About Midnight Bob

Shuster Sound was founded in 1975, by Bob Shuster, in the basement of his parents’ home in Valley Stream, New York. Originally, Bob’s recording studio, he recorded many of Long Island’s most illustrious musicians. Most notable was a songwriter named Gary Portnoy whose demos included a little song that came to be known as the theme song for the popular, long running TV Show, “Cheers.”

However, way before 1975, as a young child, around the age of 10, Bob had a fascination with mechanical things, particularly reel to reel tape decks and he began taking them apart and putting them back together astonishingly well. Over the years, this developed into Bob’s ultimate love and amazingly deep

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

knowledge of all reel to reel machines, both professional and consumer models. As a matter of fact, Bob has assisted AES (Audio Engineering Society) with their Audio History Museum project to recover and document lost materials and information relating to the history of the reel-to-reel machine.

After high school, Bob attended both Eastman School of Music and IAR (Institute of Audio Research) for Audio Engineering and Technical Mainenance Engineering. In 1977, Bob began his long, respected career in the upper echelon of world-class recording studios when he was hired to work at Media Sound in Manhattan. He remained there for 12 years as a Senior Audio Maintenance Engineer, where he was given the nickname “Midnight Bob” due to the fact that he performed all of the heavy technical maintenance and repair work on the studio equipment during the midnight to 8AM shift. Ten more years were spent at what is considered by many to be the most technically acclaimed recording studio thus far in the history of recording, Power Station Studios, again, as a Senior Audio Maintenance Engineer.

Yet throughout these 30-plus years, Shuster Sound continued as Bob’s sideline business. During this time, Bob worked for highly regarded studios including Record Plant, Electric Lady, Sony Studios (as a mastering technical maintenance engineer), Pomann Sound (as a video post-production technical maintenance engineer), Avatar Studios (the former Power Station Studio opened under new ownership), NBC (as on on-air systems engineer), and MTV/Viacom Networks (as on-air systems engineer).

Now, Shuster Sound is focused on professional and consumer audio technical maintenance, repair and installation.

Please see the Client/Reference Page for a more complete list.