Paul McManus began his career in audio at age sixteen as a mixer/show operator for Sea World in San Diego. Within two years, he accepted the position of recording engineer, responsible for the production of all audio materials used at Sea World. Paul developed a keen interest in the technical side of recording after taking Dale Manquen's course "Tape Recorder Theory and Maintenance". After receiving a BA degree in Radio and Television from San Diego State University in 1978, Paul started an independent audio engineering firm. Completed projects have varied from system design and integration for audio production facilities to the installation of a 20KW FM broadcast transmitter. Paul has worked in many distant locations, from Rio de Janeiro to Hong Kong, providing technical support for corporate multimedia presentations.
In 1990 Paul formed a new company, Paul McManus Recording, to work with a wide variety of artists. Paul has recorded and toured extensively with acclaimed songwriter- guitarist, J.J.Cale, including making a live recording in 1996 at Carnegie Hall. Recordings that Paul made with blues artist John Hammond were 1999 Grammy Nominees under Best Traditional Blues Album. Mr. McManus served as Chairman of the San Diego AES Section from 1984-1987. At the 1988 Los Angeles AES Convention he was a featured speaker at "The John T. Mullin Collection: The History of Recorded Sound" exhibit. Paul is also a voting member of the Recording Academy (NARAS). Paul is an Eagle Scout, and in his free time enjoys walking, bicycling, music, photography, shortwave radio, and art.
Paul McManus
Paul McManus Recording
P.O.Box 6530
San Diego, CA 92166 USA
619-223-1730 email Paul McManus
I first started getting interested in music on my birthday Feb 9, 1964, when my parents let me stay up late to watch the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan tv show. Then a few years later my parents took me to a Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass concert. This show prompted me to take up the trumpet, which I played for a few years in school band class. I also played the bugle in my Boy Scout troop. Braces on my front teeth to correct a severe overbite effectively ended my trumpet playing. My father was an electronics engineer and tried to interest me in electronics, but I was much more interested in mechanical things. In my neighborhood I was a junior Mr. Fixit, constantly taking things apart to see what was inside and then figuring out how to reassemble the item. I loved working on bicycles, which led to fixing lawnmowers and later motorcycles and cars. To gain more knowledge I went to the library. However, our local library would not let anyone under 16 check out technical books, so my mom had to do it for me. The librarian always looked at my mom oddly as she checked out books on engine rebuilding, welding and auto painting, never realizing they were for the small boy standing next to her.
At age 16 I got an after-school and weekend job at Sea World marine park as a music mixer/show operator. I was becoming very interested in hi fi stereo systems then, and starting to learn about electronics. This led to working in Sea World's recording studio which is where I was able to combine three of my interests: music, hi fi electronics and mechanical devices in the form of tape recorders. Our studio was very primitive by today's standards. We had a 10 x 2 Langevin console with no eq or echo sends, a turntable, and a couple of two track machines. All of our eq was done by mic placement. Our monitor speakers were Altec 844's which had two 12 inch woofers and a 811 sectoral horn crossed over at 800 Hz. Sea World at that time was a much smaller company than it is today, and our budget was very limited. All of our recording and editing was done at 71/2 ips to save on tape costs. We also took lots of music off records by artists of the day such as Henry Mancini, Al Hirt, Nelson Riddle, and Arthur Fielder. We then edited the music to suit our needs. I started noticing how good these records sounded, how the trumpets sounded like the trumpet I used to play in school, not the playing but the sound. This was in direct contrast to the rock records of the era that did not sound anything like what the bands sounded like live.
I started buying used records to study the sound and train my ear. I began to see the same equipment, engineers and studios listed on the records that I thought sounded really good-- names such as Ampex, Neumann, Universal Audio, Bill Porter, Norman Petty, Bill Putnam, A&R, Columbia and RCA. Also, my boss at Sea World had set up a four-track studio in his den and I used to spend a lot of time visiting with him, listening and asking questions. Several friends of mine had really good hi-fi systems and we spent many hours listening to all types of music, observing early on that the color and timbre of the sound was not the same on different pieces of audio equipment. Being curious I wanted to know why.
By that time I was at San Diego State University studying radio and television. I then began buying used sound and recording equipment, fixing it up and experimenting with it, trying to figure out how the sounds on the records I enjoyed so much were captured. Besides recording, I started repairing and modifying equipment for others, which led to doing system design, wiring, and sound system installation. Since most of the equipment I was interested in was long out of production, I became very good at locating sources of parts, and technical information during my frequent visits to Los Angeles. I put a lot of time into research and tracking people down by attending AES meetings and conventions, letter writing, and making phone calls. I quickly became adept at horse trading and learned the "art of the deal" from my many equipment transactions over the years.
So, I hope this explains how Paul McManus became both a "fixer and a mixer", and why he acquired this antique audio equipment.