RIP Steve Hayes (Speakeasy Vintage)

[C.J. Lewis]

Speakeasy Facebook Post

 

Rest in Peace, Steve. Thanks for your contribution to what we all do.

[mate stubb]

What a shock! I had not talked with him in awhile and was planning on calling him soon.

 

I enjoyed my many conversations with him and the AMA is a genius product.

[Analogaddict]

Yes, terrible news indeed. The AMA is amazing; I have that, his AO28 clone and the Dyno/tremolo Rhodes preamp. I love the sound of his stuff. RIP Steve!!!

[Craig MacDonald]

Moe yes sad news.. I just posted this on the Clonewheel forum, I'm sure many folks over there will know Steve and have used and enjoyed his products over the years! I know he's had a number of health problems over the years.. I've chatted with him several times, and despite visiting his shop a few years back to pick up a Speakeasy Vintage Preamp, unfortunately I missed him, he was out on his boat for the day.

[eric]

RIP Steve. I was one of his first beta testers. He was a good guy.

[Tonysounds]

I'm truly saddened. Steve was an interesting character, and like most of us organ folk, very passionate about all things clone, and pushing the state of the art further. I was Steve's guinea pig on a number of projects, some even at my behest!, and he was awesome about being there any time of day or nite to help troubleshoot whatever problems I was having, even if it was gear I hadn't bought from him, although there was plenty of it that I had. I had last talked to Steve a couple weeks ago, and he was still on the odyssey for the perfect tone with the most convenience, and of course had nailed that down to everything but the keyboard.

 

Shit.

[Skinny]

Wow. This is sad news.

 

I had the pleasure of speaking with him several times on the phone; he seemed like a stand-up guy who genuinely cared about his products and customers.

 

About 7-8 years ago, I had a Clone Vintage Tube Preamp pedal that had a problem. I called him, asking how much it would cost for him to look at it and repair it. His response? "Nothing." Sent it in, he fixed it for free.

 

RIP, Steve Hayes.

 

 

[bhodaway10]

Sad news - I was just checking out a speakeasy preamp this am. Rip.

[HammondDave]

So sad... Steve was a devoted lover of the Hammond sound.... A great musician and a wonderful person.

 

I will miss our long talks about music, sound and everything Hammond/Leslie related. Steve was great. One day I was driving up the coast of California wrestling in my mind with some issue and Steve called me out of the blue to talk about something Hammond related. We talked for about an hour and all my troubles disappeared. He made me laugh on many occasions...

 

I purchased several of his preamps and they transformed my rig. His original preamp made my CX3 come alive. I was one of the beta testers for the AMA, and that product blew me away! Even after he fell ill he always called and cared about how my rig would sound.

 

We will all miss his knowledge, good-will, and generous nature. Rest in Peace, my friend....

 

 

[solpincus]

Steve was truly one of a kind. What a CHARACTER ! He was somebody with whom you could talk for hours ! He genuinely loved his customers & was seriously devoted to his evolving products. Man, just mention some of the issues that keys players have with guitarists,bassists, & singers & he would talk your ears off with a passion that was both hilarious & moving.The world is now all the more impoverished with his absence.

[bourniplus]

While I didn't know him personnally, to me he gave the best customer service I've ever seen from any business and seemed passionnate with everything he did. RIP and my sympathies to his family.

[dazzjazz]

Ouch!

Only spoke to him once but he was a gentleman for sure.

What a loss to his family and the Hammond community in general.

[allan_evett]

Steve Hayes was a class act, and wickedly knowledgeable about sound. Had some great conversations with him, especially back in 2006 when ordering a Roadbox III, and SVM stereo tube pre. We had also discussed, more recently, one of his GigRig systems. Steve always took the time to be sure that I was getting the right tools for the job; always enjoyed talking to him, and will miss both his wisdom and sense of humor. The guy was a good soul, and an ace at customer service; a consumate pro and decent human being. He will be missed, greatly.

 

My condolences to his family and closest friends. Rest In Peace, Steve....

[DanL]

I had the pleasure of spending the day up at his place nearly 10 years ago when I bought my Speakeasy preamp and one of his 1st "road Leslies". He invited me to bring my rig up (he hadn't seen an Electro yet and was excited to see what it was all about) and he'd help me get it dialed in. My wife and I rode up there and had a fantastic time. Great guy who will be missed... RIP.

[Tonysounds]

Steve and I had hours of phone conversations, and we had tried to plan a trip for me to get up to Dover to visit him in person. Now Im really regretting that never happened.

 

I met Steve after purchasing one of his preamps (I cant remember if it was used on ebay, which it probably was, or new from him), one of the baseline footpedal jobs. It had 2 lamps in it, both amber, one for On, and one for fast. In talking with him, I told him it would make more sense to have the fast lamp green. So he did it. And then he busted my balls for years because of it.

 

Why are you even looking at the footpedal while youre playing??? Of course he was right, but he entertained my mania. We struck up a solid friendship after that. He would help me over the phone improve my then current leslies (a pair of single rotor short boy Orpheus Model 25s turned into dual rotor leslies, one of which was named The Bulldog, so named because of the grunting tone it hadI had gotten lazy on that one and decided not to expand the 12 hole and just mounted the 15 speaker on it, and it really did growl and grunt!). I was touring then, and I didnt think anything of calling him at 7pm from Ames, Iowa Hey Steve, this thing just died, what the hell do I do?!!! Hed talk me off the ledge, patiently walk me through the troubleshooting, and would tell me how to MacGyver it for the night, and then instruct me how we were going to fix it properly the next day. Hed send me parts anywhere. Eventually, he talked me into shipping him both of those leslies so he could go through them with a fine tooth comb and make them Speakeasy indestructible.

