About me: Cliff Latshaw

This lens is about me: my music, my interests, my job, my preamp company, etc. I'll begin with my heritage. That's what most people judge a person by, it seems. My mother's mother was Scotch-Irish, Welsh, German and Dutch (mostly). My mother's father was the son of two Irish immigrants, who met on the boat to America. My father's mother was mostly Welsh, and my father's father was 1/2 Scottish with the other half mixed with German and other nationalities going back to 1632, when the fist American Latshaw arrived here in South Carolina. I was born and raised in Western Pennsylvania, and I graduated from high school in 1972 from Kiskiminetas Springs School. I attended Denison University for two semesters, one semester in 1972, and another semester in 1974. I entered Berklee College of Music as a Freshman in 1975 and I graduated with a major in professional music in 1979. My first instrument at Berklee was Cello and my second was Bass Guitar.
In 1979 I was re-introduced to my mother's mother's brother, who had been an acrobat, movie actor and movie stuntman, Charlie Shaffer. When I met him he told me that he at one time had been the "biggest in show business", and that his partner in vaudeville had been Joe Bonomo. He told me he got his first job in Hollywood by jumping off of a train going 50 miles an hour 14 times in one day. He said he was paid $100 for each time he jumped. He ended up playing Teddy Roosevelt in the 1929 movie "The Rough Riders". He was Gene Autry's stunt double in many of his movies after the depression hit. He also used to drive John Wayne to work every day, when John Wayne first started working at Republic Pictures. He introduced me to Sid Marke, who had worked with Rudolf Valentino, and was a booking agent. Sid had alot of relatives in show business. Sid told me to put some musicians together and make a band. I found some known musicians in Pittsburgh to play with and we formed "The Laser Blades" (Shafer, not Shaver -- get it??)
You've never heard of "The Laser Blades", unless you were around in the early 80's in Pittsburgh, so I'll leave it at that. The next few years were fairly dull. I studied law, music, electronics, and auto mechanics during this time on my own, and with friends giving me advice. I wrote a couple books about music that I still haven't published. In the early 90's I discovered a way to make my bass guitar sound a whole lot better. There was a piano and organ moving company down the street from where I was living, and they were throwing out some church organs. I asked if I could have them, and they gave me three of them. I rebuilt the Baldwin, and sold it to a church. The Conn I stripped, and the Allen I gave away. It took a long time and alot of experimenting with the old condensers from the Conn organ in a 12ax7 class A preamplifier circuit, but it happened. My bass guitar was sounding much better!!
I Had been having such a bad time with the Pittsburgh local talent agencies that I decided to move to Las Vegas. On July 4th 1997 I arrived in Las Vegas. It was real hot, and I hardly had any money. I worked some construction jobs for a couple weeks. They were building the Summerlin area at that time, but the wages were only $7.00 an hour. I put my things in storage and went out of town to work in areas that I'd learned by word of mouth where there was work for better wages. I went to Louisiana and got a job in Mobile, Alabama as a pipefitter helper at age 45. In seven weeks I was promoted to journeyman pipefitter. I spent the next 10 years working as a pipefitter, on and off. I worked in North Dakota, Arizona, Louisiana, and I spent two years in Beijing, China, building the new US Embassy. When I get some time off I always go back to playing alot of music. I'm trying to get a job around Las Vegas playing the 6 Bach Cello Suites with my electric cello these days. I give performances at local old folks homes when I get a chance to, and I sing at karaoke nights where I stay in Las Vegas.
While I was in China I did alot of research about the condensers that I'd found for my preamp circuit. I found out that they were called "paper in oil" condensers, and that they were available in England and Denmark at about $40 -$80 each. I also found some in Russia though military surplus outlets that were easier to work with, (because they don't need to be broken in for 100 hours before they sound OK) and I bought enough to make a good quantity of preamps to market to the public. I formed a company, and when I got back from China I took some time off to get the details of the final design worked out and get some preamps made. These preamps are available online today here: www.nitewalkerpreamp.com.