Thank you so much for the reply! I’ve been a massive fan of the equipment that you guys have been producing. That’s incredibly awesome that you got your hands on some of the elusive Olive EQ’s.
Thank you so much, its always great to hear that the community is benefiting from the work I do and enjoying using the gear we design or restore, but even if no one spoke up, I would still be doing it and loving it just the same.
I got the schematic from someone earlier in this thread so I’ll have to reach out. Do you think reaching out to Craig Patterson directly would yield results on getting a copy of the schematics?
My feeling is, cast your net far and wide and eventually you will get a hit or two, and maybe a bonanza of info.
Ask everyone you can find who might have a clue, but going back to the original founding engineers and asking if they have anything or know where to look is usually the first place to start. Get permission to post the data to the Pro and Hobbyist community and always give credit where it is due.
Anyone who has a buddy, who has a friend, who knows someone else who worked there, that might know someone else who might have some document copies safely hidden away is also a great lead to run down. (Duckie??, you listening?)
Let these incredibly talented and forward thinking designers and support staff know you are just one of many interested in chasing down and helping to enshrine, immortalize and educate fans of Pro-Audio about the legend of Olive and its contributions to the industry,... and perhaps some of their products will live again so many more can enjoy them.
How I made a small fortune (starting with a fairly large one, or.... "what the heck was I thinking!!??") :
In the early 1980's I visited the Quad-Eight factory on Vose Street in North Hollywood, CA. after purchasing a QEE CL-22 needing repair. I bought a replacement AM-10 opamp for the compressor and the production manager handed me a complete set of full size blueprints, still warm from the Daizo copier. That was the point where I started collecting, organizing and archiving vintage documentation and parts, and created a much needed factory level support system for obsolete products that might otherwise vanish into the mists of time. With that simple experience, Orphan Audio was born, and over time I was able to bring Quad-Eight, Electrodyne and a few others back to life, and am able to help breathe life back into countless more vintage products.
The current document collection is well over 30,000 meticulously organized individual paper schematics and technical data from hundreds of brands, and a few complete company archives for several major brands (many are original hand drafted pencil on vellum drawings), plus Service manuals, PCB parts locators and Parts lists, Mechanical fabrication drawings, Data sheets and Advertising brochures, Test & Calibration procedures, Operator manuals, PC board fabrication films, Wiring/Pinout sheets, Application data, plus countless more scans, photos, PDF docs and manuals on the company servers.
I have also made friends with dozens of original design engineers and production staff from many of the companies we directly support, which allows me to call someone up and chat when I have hit a wall during a restoration or want to clarify details on one of their products that is still in use and highly valued by the Pro-Audio community.
Notes from those conversations almost always make it onto a shop copy of the schematics and its great to occasionally brain-storm with these geniuses of audio, and every now and then, one of them calls and says, "Hey, I found this box of schematics I though was lost,.... want it??"
Rare service docs:
With respect to people requesting service and historical documents from the Orphan Audio Archives,......Some docs are free (pinouts are always free) or I can just pass on some scanned files at no charge, especially if it was something pulled from the web where the original server or website has been lost, or came to me at no cost in the first case.
Other docs may incur costs depending on what the document is, how large (most 8.5x11 sheets are easy to copy,... but not all!!), how many individual sheets are involved and how long I have to work restoring and copying (for small size docs) or do I have to crank up the 42" wide/2400dpi large format scanner, dig into the massive flat-file storage to locate a specific set of drawings and often spend hours getting everything readable, hand re-drawing hundreds of unreadable parts values and distorted or missing schematic lines, so I can then re-print a full size (24" x 36" or larger) schematic that will actually be useful.
Nothing is worse than scrolling madly across a huge page on a tiny computer screen, squinting at horribly furry parts values at maximum zoom.... ""is that a 5,..a 6 or... an A???" (often scanned by someone else at 300dpi or less, or from a low-res photo, sometimes in 8.5x11 chunks that d0n't-qUiTe-f1t-backK-2geth3R... or saved with lossy data compression).
Spare parts and technical assist:
The Orphan Audio vintage parts inventory shelving covers most of a 3500 square foot building on two levels with eight service benches a small machine shop and a modest PCB assembly line for new products,..... and I am happy to assist if you need a bit of technical advice, but please know the shop is always overloaded with work on demanding customer deadlines, I am not always free to go over details at any time and only get to emails 2-3 times a week, so please be patient and if you would like a phone conversation, send an email though one of the websites first to set up a time and outline what you need assistance with.
So...... you could say its gotten more than a bit out of control over the years since it started, "but a man,s gotta have a hobby".
Thank you,
Ken Hirsch / Director of Engineering
Orphan Audio
www.orphanaudio.com
Quad-Eight Electronics
www.quadeightelectronics.com
Electrodyne Audio
www.electrodyneaudio.com (a division of Orphan Audio)
"Education is the cure for everything"
