Music became a passion, a need. Instead of following the popular culture of the day - Elvis and The Beatles - he developed a love of classical music. It is bemusing to watch him -perfectly pressed sitting on the floor, legs crossed, conducting the music that is playing over the WAMMs. His eyes closed, a hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth - this is passion.
At Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, Dave met the other passion of his life - Sheryl Lee Jamison. In this instance, Dave’s passion and intellect worked in perfect synch.
Sheryl Lee was looking for somebody to transcribe records onto tapes she could send her boyfriend in New Zealand. Sheryl Lee’s cousin, Ty Jamison, told her about his roomate, Dave, who was really into audio. When Dave met her at the door of his apartment, his heart rate went into high RPM. As they talked and he showed her his system, he was calculating just how much time he would have before she "walked out of my life." The time it would take to transfer a tape was not enough. He reached behind the recorder when she wasn't looking and snapped the input patch cords. A night of taping was followed by the shocking discovery that there was no music on the tape! It had to be done over. In 1966, they were married.
Even though Dave went into pharmaceutical research, audio was never far from his heart. A look at his 1966 system (see photo) is evidence of obsession. A turntable suspended from Whamm-o sling shot rubber bands? Years later, this concept reappeared in one of the world's finest turntables, the SME Model 30.
By 1974, Dave had a pair of Dahlquist DQ-10 loudspeakers, which he started modifying (beyond recognition). In 1977, the Wilsons launched the Wilson Recording label with their first release of organist James Welch (Concert).
Working in his garage and living room in the late Seventies, Dave Wilson constructs a prototype of the state-of-the-art modular "white dwarf" WATT loudspeaker.