joe Walsh wanted me to build him a ‘better’ microphone since everyone else has moved off to China and just copying their 45  year old design.  Hundreds of leading artists  have discovered the PR 35.  Carrie Underwood, Charlie Daniels, Joan Baez, Keith Urban, Joe Walsh…on and on…hundreds.”

He’s built sound systems for some of the most hallowed names in rock. Names like The Who, The Grateful Dead, The Eagles, Humble Pie, Peter Frampton, and pivotally, his longtime pal Joe Walsh with whom he shares an obsession for Ham radio. It’s his lifelong love of amateur radio that has surprisingly helped put Heil Sound at the forefront of live music reproduction with a collection of microphones that has been winning converts everywhere. Heil said “Yes, I was blessed my whole life.  So much of what leads the way is my ham radio which taught me how to build and my Wurlitzer theatre organ career that still teaches me how to listen as we tune and voice those 6 to 8 thousand pipes.  Listening is an art and I learned it early.” 

Bob is also the television host of the show “Ham Nation” which is watched by Ham Radio enthusiasts around the world.

The public is invited and there is no cover charge. For more information contact Joe Scheibinger at 920-237-1450.