In high school one of my activities was the stage crew. We had grades 7-12 in one building. The stage crew operated on an apprentice and seniority system and we had our own self-managed budget. We had a stage & set department, a lighting department, and a sound department. I was the youngest sound manager in 10th grade, we built some of our equipment, and I bought some great AKG lower end microphones. We did our own unpermitted electrician work up to 50A/220 installing breakers in the existing school panels and had ancient arc spotlights we wired off their own motor generators - 90V @ 90A DC where we did all the wiring off the generator panel. We were very independent and the sound booth was filled with unlabeled patch panels and switches you had to know how to operate to use the auditorium PA. We also pinned our own locks. We had a master key system. We gave the principal all the individual unlabeled keys, and the principal had a.freakout when I arrived for a show, found them with the sound equipment trying to set it up for a PTA meeting, and then realizing they couldn't run it without a student. After I graduated, they took back control of the stage crew. It was actually somewhat a miracle no one was injured.
Somehow the Eastman School of Music, with smooth jazz trumpeter Chuck Mangione, visited our high school on tour bringing 3 Suburban Sound 8 channel mixers. As a result of helping at that concert, I later got a student job working in Eastman's recording department and dated a cute one year older oboist learning to make her own reeds. So that visiting show was the moment.
The Suburban Sound design and the Melcor op amps later became the basis of Automated Processes Inc. mixer, op amp, and preamp card lines. From there, API developed their respected EQ and compressors. They even did a small run of transistor power amps with transformer out.The Eastman School later got a big grant from the Kresge Foundation - KMart and built a large recording space, the Rey Wright room, Hidley/Westlake control rooms, one with a big API console, and one with a big Quad Eight, one of the first automated mixing consoles and based on the DBX voltage controlled amplifier.