AXPONA 2022

There was one room at AXPONA where I was too in awe to take notes. In shock is more like it. The brothers who own JS Audio have acquired and restored the very first pair of WAMM loudspeakers that the late Dave Wilson began to manufacture in 1981. It seems that after living with the model for a few months, Dave's other half in the truest sense, his beloved wife and life partner Sheryl Lee, pictured below at AXPONA, preferred a different cabinet color for their living room and encouraged him to move this pair along. (If I've got that wrong, please forgive me.)

Why was I so dumbstruck? Not because my reference speaker is the Wilson Audio Alexia 2; rather, because WAMM #1 looks very much like the strange assortment of drivers, stacked one above the other, I saw in Dave's living room when I visited his Novato home in either 1980 or early 1981.

Maybe a year after I had recorded Puccini's "O mio babbino caro" as The Voice of Woodstock in the Emmy-nominated Peanuts cartoon, "She's a Good Skate, Charlie Brown," Fisher-Price prepared to issue an illustrated children's book of the cartoon that included the soundtrack on cassette. But because producer Lee Mendelssohn only had secured rights to use the Puccini in the TV cartoon, we needed to record an entirely different piece of music.

Days after I'd completed the recording with composer Ed Bogas, he said to me, "I'd love you to whistle for my friend Dave."

"Sure," said the ever-eloquent I.

Shortly thereafter, we climbed into Ed's car and headed to Novato in Marin County. While I was shaking hands, all l I knew about this guy Dave was that he was tall, had the most winning smile and warmest way of making me feel at home, and had the strangest looking speakers I'd ever seen at one end of his living room. While I was whistling to one of my accompaniment cassettes—thank goodness this guy Dave owned a cassette recorder—Dave pulled out a sound pressure meter and declared, "My gosh, you've got a 20dB dynamic range!" As with his speakers, I didn't know what to make of Dave's comment. As far as I was concerned, I was just doing what I loved to do, which was to whistle.

Years later, when I stumbled upon a copy of Stereophile at Oakland Pro Home Systems, I read about David A. Wilson of Wilson Audio. That's when it dawned on me...

Now, at last, I could see, hear, and understand what was brewing in that suburban living room over four decades ago. Powered by D'Agostino Momentum mono amplifiers and more—the ability to hold a pen escaped me in that room—it sounded very, very good. But beyond the sound was the reality. The first pair of WAMMs ever produced, whose antecedents I'd seen many, many moons ago, was singing once again.