To employ an automobile analogy for a moment -
Me: Jocko, I'd like to swap out the engine in my car for one that is higher in performance. What do you recommend?
Jocko: First, learn how to grind your own camshaft, then ...
And always with humor, even when he was totally pissed off.
Of all the ways to find out my best friend whom I met in 1985 is dead, this is the last one I expected. The irony would have had him laughing till he couldn’t breath. He was my best of allies and my fiercest critic. I watched him beat cancer and care for his mother damn near all by himself at the end of her life. He was the one I called when I was in jam and never asked for my help for anything. He loved baseball, Zappa, and the Doors in that order and had a warped sense of humor that makes me smile even now. The first time I heard him laugh himself breathless is when I accidentally touched the very high voltage electrode of a homemade air ionizer in his car and cussed him out. We had only met for the first time a couple of hours before. I repaid him by rolling on my lawn laugh while he cussed and sweated tearing out my shrubbery with a pick ax in the middle a Texas summer day. He could recite the dialogue from Repo Man and The Magic Christian verbatim and often did. I can’t imagine a world without him to complain about it with. I knew this day would come but I never dared imagine it. I always told him he would outlive me and I half hoped he would.
Fred Dieckmann
Fred Dieckmann
Great guy and smart engineer, a huge loss to the audio community.
I like to think him as the master of clock.
I learned a lot from him.
It is thanks to him that I became passionate about clock and finally I built a pair of state of the art oscillators.
I was in his lab in 2018, I was leaving Texas to Colorado Rocky Mountain and he told me how many times he drived that route to meet Charlie Hansen in Boulder.
I will keep the memory in my heart.
R.I.P. Patrick
@scott wurcer
Scott, I know he didn't hate you, he had the utmost respect for you, it was just his way of writing on audio forums but in his private life he was quite another person, a very good guy.
I like to think him as the master of clock.
I learned a lot from him.
It is thanks to him that I became passionate about clock and finally I built a pair of state of the art oscillators.
I was in his lab in 2018, I was leaving Texas to Colorado Rocky Mountain and he told me how many times he drived that route to meet Charlie Hansen in Boulder.
I will keep the memory in my heart.
R.I.P. Patrick
@scott wurcer
Scott, I know he didn't hate you, he had the utmost respect for you, it was just his way of writing on audio forums but in his private life he was quite another person, a very good guy.
Attachments
That can cause problems when people take themselves and/or their hobby/business too seriously.Sad newsI used to enjoy his posts. I think he had an often misunderstood sense of humour
Tony.
Sad that we were denied Pat's thoughts for so many years here.
I contacted Pat a few years ago at the behest of a fellow in Ireland to get some of his selected clock chips. We seemed to find each other amusing and had one very long biographical conversation followed by much shorter ones and more often email exchanges.
Things everyone needs to know about Pat: University of Alabama never had a more vociferous adherent. He loved them because they were good. There is no other reason Pat would like anything. Sentimentality was not part of his personality.
By the same token he never missed a chance to make good fun of the University of Texas football program. Living in Dallas i am sure he got great pleasure in riling his fellow Texans.
Pat was born In Arkansas. Due to an extremely unusual situation he was sent to an orphanage for most of his school years. He never had great health - seems he was always battling something throughout his life.
The man was determined. He became an electrical engineer and worked for various phone companies. He came up with many "solutions" as they are called today which is a term that makes me cringe.
How he came to be in the audio industry I am having trouble remembering. My first guess is that he was the victim of some downsizing.
I was not familiar with any of his audio products which is meaningless. Being a fan of Nelson Pass I could tell that Pat did not share my love of simplicity in audio circuits. Before being asked to look into the availability of the selected clocks I had not heard of him.
Having a copy of DEVO's JOCKO HOMO self marketed 45 from 1980 (?) I figured i knew where the name came from - only to discover when I learned of his real name of it being a malapropism of his surname. Turns out his true musical love was Frank Zappa. He really loved Zappa's work. I could never tell if it was of the early MOTHERS OF INVENTION stuff which i listen to still or the mostly nonsense that LIVE AT THE FILLMORE was a harbinger of and APOSTROPHE all the proof you needed that something had gone very wrong.
I do know he enjoyed using lines from the BIG LEBOWSKI as much as i do - sparingly, of course, in both of our cases. We were talking about LITTLE FEAT's first two records and when something was said about the bassist Pat said "eight year old, Dude". I did my best to take up for the beleaguered musician of questionable moral compass but how can you win one like that?
He was very soft spoken on the phone. Very gentle until it was time for a zinger; the smile was plainly heard.
