then the busiest facility in town: Studio 3 at Bill Putnam's United Western Recorders.

"Wally and his carpenter, a guy named Hal Halverson — no relation to me — booked an hour of studio time at United Western 3, measured it and figured out it would fit into the space that was available,” Bill Halverson recalls. "So, that's how Heider came to build his own Studio 3. He never did have a Studio 2; he actually had the balls to name it Studio 3. Then, in an effort to get Bones Howe — who had engineered so many hit records at United Western 3 — to move some of his business over to Heider Studio 3, Wally asked him, 'What do I need to get you?' Maybe that wasa flip remark, but Bones said, 'Well, I want 16 of those Universal Audio equalisers and 16 of those Universal Audio filters in the rack so I can run everything that way.'

"That's what Heider did. He went out and bought Pultecs and Universal Audio with the 175B and 1176 limiters, doing whatever Bones wanted in order to get him over there. Then there was a 16‑track Frank DiMedio‑designed valve console comprised largely of Universal Audio components, together with an Ampex 300 two‑inch tape machine that DiMedio had jury‑rigged with Ampex 350 electronics. This was before we got the API board and 3M 16‑track machines. The Ampex was 15ips, and I was one of the few guys who never went to 30ips because the bottom end at 15 was