Berklee Blogs hears final thoughts from Mike Cavalli as he finishes his internship at Fuchs Audio Technology, a boutique audio equipment company. In today’s blog, Mike follows up on Part I of his post, telling us what it was like working at Fuchs and the lessons he took away from the experience
The first day at Fuchs Audio was nothing like I could imagine. I discovered the company during my freshman year at Berklee through a family friend of my Dad. Additionally, I had an opportunity to talk to Harvey Leeds of Headquarters Media, a Live Nation consulting company and compared both situations to figure out which environment would best suit me. Having done only odd jobs and outdoor work, I was never meant to sit at a desk in front of a computer all day. I don’t mind the idea of it, considering air conditioning is usually involved. However, my idea of pleasant workday involves creativity to accomplish a task and working with artists and luthiers of similar beliefs. The idea of custom building guitar cabinets has been something that I aspire to do. Having minimal experience in this field, what better way to learn something particular to me and receive credits at the same time?
Waking up in the morning and going to work is easier when you get to walk into a room, stocked wall to wall, with custom amps and framed press releases. Most would say its like a little piece of heaven. However, behind the wall of amps is where the real “day to day” work gets done- with mountains of amplifiers and boxes getting ready to be loaded with speakers and shipped. With a lot to do on a daily basis, my first day as an intern consisted of soldering reverb cards for one of their top-selling amps, the Fuchs ODS 50. I had never soldered a thing in my life nor did I understand what it was that I was soldering. Nevertheless, I got my new spot at the bench, ready for chaos, and began loading the boards with resistors and capacitors, and soldered away.