He loved hummus and was very particular that it be done properly. I mentioned I had made some using black eyed peas and I thought he was going to "faint" like Jeeves upon seeing those horseshoes on Bingo Little's necktie. Assuming everyone here loves Wodehouse.
I feel sure he was "that way" with Mr. Wurcer with respect. I am not familiar with the posts but I can tell that Pat was always needing a better than competent sparring partner. I certainly was not up to that; let him know early on. As if I needed to tell him - he knew that immediately What kept our email conversation going was the great pleasure he got telling someone from Georgia how much he hated the University of Georgia football program. It was a toss up between Georgia and Texas for the greatest disdain he could summon at the moment. He never failed at coming up something true and very funny. I was just as unsuited for advanced football conversation as electronics - being nothing more than a spectator for football and a dilettante with electronics.
I have a photo that was sent to me by Andrea Mori of the two of them when he visited him in Texas. I would have loved to have heard that conversation. Of course, Pat thought Mori's clocks were all wrong! I have one of Mori's clocks and it is a work of art.
EDIT - I had not notice the photo had been posted. Thanks, Andrea.
I know I am lucky to have known him even as facile as it was. One of the greats of our insane, but noble, hobby. He was driven by a love of music - what more can you ask of an audio engineer?
I contacted Pat a few years ago at the behest of a fellow in Ireland to get some of his selected clock chips. We seemed to find each other amusing and had one very long biographical conversation followed by much shorter ones and more often email exchanges.
Things everyone needs to know about Pat: University of Alabama never had a more vociferous adherent. He loved them because they were good. There is no other reason Pat would like anything. Sentimentality was not part of his personality.
By the same token he never missed a chance to make good fun of the University of Texas football program. Living in Dallas i am sure he got great pleasure in riling his fellow Texans.
Pat was born In Arkansas. Due to an extremely unusual situation he was sent to an orphanage for most of his school years. He never had great health - seems he was always battling something throughout his life.
The man was determined. He became an electrical engineer and worked for various phone companies. He came up with many "solutions" as they are called today which is a term that makes me cringe.
How he came to be in the audio industry I am having trouble remembering. My first guess is that he was the victim of some downsizing.
I was not familiar with any of his audio products which is meaningless. Being a fan of Nelson Pass I could tell that Pat did not share my love of simplicity in audio circuits. Before being asked to look into the availability of the selected clocks I had not heard of him.
Having a copy of DEVO's JOCKO HOMO self marketed 45 from 1980 (?) I figured i knew where the name came from - only to discover when I learned of his real name of it being a malapropism of his surname. Turns out his true musical love was Frank Zappa. He really loved Zappa's work. I could never tell if it was of the early MOTHERS OF INVENTION stuff which i listen to still or the mostly nonsense that LIVE AT THE FILLMORE was a harbinger of and APOSTROPHE all the proof you needed that something had gone very wrong.
I do know he enjoyed using lines from the BIG LEBOWSKI as much as i do - sparingly, of course, in both of our cases. We were talking about LITTLE FEAT's first two records and when something was said about the bassist Pat said "eight year old, Dude". I did my best to take up for the beleaguered musician of questionable moral compass but how can you win one like that?
He was very soft spoken on the phone. Very gentle until it was time for a zinger; the smile was plainly heard.
He loved hummus and was very particular that it be done properly. I mentioned I had made some using black eyed peas and I thought he was going to "faint" like Jeeves upon seeing those horseshoes on Bingo Little's necktie. Assuming everyone here loves Wodehouse.
I feel sure he was "that way" with Mr. Wurcer with respect. I am not familiar with the posts but I can tell that Pat was always needing a better than competent sparring partner. I certainly was not up to that; let him know early on. As if I needed to tell him - he knew that immediately What kept our email conversation going was the great pleasure he got telling someone from Georgia how much he hated the University of Georgia football program. It was a toss up between Georgia and Texas for the greatest disdain he could summon at the moment. He never failed at coming up something true and very funny. I was just as unsuited for advanced football conversation as electronics - being nothing more than a spectator for football and a dilettante with electronics.
I have a photo that was sent to me by Andrea Mori of the two of them when he visited him in Texas. I would have loved to have heard that conversation. Of course, Pat thought Mori's clocks were all wrong! I have one of Mori's clocks and it is a work of art.
EDIT - I had not notice the photo had been posted. Thanks, Andrea.
I know I am lucky to have known him even as facile as it was. One of the greats of our insane, but noble, hobby. He was driven by a love of music - what more can you ask of an audio engineer?
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