Hi Dan,

I worked some of those broadcasts as well in the late 70’s. I can remember the likes of Phil Woods and McCoy Tyner, Ron Carter among others. Do you know what happened to the tapes of those broadcasts?

My father, Ed Gately, did write some articles for The Audio Amateur but since it was fifty years ago, I don’t remember which mixer they were about. Probably the SM-6, the EQ-6, and the EK-6, Gately Electronic’s kit mixer series.

That company’s owner routinely referred to the Mom’s console as a “Gately”, in order to project a bit more credibility for the equipment he was offering. As far as I know, there was no difference between the Mom’s console and the Gately Micro-mixer — they may have even shared the same metal work. Personally, I think the Mom’s product suffered from the somewhat ‘hippy-dippy’ look of the graphics. $2400 in 1976 translates to more than $11K in today’s dollars — if I’m laying out that kind of scratch, I might prefer the graphics to convey more of a ‘precision instrument’ look. That’s just a personal opinion, of course. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the consoles — they were pretty much as good as anything in that era that was portable. To get much better performance, you would have had to step up considerably in cost — I think a 16-input Yamaha PM-1000 was over $5K in ’76, which was about the time it was introduced in the US.

As I recall, Ed Gately authored a multi-part article in one of the electronic hobbyist’s mags detailing how to build your own micro-mixer; I believe those articles contained full-sized circuit-board layouts for the real DIY types. The motivation for publishing articles like that in those days was to sell kits and parts; I presume that means there were Micro-mixer kits, or perhaps it was just to promote interest in the other, less ambitious projects. [Edit: the entry from Chris Gately above, in 2017, brings into doubt the accuracy of this memory. I’m going to stick by my theory that at least SOMEONE published such an article.]

Chris:

Back in the early 70’s I had bought and built 3 of the SM-6 mixers as kits so I could do “On-Location” recording with my CROWN SX-722 stereo tape-recorder. This gave me 18-inputs that I could mix down to a stereo send to my CROWN while doing a “LIVE” mix on headphones!!! I even – STILL – have all of those tapes!!! Big bands, acoustic guitar groups, rock bands and even The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra!!!

Is there – ANY – chance whatsoever that either you or “someone” would still have the schematics for this mixer? I kept my manual with me forever, but during the 1980’s, I ended up moving so many times that I lost track of a lot of my stuff. But, I’ve been searching high and low for those schematics forever, but they seem to be totally impossible to find anywhere on this planet Earth!!!

I would sincerely appreciate being able to have those schematics once again!!! I do hope to hear back from you shortly…..assuming that you happen to see this message. THANKS!!!

Regards,

Jerry B. Williams
Midnight Blue Studios
– midnight_blue_studios@yahoo.com –

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I am curious as to what the Philly sound company was, as I was the production manager at Mom’s / 2005 AD from early ’76 through late ’77.

I can send pictures