Found this, Can you answer it?

[Dylanl]

What had 586 JBL speakers and 54 Electrovoice tweeters and was powered by 48 McIntosh MC2300 300 wpc Stereo Amps yeilding (48 X 600) = 28,800 Watts of continuous (RMS) power?

[robertbartsch]

The Dead.


I saw them 6 times about 35 years ago.

PS - I never liked their music.

[BMWCCA]

Tough question! ;)

http://www.audioheritage.org/html/history/jbl-pro/jbl-pro.htm


PS: Heard them many times in the late '60s and early '70s, sometimes in high-school gymnasiums with 200 people in the Midwest. My favorite was under the stars in the quadrangle at Washington University in St. Louis about 1970. I've never forgotten the sound of Dark Star, outside, live. I often attempted to recreate that feeling in Virginia by putting my 030s on the porch in our farmhouse at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Whitehall, VA and playing them into the night with the sound echoing off the hills. With or without hallucinogenics, it was a lovely sound. The Dead and D130s just seem to go together!

I love the dead and have passed along that appreciation to at least one of my daughters. The best live rendition of their music I've heard recently was performed by the bluegrass group The Waybacks who do a great St. Stephen-based medley. They've also toured with Bob Weir.

Here they are with guest banjo player, Danny Barnes, performing St. Stephens outside by the tracks at the Virginia Science Museum last year for a cancer-center benefit (with locally supplied lousy SR system, unfortunately). It's not my video but I was there and took my daughter along for her first Waybacks Live experience. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--kOsLFv0tg

And, if you like this, you might like their Led Zeppelin II set at MerleFest last year.

[2turbos]

The Dead.


I saw them 6 times about 35 years ago.

PS - I never liked their music.

Opinion warning!!

Yeah, The Dead.

Jbl & Mc using Alembic guitars.

I didn't understand why the were so popular. Musically they weren't very good.

I thought they should sound better with all that state of the art equipment they used.

I guess I just didn't get their "art" or "talent".

[JBLRaiser]

Left Coast thing for the most part. Living the hippie dream/NM.:D

[robertbartsch]

I beleive they were one of the very first bands to use JBL reinforcement systems.

Until that time, everything was Altec bass horns, Altec compression drivers and Crown dc300s.

I think the picture above is around 1973 or so....

[Doctor_Electron]

Quote:

"I thought they should sound better with all that state of the art equipment they used."

Bad "Sound Engineers" can make ANYTHING sound bad. And IMO that is always a damned shame.

Good Sound Engineers can make most gear sound good.

I am of the Drew Daniels philosophy, regarding sound reproduction. You have to LISTEN, and know what it is you're listening to.

Perceptible distortion in reproduced sound drives me nuts. So I've always put the quality first, volume last. Simple.

Don't we all use great JBL gear, etc., in order to achieve this?

[hjames]

Pretty wacky - one guy posts the old Dead Wall of Sound picture and a bunch of folks come out to insult them ... sheesh!

Yeah, I saw them about 6 times myself - saw them twice with the wall of sound - once indoors in spring '72 at the Baltimore Civic Center, and then a year later outdoors at RFK stadium in DC with the Allman Brothers - they even jammed together for a while ...
see http://www.archive.org/details/gd1973-06-10.sbd.miller.89640.sbeok.flac16


Also saw them indoors a few times afterwards - good spirited music but not quite the same -
worst time was the Capital Center circa fall 1974 - too noodly and just couldn't decide what to play ...
L O N G pauses between songs ...

but there sure a heck of a lot WORSE bands out there ...

[Tim Rinkerman]

Bad "Sound Engineers" can make ANYTHING sound bad. And IMO that is always a damned shame.

Good Sound Engineers can make most gear sound good.

If I recollect correctly, the wall of sound did not use a house mixer, they were seperate towers of speakers directly fed by the guitar and bass amps...the band mixed themselves :blink:....the central cluster of cones and tweeters were for the vocals,there must have been some sort of mixer there....

[boputnam]

Grateful Dead - Wall of Sound (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_of_Sound_(Grateful_Dead)).


Jbl & Mc using Alembic guitars.The use of Alembic guitars was in this period (early 1970's) but was pretty short-lived. Jerry went back to a Fender Straticaster until '73'ish, when he started using Doug Irwin's "Wolf" which had some Alembic guts, but was mostly a souped-up Strat. Then the really interesting guitars started coming...


L O N G pauses between songs ...
That's affectionately called "Dead Air".

:)

[robertbartsch]

...well the things that strike me when I see this picture include:


1. No compression drivers and HF horns
2. No bass horn cabinets (these were standard in that time period)

I beleive the bass and HF horns improved sensativity (efficency) and these were viewed as critical since the biggest solid state amplifiers of the day were "only" around 200-300 WPC.

