Steve got his radio start sometime after Marconi retired. Marconi said to Steve's first clients, "hire this guy, he can sell you the Golden Gate Bridge"...
Sometime later, Mr. West was found hunched over a production board, microphone in hand, which, at the time, was not much more than a couple of tin cans strung together with thin wire, voicing a commercial for the Ford Model T, then a brand new model. That sold millions of cars.
Nowadays, Steve West uses much better equipment, a Samson C01 professional mic and a EuroRack UB 1204 Professional mixer with an Alesis NanoVerb effects box into a computer with 2 gigs of memory and 300 gigs of hard drive space. A *little* better to do voiceover and commercials.
Actually, gang, Steve West is one of the main personalities now on internet station , his latest national radio spot was done in conjunction with national voiceover talent Jack Parnell for PowerPlus MPG, and his last gig was as a national news anchor on a major radio news/talk network.... The Information Radio Network, heard on over 500 news/talk stations in the U.S.
Back in the old days, many of us got into broadcasting by walking in and asking. I did that at 16 years old, at little 1,000 watt WCAT in Orange, MA. I was voice-trained by station owner Dick Partridge, who was once the national voice of Lucky Strikes cigarettes back in the 60s.
For the last 5 years I've been voice-coached by Jack Parnell. His advice has become invaluable in helping to mature my voice of over 25 years experience in this business.
I use a Samson C01 Studio mic and a Behringer 6 channel board with effects plugged directly into my custom-built pc. Audio card is a Sound Blaster Fatality X-Fi, so the sound is very clean. I have a number of different programs available to record in, among them, Sony Sound Forge (lots of bells and whistles there), but I mainly use Adobe Audition due to familiarity and ease of use. I've been with the program virtually since the first version of Cool Edit.
I'm also a musician. I can insert acoustic or electric guitar riffs if needed, or even sing!