The Jim Long Interview
By Keith Clark

Q. I’ve noticed that every generation seems to think that they’ve invented everything truly important to an industry, pretty much ignoring the past. Do you find that to be true as well?

(Laughs) EV used to make these things we called line radiators and they were fundamentally stacks of automobile speakers, with some engineering work to give them a unique coverage pattern over a fairly wide bandwidth. That’s still the essence of things like our new X-Line line array system, with the caveat that it’s on steroids in comparison, with tons more engineering. More in general has gone into them.

I probably thought we had invented everything in my generation at one point in time, but of course, the longer you’re around the more you come to understand that most of the important work has already been done.

A couple of years ago, Bob Coffeen brought a Western Electric compression driver to EV, built in 1935 or so, and the precursor to the JBL four-inch diaphragm, two-inch exit drivers. This driver didn’t have a permanent magnet on it, instead, you apply DC current to create an electro-magnetic field.

So we took this driver to the anechoic chamber at EV, bolted it to one of our horns, found a power supply and tenderly put a little juice on there, about one volt, and ran a curve on it. We then did the same thing with an EV DH1A driver. The curves looked exactly the same, except the DH1A went to about 20K, while the Western Electric driver cut out at about 12K.

When you think about that, it’s real humbling. Sure, if you ‘blast’ the Western Electric driver, it would blow up, but they had come so far at that early stage, and largely for cinema sound. Cinema was a huge market, with sound for movies just coming to full fruition, and you can bet that Bell Labs wanted a piece of that action. So they put some pretty smart people on the development project and likely didn’t spare expense. By the way, I understand that James Lansing hand-machined the phase plugs for those drivers.

I was privileged to be on hand when Dr. Charles Boner first popularized equalizing a sound system to get the proper response. He was doing parametric EQ before the term was invented, using a 600-ohm mixer and filter bank, looking at the house curve and then working with homemade toroidal inductors, putting a capacitor across the load, and then he’d just add or deduct resistance. Thus, the first parametric EQ. Once you got this soldered together, it wasn’t quite as easy as turning a knob to make a change, but he was able to put as many of these filters in as needed to flatten the house curve.

My point is that a lot went before that will continue to be the basis of what we do in the future.

Q. I’m going to be attending a Syn-Aud-Con seminar next month, and I’m really looking forward to it. Have you ever been to their seminars?

Oh, yes. I went to some of their earliest seminars, and got to be pretty good friends with Don Davis. He became very interested in EV product because he measured the “Q” of one of the first constant directivity horns and said “this is actually what the spec sheet says…” And then he proceeded to tell the whole industry. I really appreciated that.

I’ve not had the chance to attend the training that Pat Brown’s currently doing with Syn-Aud-Con, but so many people I’ve talked to say that it’s simply phenomenal. I’m really glad that EV is a long-time supporter of Syn-Aud-Con, because they consistently do a great service to the industry.

Q. What’s the future hold for Jim Long?

I envision continuing the regular training sessions that I conduct at Telex, making presentations to customers and at trade shows, and in general, just helping out the company any way I can.

I’m also looking forward to the next “Kahnvention,” an annual gathering of EV people with the company during Mr. Kahn’s tenure. We all get together and catch up.

By the way, Al’s doing great at 90-plus years of age, still very active, living out at Diamond Lake (in southwest Michigan). The last time I saw him, he was buying a new computer so that he can use e-mail to stay in touch with his grandkids. And he’s still actively engaged in keeping up with current EV/Telex happenings. It’s been fun getting back in touch with him after all these years. The first go-round, I was a kid, he was the boss, and then a lot of time has gone by, and the dynamic changes.

Jim in his vintage Corvette Stingray.

We’ve always had our ups and downs at EV, but boy, it has been interesting.

Page 1 I Page 2 I Previous (3)