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In late 1979, our friend TomPicture of Tom(AKA Hodderman) showed us, (Brian and Dave)Brian and Dave how to build speaker cabinets. Our first PA was two 12" wedges, a BGW 250 amp, a Tapco EQ, and a cassette deck for a mic preamp/mixer (read "y" cable on the output). Everything fit in a Toyota Celica and we could earn in excess of $25 a night. We saved, we bought and we built until finally we had to take the first big step. Bye bye Celica and hello vanBlack Rat Van. We decided to quit our real jobs at Hughes Aircraft and worked hard designing, building and renting our growing systems. We mainly enjoyed doing sound for punk shows and on Sundays we were doing 60 piece orchestra's and 18 piece big band shows. In 1985 Black FlagBlack Flag asked us to tour with them and we did three tours with them.  A typical tour for them was 16 weeks long and over 100 shows.  We built a new PA for each of three tours. The next 5 years were spent rebuilding everything into a "real touring system" and doing lots and lots of local shows. Tommy, our third partner came to join us in 1988 from Tucson Arizona. Sonic Youth and Red Hot Chili PeppersPeppers with light bulbs tours were the breaks we needed to prove ourselves as a national touring sound company. By then we had dropped "Reliable Audio Technology" as our "more professional" name and only used "RAT Sound". We found Karrie on a Black Flag tour and she has been with us ever since.  We hired SmittyAd to sell Smitty for the Peppers tour and we only tried to sell him once. As bands like Pearl JamPJ, and Chili Peppers brought us out on larger and larger tours, we were able to refine and perfect the system designs for arenas and stadiums.  We continue to surround ourselves with the people and bands that we truly love and work together on building our dream into reality.  

For more a more in depth progression or Rat Sound and our systems, check out the Evolution pages.

 

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