Bob Heil to Receive 2007 Parnelli Audio Innovator Award
LAS VEGAS—The Parnelli Awards Board of Directors announce that Bob Heil, one of pro sound’s most prolific inventors, will be honored with the Parnelli Audio Innovator Award at this year’s Parnelli Awards. The ceremony will be held in conjunction with LDI show in Orlando, Fla., at a lavish event staged at the Peabody on November 16.
“I can’t tell you how blown away I am by this,” says Bob Heil, from his Heil Sound headquarters located in Fairview Heights, Ill. “To me this is a bigger deal than getting in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame because the Parnelli’s are voted on by my peers. It is truly an honor.”
Heil started out in St. Louis as a professional organist, performing up to six times a week at movie houses and restaurants by the time he was 15. Around that time, he became an avid amateur radio operator and started designing and building transmitters, amplifiers and antenna systems. But it was when he opened a music store in the small town of Marissa in Southern Illinois that he started to make his mark. It was an unlikely place to begin what would become America’s first “pro” shop and became a Mecca for the likes of the Grateful Dead, the Who, Joe Walsh, Peter Frampton, Jeff Beck and scores of others touring in 1960s and 1970s looking for innovations in live sound.
His “little” store quickly became the largest Sunn dealer in the country the P.A. manufacturer looked to him not only to sell, but to build. Heil was responsible for the breakthrough Sunn Coliseum system. While in Chicago working with the system for a regional band, he got a call asking him to bring the system to Boston the next day. Heil scoffed, saying how could he possibly do that? He was told to simply rent a 707…
The modest small-town kid did just that, and the next thing he knew, he was showing the system to The Who. They took it on the band’s “Who’s Next” tour, and soon all the acts were clamoring for Heil’s system.
Written By: editorDate Posted: 8/8/2007Number of Views: 1056
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