I'm kinda puzzled at why the Dead used Macs and not Crown since the later was specifically designed for reinforcement and the Macs were super pricy.

I bet the typical SPL of concerts back then was at least 110db, but that would be an educted guess.

[robertbartsch]

Oh yeh, one other unusual thing - there is no stage monitors facing the band since the SR system is at the rear of where they stood.

Most concerts of that day had the SR speakers on each side of the stage and the band listened to their own music using their "tubed" stage amps (Fender, Marshall, Ampex, etc.)

I don't think stage monitors became popular until the 1990s; right?

Most the the shows I have seen recently have no stage monitors but the band listens through headphones (ear pods).

The average SPL of shows today must be around 80-85db (another guess on my part).

[jcrobso]

Oh yeh, one other unusual thing - there is no stage monitors facing the band since the SR system is at the rear of where they stood.

Most concerts of that day had the SR speakers on each side of the stage and the band listened to their own music using their "tubed" stage amps (Fender, Marshall, Ampex, etc.)

I don't think stage monitors became popular until the 1990s; right?

Most the the shows I have seen recently have no stage monitors but the band listens through headphones (ear pods).

The average SPL of shows today must be around 80-85db (another guess on my part).

80-85db would be a home listening level at a moderate level. When I run sound at my Church the level is around 85~95 db during the Music part.
Concerts to day can easily get above 100~110 db, ear protectors anyone?

[boputnam]

Oh yeh, one other unusual thing - there is no stage monitors facing the band since the SR system is at the rear of where they stood.

Most concerts of that day had the SR speakers on each side of the stage and the band listened to their own music using their "tubed" stage amps (Fender, Marshall, Ampex, etc.)

I don't think stage monitors became popular until the 1990s; right?

Most the the shows I have seen recently have no stage monitors but the band listens through headphones (ear pods).I'm sure you know most of this, but for those new to it...

The Wall of Sound served both as monitor and PA - a novel concept for sure, and required each artist sing into one of two mics strapped together and out-of-phase. Thus, the mics cancelled until one was sung into, at which point the artist's body shielded the mic from producing feedback.

Stage monitors began to take-hold late in the 1970's - but they were far from perfect. Bob Heil, working with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead developed one of the first "foldback" systems comprised of multiple mixes tailored for each artists' needs. Still, EQ'ing was not very advanced and the old GD tapes are frequented with feedback spikes, particularly the acoustic sets (still a problem today! :o:). I used one of Heil's first small consoles which had one foldback send in 1978'ish - it was pretty unique and we had no EQ on that send. Yikes...

The recent trend is to In Ear Monitors as you say, but these are much more advanced than anything consumer or "pod" like. The IEM themselves can cost upwards of $400 (multiple drivers per ear) and typically have custom molded fittings for the artists's ear canal. These are fed stereo mixes, either wireless or hardwired, to the artists' butt pack, again with this portion of the system frequently costing +$1,000. Consumer-grade "ear buds" don't cut it, as they rest in the outer ear and do not occlude outside noise so the benefits of a personal mix are mooted.

[robertbartsch]

Hey Bo:
great insight...

When did the modern 18" sub woofer become popular for SR?
When were the bass horns phased out in favor of flying rigs?

I attended shows in the 60s-70s and only recently returned to see several shows - so I missed a couple of decades of progress on this front.

Thx...

[Earl K]

When did the modern 18" sub woofer become popular for SR?

- Mid to late 70's with JBLs' development and release of the K151, 18" woofer .

- Clair Bros ( & Audio Analysts to a much smaller degree ) used them in their iconic "S4" flyable cabinet .
- All the components in this 4-way box were sourced from JBL .

- This SR box is singularly ( IMO ) responsible for burying any ( & all ) hope that Altec may of still had of servicing the "touring" market with their low power-handling componentry .

>< cheers

[boputnam]

When were the bass horns phased out in favor of flying rigs?They just started flying the subs, too. I think those are subs atop this hang - Neil Diamond in St. Paul, MN Civic Center, December 1985. Stanal Sound did the system design and rigging.

[scott fitlin]

I'm kinda puzzled at why the Dead used Macs and not Crown since the later was specifically designed for reinforcement and the Macs were super pricy.

As I remember it told, Jerry preferred the sound of Mac, and everyone, all the DEAD HEADS used to talk about how The Dead had a million dollars worth of Mac,s.

I went to a few dead concerts, wasn't all that crazy for their tunes, but, I sort of understand why they might have liked Mc over another.