The Grand Wazoo
03-10-2011, 08:37
The Grateful Dead had a rather serious attitude to the quality of sound that they delivered to their fans. Not only that but they also used to set up a pirate radio station at every gig so they could broadcast the performance to local fans who couldn't get tickets.
It started off as the hi-fi of Owsley Stanley (a set of four McIntosh MC240 valve power amps) loaned to the band for use during gigs & ended up as basically the biggest hi-fi system ever, powered with banks and banks of McIntosh amps (26,400 watts worth of them!). They were 300 wpc transistor amps except for one each in the vocal and drum system which were valve driven 350 wpc designs driving the tweeters. John Curl also had a hand in producing bespoke designs for various element of the system. The speakers were 586 JBL loudspeakers for bass and mid frequencies (15", 12" and 5") and 54 Electrovoice tweeters.
Speaker set up geometry was designed in advance specifically for each venue in order to give the best performance possible. The layout was then plotted on detailed plans showing angles and dimensions, then assembled with the use of surveyors tools to ensure accuracy of placement to within an inch. Unusually, it was positioned behind the band, and used without monitors. To avoid feedback they used dual microphones with one mic connected out of phase. The singer used one mic while the other mic picked up the ambient sound which was then cancelled.
http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/5828/wallofsound.jpg
The whole thing weighed about 75 tonnes & I believe there were three of them out on the road at any one time - the one for tonight's show, the one for last nights show & the one for tomorrow's show, all leapfrogging over each other to allow for the long setting up time that was needed!
Here's a long interview with Dan Healy from The Absolute Sound (1994)
ftp://gdead.berkeley.edu/pub/gdead/interviews/absolute-sound
More info:
http://www.dozin.com/wallofsound/index.html
JBL website with photo of the PA:
http://www.audioheritage.org/html/history/jbl-pro/jbl-pro.htm
It started off as the hi-fi of Owsley Stanley (a set of four McIntosh MC240 valve power amps) loaned to the band for use during gigs & ended up as basically the biggest hi-fi system ever, powered with banks and banks of McIntosh amps (26,400 watts worth of them!). They were 300 wpc transistor amps except for one each in the vocal and drum system which were valve driven 350 wpc designs driving the tweeters. John Curl also had a hand in producing bespoke designs for various element of the system. The speakers were 586 JBL loudspeakers for bass and mid frequencies (15", 12" and 5") and 54 Electrovoice tweeters.
Speaker set up geometry was designed in advance specifically for each venue in order to give the best performance possible. The layout was then plotted on detailed plans showing angles and dimensions, then assembled with the use of surveyors tools to ensure accuracy of placement to within an inch. Unusually, it was positioned behind the band, and used without monitors. To avoid feedback they used dual microphones with one mic connected out of phase. The singer used one mic while the other mic picked up the ambient sound which was then cancelled.
http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/5828/wallofsound.jpg
The whole thing weighed about 75 tonnes & I believe there were three of them out on the road at any one time - the one for tonight's show, the one for last nights show & the one for tomorrow's show, all leapfrogging over each other to allow for the long setting up time that was needed!
Here's a long interview with Dan Healy from The Absolute Sound (1994)
ftp://gdead.berkeley.edu/pub/gdead/interviews/absolute-sound
More info:
http://www.dozin.com/wallofsound/index.html
JBL website with photo of the PA:
http://www.audioheritage.org/html/history/jbl-pro/jbl-pro.htm