[BC] Shulke's Black Box

[Rich Wood]

------ At 12:22 AM 7/3/2006, Ron Cole wrote: -------

>Does anyone know what was in the Schulke Black box.
>At my station It was in the audio chain just before the 8100 and STL.
>Not sure what it did, as it had potted audio circuits.

It had three wires. One end connected to the input jack and the other 
end connected to the output jack. It had an AC input to light a pilot 
light so you'd know it was operating. The case was completely potted 
and, as I recall, all were owned by SRP, so you couldn't mess with it 
to find out what was inside. Virtually every station was amazed at 
how great this box sounded. To use it you were required to remove all 
processing except a limiter and a compressor set for no more than 3dB 
compression. Jim's purpose was to show SRP clients how good a station 
could sound without lots of processing.

It would be a perfect high end audio device today that would sell for 
thousands.

WJIB, Boston, was a sales client of Quality Media, Inc. QMI believed 
they could control the quality of their clients' sound by providing 
them with music. Bob Richer and Jim Schulke split. Bob took the sales 
division and Jim took the music and became Stereo Radio Productions, 
later Schulke Radio Productions. We didn't use the music service 
until years later. I programmed the station (after Marlin Taylor) for 
many years before I moved to WGBH. I went back to WJIB and the 
library was in bad shape. We became a Schulke music station and ran 
it exactly as Jim demanded. We were dominant in the market for years. 
Almost from the beginning. We were off the air for 6 months. The 
calls were changed from WXHR to WJIB with a nautical image. Audio 
quality was paramount and 8 commercial units made it very easy to 
listen to. We set rigid controls on commercial content. It worked 
beautifully and sold for the highest price ever paid, up to that 
time, for an FM station. 35% set penetration. GE bought it from 
Kaiser Broadcasting and the Boston Globe - Kaiser/Globe Broadcasting.

Rich

Rich Wood
Rich Wood Multimedia
Phone: 413-454-3258