Mike Shea: Musician and Gentleman

We'd like to offer a big THANK YOU to Mike Shea. Mike, a well known Ottawa musician for many years, has been downsizing and donated his sound system to Grateful We're Not Dead. The equipment includes an AudioPro MicroMix SP8 mixer/amplifer, Elite Micron 160 speakers and an assortment of microphones, stands and cable.

Now a bit of information about Mike.

He started his musical career 47 years ago at the age of 16. He performed on a regular basis until 1993 when he stopped entertaining professionally. During his career as a musician he was a member of an Ottawa band, The Counts, for 8 years. He also entertained at the former Skyline Hotel with a band called The Beggarmen for 1-1/2 years. For 20 years Micheal entertained, on a volunteer basis, for the Children's Hospital Foundation of Ottawa. He received a Citation from the Children's Hospital in recognition of his volunteer contribution.

In addition to the above, Mike entertained in senior citizens homes throughout the Ottawa Valley for his whole career, also on a voluntary basis. For five years of this time, he joined forces with Bernie Carroll and entertained as Bernie and Mike.

So once again, Thank You, Mike. We do appreciate your generosity and will be proud to continue using this excellent sound system, hopefully for years to come.

And for the techies, some information about the MicroMix:

1987 marked the introduction of Micromix. Paul Ierymenko designed an advanced stereo mixer and a 250-Watt per-channel stereo amplifier then put them together. Voila - the Audiopro Micromix SP-8 (8 channels stereo, 250 wattsx2, fan-cooled), soon to be joined by the SP-12 (12 channels, same power). Both powered mixers were compact, console-style affairs with slick blue cosmetics, colour-coded knobs and loads of features. Each input channel had a gain control and clip LED, a monitor level control, 3 bands of EQ, an external effects level control and another for the internal effects system, a pan control and a slide control for main mix level. Masters included two ten-band graphic equalizers - stereo for the main PA and mono for the monitors - a stereo reverb/echo (a "first" for Yorkville), dual LED level meters and a pushbutton which enabled you to power the main speakers with one of the built-in amp channels and monitors with the other (another "first" for Yorkville). Naturally there were the usual master faders for sub 1 and sub 2 (left & right), one for monitors and another for the mono line-level output which resulted when the afore-mentioned pushbutton was depressed blending the sub 1 & 2 signals into one. Whew! Oh, and one more thing - a full-time stereo limiter in series with the power amp ensured that distortion would be minimal even under worst-case conditions.

Reference: Yorkville Sound History: 1963-1991 Published Feb 20,2002. Written by Mike Holman