Feast your eyes upon this home studio of former ABC Radio Networks DJ, now retired, Steve Lewis. A pair of easily identifiable Gates consoles (Diplomat and Stereo Producer), several cart machines, a reel-to-reel and so much more fill this “Retro Meets Digital” room that Steve lets his close, personal friends play in.
Or rather he did until, well, let him tell the story:
“Last week a car ran a stop sign in a residential area at a very high rate of speed rear-ending another car. The speeding car then went airborne and came down in my yard, bounced airborne again and crashed through my front windows and wall at chest level making a direct hit into my studio equipment. The car then bounced back into the yard and flipped over. The driver was taken to the hospital and there were no injuries in the house. My wife and I are usually sitting right in front of the equipment that time of day, but we had gone to another room moments before.”
The house sustained some structural damage but neither Steve nor his wife was injured. But you really want to know about the equipment, don”t you? Steve says, “Much of the equipment was damaged when it crashed into the floor. But surprisingly the ’60s Gates Diplomat, on the left, is now working after I reconnected a broken wire which snapped from one of the master pots. The early ’70s Gates Stereo Producer, on the right, still works. Both are built with heavy steel cabinets.”
He warns, “It might be wise to rethink putting a studio at street level by a street. And lastly, remember seeing those movies in which a speeding car rear ends another car and goes airborne? … It happens.”
A lesson for us all.
