The "Studio"

It was the summer of 1967 when some of my dad's brother's and their extended families gathered at Lake of the Ozarks for a family reunion/vacation.

By November of that year, I had a assembled a makeshift radio studio in my bedroom back in St. Louis.  Granted, some of it was for appearance, but there was the real microphone for the small GE 3" reel to reel tape recorder, my childhood phonograph player and the clock/radio handed down from my brother.  For appearances only, there was an old fishing rod suspended from a desk lamp attached to the wall for a mic boom and a rod magnet taped to the end of that fishing rod for the "studio mic" look - but it all added the magic of making "radio" happen right there in my bedroom.

With the GE recorder, I actually made tapes of myself introducing records (45 rpm singles), talking in between changing records, reading some news and a weather forecast.  I tried to recreate the magic that the pros created in their real radio studios, but there in my bedroom and for my ears only.

In this photo, you can see the mic boom, fake mic, record player (with a script for a commercial propped up in the lid), the real tape recorder microphone on a cardboard box at the center (the box acted as a sound shock absorber), plus the tape recorder and the clock/radio with some 3" reels of tape stacked on top.

 

Oh, and here's me in my studio:

And, believe it or not, in the next year or two, I took this studio to the next level with the help of a kit from Radio Shack, that allowed me to build my very own FM transmitter.

(to be continued)