 

Eventually I became his guinea pig for his new designs (he preferred test pilot). Because of the music and bands I play with, LOUDER!!! was always an issue. So he built me what eventually became the Dominator (I think Mate Stubb still has a version of it), separate rotor boxes, and an AMA/power amp rack to go with it. Retarded loud at 600watts! We went through a few iterations of that to get it to where it was, but it was awesome! When gas hit $4.00 a gallon in the Bush years and it cost me $75.00 to fill my van with gas, I decided it was time to finally streamline the rig. Steve, we need to make this thing smaller, a LOT smaller! So that begat the final project: dual box leslie only slightly larger than the Motion Sound Pro145. My requirements were that it had to fit in the hatchback or back seat of a car, and it had to be at least as loud as The Dominator. That was a six month project that made UPS a lot of money, between the actual rotor boxes, then all the drivers and components that were being shipped. It sounded great, but just didnt have the volume I needed, especially because it was so short. The final version, Im not kidding, had 4 Kevlar drivers in the upper rotor box! It was small, but that upper rotor box now weighed 90lbs. CRAZY!

 

One day we were talking about pizza. And being from Chicago, I know a little something about pizza. And he was going off about pizza, how great it was because of the cheese in PA. I guess he didnt factor in that Wisconsin being 30 minutes away, we have some pretty good cheese at our disposal. And really, the big advantage Chicago has when it comes to pizza is sausage. We have a huge Italian enclave, and we used to be the meat packing center of the world. Chicago slaughterhouses used to reek out the South Side summers until 30 years ago. I decided he needed some schooling about pizza. So I FedExd him 5 deep dish pizzas from Giordanos, 3 sausage and 2 of his beloved cheese pizzas. (They put ground beef on pizza out there. Blechhh!)

Tony, what the heck is this? That is PIZZA mthrfkr! Feed your staff, and put the rest in the freezer until youre ready for a second helping. He ended up cooking the rest of those pies within the next week. Now he knew what REAL pizza was!

 

I guess I can talk about it now, but Steve was diagnosed on a fluke. He and his wife Doreen had been sailing. And on their trip to Boston I think it was, they encountered a really bad storm. He said it was one of the worst storms he had ever sailed through. But they made it to Boston okay, but he got sick. He figured it was just the storm, but after dinner, he really had a hard time breathing and was coughing terribly. They went to the hospital, and that was when he was diagnosed, on that weekend trip. He was devastated, and completely blindsided understandably. But I think the boat became a symbol for him after that, and he wanted it gone. When he sold the boat, he bought an RV. I laughed when he told me, ah, a boat on wheels eh? And he laughed too, and told me that he and his wife really enjoyed the boat together, and this was the next best alternative. He bought a scooter to go with the trailer, and I know they loved taking trips with that thing. We talked for a couple years about him coming to Chicago in the RV, and getting some non-frozen deep dish, but sadly that never happened.

 

Even though I never got to meet him in person, we spent hours on the phone together. We talked a lot when he was sick, and I think I appreciated those calls as much as he did. He didnt make his illness public for a long time, I dont think until his doctors had a handle on it, and he was getting his strength back after the first couple of rounds of chemo. But we shared a lot in that time, and we got to feeling like brothers.

 

Relationships wane and resurge, and life has a funny habit of getting in the way of living sometimes. Its downright strange to think we had a real bond though we had never met in person, but we really did.

 

My wife said we were gear homos. Of course she was right.

 

 

[Jason Stanfield]

Tony, that was beautiful.

 

I, too, spent many an hour on the phone with Steve, and really feel like I'm a better person (and player!) for having known him.

 

Rest in peace, Steve.

[mate stubb]

When I was building my Decimator Roadboxes, I had a lot of discussions (arguments) with Steve about horns, crossover frequencies, and pulley systems effect on ramp time. He called me "anal" once.

 

Coming from him, I took that as a compliment.

[rockkeys]

I've purchased several products over the years...always blown away with how he took the time to talk, and address the most minute details. A great guy and someone who really helped bridge the gap for clonewheelers. I just placed an order of an AMA 122 last week...total shock. Condolences for his family and team of workers.

[Stephen Fortner]

I'm incredibly saddened to hear of Steve's passing. I too had many long conversations with him over the years. Ken Hughes did a lot to evangelize Steve's preamp pedals when we first encountered them, back when Ken was tech editor and I was a freelance writer. Steve did so much to make authentic vintage sound--particularly Leslie sound--available to gigging musicians who wouldn't otherwise have access to it.

 

He was also incredibly supportive on a personal level, during a scary health diagnosis in my own family that had some things in common with his own. He shared a lot of his own experiences and gave great advice for my loved one minimizing the nasty side effects of treatments.

 

Just the other day I was thinking that we needed to catch up, as I hadn't spoken to him in awhile. He was way, way too young to go, but I take some solace in the fact that he did over 100 years worth of service to musicians in his actual 59.

 

Rest in peace, friend. I'll be firing up the RoadBox and playing something in your honor tonight.

[David Loving]

What a shame - Steve was a class act who stood behind his products and produced some excellent equipment. He treated me right and I'm sure the rest of us, too. I'm taking the 122AMA along and playing through it from now on, in his honor. The great sound helps, too. Good guy - rest in peace

[Legatoboy]

I'll never forget the pitch he threw me on the phone about his Leslie pre-amps and tube design. I think I bought #7. When I had it rebuilt he told me he would sign it inside! Sad to hear!