Eric Broyhill: Let's start with you telling us what Universal Audio is and what it's all about.
Bill Putnam Jr.: We were thinking about this company and what do we call it. We knew we wanted to make cool analog equipment, we wanted to get back into business and we're like, "Universal Audio," which connects us back to our roots for personal as well as business reasons.
What kind of role do you and your brother Jim play in running Universal Audio?
My brother is kind of the creative end. He's in a band in LA called the Radar Brothers, he has a studio in his backyard with an API console and a lot of this was really his idea. We come from opposite schools-my background is in engineering, his is in music. So in remaking some of the old circuits I wanted to make improvements and he was the one who would step in and say, "No no no, stop. These units are great just the way they are, let's leave them alone." You look at anyone else's units and they're all different because it's difficult to go in and not try to make it better.
That's true. What do you think about other companies re- issuing vintage-style gear and their claim that it's totally faithful to the original, but a little better?
Well, I tried to go that route, but my brother stopped me and said, "Let's keep it 100% true to the original." And now looking back I think he was right because that's what people love. So as far as being better is concerned we are the closer to the original units than anyone else and in that way we are better. We opted for attention to detail in making it as close to the original as possible. I think there is room for other units that have "improvements" but that's not what we did.
I recently asked a friend of mine about the new LA-2A and how it compares to the original, which he owns a couple of. He said they sounded great but a little different because the materials used in the original transformers are no longer in use.
That's true but one of the bigger differences I found is the fact that ours are new. The most common thing that goes bad in a LA-2A is the light in the el-op [electro-optical]. These were made and designed to be lights in the instrument panel of an aircraft. But we are applying broadband audio so they degrade. They were not made for this particular application. So the effect is that the old ones are not as sensitive as the new ones, causing you to drive them more to get the same amount of compression.
I heard that as a kid you helped you father build 1176 limiters for your allowance. What was it like growing up with the legendary engineer Bill Putnam as your father?
I got to spend summers wiring stuff up, helping my dad hang and test the UREI monitors in the back yard. We had this 40 ft. scaffolding we used to put the speakers way up in the air above the trees and tested frequency response. It was kind of my dad's own creative anechoic chamber. During tests it was a 110 dB of, "bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup", all day. The neighbors couldn't have been more pleased.
How did your father start out?
He was an RF engineer in a couple of Illinois radio stations and that's how I got into this because my dad got me into radio. I knew how to build radio amplifiers before I could build audio amplifiers. Then my dad was drafted into the signal corps during WWII and during that time my father got into audio recording. Then right after the war he returned to Chicago and opened a recording studio. His big break was recording The Harmonicats. I think the story goes that they needed $350 to do the record and only had a hundred bucks, so my dad agreed to do it as long as he got 10% of the sales from the record. Needless to say it was one of the nation's first million sellers. Bruce Sweiden, who later went to work for my father, said that for its time it was a whole new thing in recording and cited it as the first modern pop recording. It wasn't just put the mics up and record an auditory event, it was the first recording to use artificial reverb. My father more or less turned the studio bathroom into an echo chamber. From there he did a bunch of jazz stuff as well as Muddy Waters, T-Bone Walker and Willie Dixon- all the Chicago blues which must have been very cool to be around. He recorded most of the big stuff that came through Chicago. Eventually he started working with Sinatra and Frank talked him into moving the studio to southern California in the early sixties. I later heard from Bruce Sweiden that they were doing a Stan Kenton session where Bruce was the second engineer, and during the recording my dad said, "Hey Bruce take over, I'll be back in a little bit," and my dad took off for good, effectively throwing Bruce into the hot seat. After that he just started building his own equipment, making his own consoles and recording gear. Back then there weren't many audio companies like there are now. So Universal Audio was making consoles and selling them and started buying other companies like Teletronix, Tektronic from Babcock engineering and in '68 he lopped them all together into one company that was UREI- "Universal Recording Electronic Industry", and then went on to make the LA-3, LA- 4, 1176 limiters, and eventually the well-known UREI monitors. Eventually JBL bought UREI and Infinity in one of their first set of acquisitions and for whatever reasons they just quit using the name.
Somewhat successful career as an engineer I would say.
Looking back now, I realize my father had an interesting combination of having a musical background and a technical background that helped him to very much excel in what he did.
Kind of like you and your brother. Are you guys coming out with any of your father's other designs soon?
We have a 2-610 mic-pre out that's based on my father's original Universal Audio 610 consoles. This was a console used to record the Beach Boys, Sinatra, Neil Young, Cream, The Doors — it would not even be feasible to list all the great records done with that board right now. It was also the first modular console. Before that it was all discrete wiring, just a big glob of wire.
Sounds like a lot to live up to, but I understand you've been up to some great things yourself. Tell me a little about the digital end at Universal Audio.
