Bob Heaton was my Dad. His funeral was on Friday. He was 90. He wasn’t a famous engineer or recording artist or anything, but he was my Dad and he was unique and much loved by all who knew him.
He wasn’t a member here since when he was doing DIY audio the internet hadn’t been invented! But I get the feeling that he would have enjoyed this forum and the conversations that go on around here. I’m sure he’d have enjoyed the thread about gravity too as he loved science.
He had lots of technical hobbies, these included Amateur Radio, DIY audio, electronics and Photography and he would also maintain his cars himself for many years.
He was my inspiration to take on some DIY audio projects.
Some of his projects included:
A Home made record deck based on a second hand turntable, but with a home made arm and a ceramic cartridge made with the help of one of his friends who had a lathe and a metal work setup.
A stereo amplifier. This used the Sinclair 3W pc chip if I recall correctly and the chassis was his own folded aluminium effort. It had tone and balance controls along with the usual volume control.
A pair of large bass reflex full range speakers based on the goodmans axiom 8” driver.
These were all built from chipboard and finished with a stick on wood finish laminate. The record player unit had a built in storage space for vinyl and one of the speakers also had a side pod for record storage.
He would love to sit at the apex of the speaker triangle on the floor so his ears were at the level of the drive units and would enjoy the stereo effect and the surprising amount of bass from a 3W amp. I think the drive units were rated at 6W. Tocata and Fugue would shake the room even at 3W.
When I bought Douglas Self’s audio books and showed them to my Dad, he remembered the name from many Wireless World articles. There was often an up to date copy in the house along with Practical Wireless and Electronics Today International, and an occasional copy of Elektor. These accompanied many of the Amateur Radio magazines like QST and the RSGB magazine. He had articles published in both.
The QST article was kind of a crossover between audio and radio. The idea behind the article was that to make Morse code signals easier to hear, you could limit the audio bandwidth to a narrow range around the carrier frequency. These days you’d use an opamp or two. It was novel because it used an acoustic resonator. It used a small loudspeaker from a transistor radio affixed to the top of a parallel sided glass tumbler. Doing a frequency sweep with our Wein Bridge oscillator, we found the resonant frequency. We then added a series LC circuit tuned to the same frequency to create a simple narrow bandwidth band pass filter.
It was surprisingly effective! You could easily hear Morse code signals that were otherwise buried in the noise!
He lived to see and hear my DIY audio efforts and was astonished at how much detail he could hear on my system and how good the bass was for such tiny speakers. He enjoyed hearing about my discoveries and the ways I managed to fix the self inflicted defects I had inadvertently introduced along the way.
He would have loved to see XRK’s photography thread on here as photography was his lifelong favourite.
He will be very much missed, particularly since he was really the only person I knew who could understand any of the DIY audio stuff! (Apart from the folks here of course!).
RIP Dad.
He wasn’t a member here since when he was doing DIY audio the internet hadn’t been invented! But I get the feeling that he would have enjoyed this forum and the conversations that go on around here. I’m sure he’d have enjoyed the thread about gravity too as he loved science.
He had lots of technical hobbies, these included Amateur Radio, DIY audio, electronics and Photography and he would also maintain his cars himself for many years.
He was my inspiration to take on some DIY audio projects.
Some of his projects included:
A Home made record deck based on a second hand turntable, but with a home made arm and a ceramic cartridge made with the help of one of his friends who had a lathe and a metal work setup.
A stereo amplifier. This used the Sinclair 3W pc chip if I recall correctly and the chassis was his own folded aluminium effort. It had tone and balance controls along with the usual volume control.
A pair of large bass reflex full range speakers based on the goodmans axiom 8” driver.
These were all built from chipboard and finished with a stick on wood finish laminate. The record player unit had a built in storage space for vinyl and one of the speakers also had a side pod for record storage.
He would love to sit at the apex of the speaker triangle on the floor so his ears were at the level of the drive units and would enjoy the stereo effect and the surprising amount of bass from a 3W amp. I think the drive units were rated at 6W. Tocata and Fugue would shake the room even at 3W.
When I bought Douglas Self’s audio books and showed them to my Dad, he remembered the name from many Wireless World articles. There was often an up to date copy in the house along with Practical Wireless and Electronics Today International, and an occasional copy of Elektor. These accompanied many of the Amateur Radio magazines like QST and the RSGB magazine. He had articles published in both.
The QST article was kind of a crossover between audio and radio. The idea behind the article was that to make Morse code signals easier to hear, you could limit the audio bandwidth to a narrow range around the carrier frequency. These days you’d use an opamp or two. It was novel because it used an acoustic resonator. It used a small loudspeaker from a transistor radio affixed to the top of a parallel sided glass tumbler. Doing a frequency sweep with our Wein Bridge oscillator, we found the resonant frequency. We then added a series LC circuit tuned to the same frequency to create a simple narrow bandwidth band pass filter.
It was surprisingly effective! You could easily hear Morse code signals that were otherwise buried in the noise!
He lived to see and hear my DIY audio efforts and was astonished at how much detail he could hear on my system and how good the bass was for such tiny speakers. He enjoyed hearing about my discoveries and the ways I managed to fix the self inflicted defects I had inadvertently introduced along the way.
He would have loved to see XRK’s photography thread on here as photography was his lifelong favourite.
He will be very much missed, particularly since he was really the only person I knew who could understand any of the DIY audio stuff! (Apart from the folks here of course!).
RIP Dad.
Many thanks for all of your kind thoughts and good wishes. I’m sure Dad would have been pleased with the interest in his projects!