LAS VEGAS — The governing body of the Parnelli Awards announced that QSC founder Pat Quilter will be the 2015 recipient of the Parnelli Audio Innovator Award. Sound Image’s Dave Shadoan, a Parnelli board member, credited Quilter for building products renowned for their reliability, noting that Sound Image still has QSC’s Series 3 amps from the early 1980s.
“If you want to know why we went to QSC and stayed there for 25 years and never bought anyone else’s amp, it’s because their products simply did not break,” Shadoan says. “When you’re a touring company, you don’t want your speakers to hum, you don’t want them to catch fire. And they were the best sounding amps on the planet.”
“I was the classically nerdy kid,” Quilter says. “So rather than getting some nerdy Dilbert-like job, I thought, ‘I can make amplifiers!’” He started in the 1970s making guitar and bass amps, but that would not be his road to success. Even when brothers and soon-to-be partners Barry and John Andrews joined him, the company continued a downward spiral up until they decided to focus on power amps as P.A. systems were moving away the old Shure Vocal Master model.
In 1980, Quilter created the popular 1400 Stereo Power, and in 1985, the workhorse MX 1500, which delivered an impressive amount of power while only taking up two rack spaces. When movie theaters were being retrofitted with Dolby sound, that company chose QSC’s power amps. While Quilter didn’t pioneer the powered speaker, he worked to perfect it. His K-Series speakers, which came out in 2009, became among the most popular in the world, and they are still selling strong today. More recently, QSC has become known for its work in network audio systems and digital signal processors.
Perhaps Quilter’s most admired talent is creating products that far surpass others in reliability. Not unrelated to the company’s success is his work ethic. “Pat is a very bright guy – brilliant, of course, but he’s also incredibly hard working, and capable of working ridiculously long hours,” John Andrews says. “Even today, as Barry and I back away from the company a little bit, he’s working as hard as ever!” In 2011, Quilter returned to his first passion, building guitar amplifiers, which he does under the Quilter Lab moniker.
“Pat is to be admired not just for his remarkable innovations and contributions to pro sound, but because he became successful because he’s one of the nicest, most honest guys in the business, not in spite of that,” says Parnelli producer and FRONT of HOUSE/PLSN publisher Terry Lowe. “His contributions to this business cannot be overstated, and we are delighted to honor him.”
The Parnelli Awards will be held on Oct. 24 at the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. For more information, go to www.parnelliawards.com.
