Joel Silverman, Silverfish Audio
Joel Silverman has spent the last 41 years on the manufacturing side of the business with companies like MXR, DBX, Lexicon, and Millennia. Before this long successful career, Joel who was based in Rochester, NY started Silverfish Audio in 1971. In the summer of 74, Joel had been working with Bonnie Raitt while at Brighton Sound. Ross Ritto joined up with Joel to start building a speaker system for a Bonnie Raitt tour, which is really where it all started to come together for Silverfish Audio.
Bill Thompson was co-owner of Brighton Sound before moving on to start Ashly Audio. Early on they were building custom consoles, of which Silverfish had the most. These consoles were ahead of their time with parametric eq's on the outputs, built-in speaker crossovers, compressors, and more
In 1976, Silverfish landed Jimmy Buffet as a touring client. As they took on more clients and tours grew, it led them to open up an office in Burbank CA in 1978. The company continued to grow as Joel decided to leave the sound company and start the manufacturing side of his career. In 1980 Silverfish moved to San Diego. During this time Dave Shadoan joined the company and became half owner with Ross Ritto. They changed the name to "Southern California Sound Image” in 1984. They are celebrating 50 years in business and Jimmy Buffet is still a client to this day
Listen in on the episode to hear all about Joel Silverman and Silverfish Audio.
Ashly Consoles
Images, titles, and notes from Bill Thompson
Northeastern mixer - 1976
This mixer was the first built in a case designed by Ron Rothe. This mechanical design was modular and easily customized, it worked well, and was used in all future custom mixers.
Notheastern mixer module
A module from the Northeastern mixer. Input modules each contained 4 channels.
Sound Image 32 input mixer - 1979
We built several mixers for Sound Image in San Marcos, CA. This 32 input mixer built in 1978 was later expanded to 40 inputs. It traveled all over the world with Jimmy Buffet, Emmy Lou Harris, and Jackson Browne.
Sound Image monitor mixer
We built two of these monitor mixers for Sound Image. They were used as companions to the 32-40 input house mixers.
You can hear more about Silverfish Audio from Steve Nider
Based in Rochester, NY Steve Nider was in the right place at the right time and kind of "fell into the business" at a young age.