It was 50 years ago today!

[Junior8]

Youngsters watch and wonder my age yes it was that long ago.

[themadhippy]

8 boxes a side, 10kw of amps, no wedges just sidefills and a compact foh position

[sunray]

8 boxes a side, 10kw of amps, no wedges just sidefills and a compact foh position

I'm a little surprised at 10KW in 1969, unless this is Woodstock.In 1973 I recall a band turning up to Central Hall in Chatham with 2.5KW and we were concerned about the plaster ceilings and shortly after another band with watercooled 1KW amps and we refused to let them use their full complement of 4.

About 1977 I was part of the sound crew for a festival in Brighton and 14KW including wedges etc was very much frowned upon by the organisers.

 

 

8 boxes a side, 10kw of amps, no wedges just sidefills and a compact foh position

I'm a little surprised at 10KW in 1969, unless this is Woodstock.In 1973 I recall a band turning up to Central Hall in Chatham with 2.5KW and we were concerned about the plaster ceilings and shortly after another band with watercooled 1KW amps and we refused to let them use their full complement of 4.

About 1977 I was part of the sound crew for a festival in Brighton and 14KW including wedges etc was very much frowned upon by the organisers.

 

 

Ah, I see it is Woodstock

[Andrew C]

I was living just down the road; my parents didn't take me (or go themselves, which would have been more galling).

[Mickstup]

I have seen somewhere, when the Beatles infamously played the Shea Stadium they had a 1000w sound system, someone on here will tell me if this is true.

[bruce]

Dunno about that one, but Charlie Watkins claimed he used 1500W for "Stones in the Park" in 1969, with a quarter of a million audience in Hyde Park

 

The PA system was supplied by Watkins Electric Music, who already handled amplification at previous Hyde Park shows. Company founder Charlie Watkins recalls it was the largest PA he had assembled to that point and, unable to provide enough gear himself, he was forced to borrow extras from other groups, later saying, "I didn't have many columns, but I wanted to put 1500W up. I borrowed some from T-Rex. They all chipped in — that's what we used to do."

[Junior8]

Dunno about that one, but Charlie Watkins claimed he used 1500W for "Stones in the Park" in 1969, with a quarter of a million audience in Hyde Park

 

The PA system was supplied by Watkins Electric Music, who already handled amplification at previous Hyde Park shows. Company founder Charlie Watkins recalls it was the largest PA he had assembled to that point and, unable to provide enough gear himself, he was forced to borrow extras from other groups, later saying, "I didn't have many columns, but I wanted to put 1500W up. I borrowed some from T-Rex. They all chipped in — that's what we used to do."

 

I have a feeling that Charlie Watkins claimed that the wall of sound he put together about 1969 was a first for that power.

Edited August 22, 2019 by Junior8

[kerry davies]

I keep trying to respond to this but ending up writing a novel. Suffice to say that Charlie Watkins was prone to boasting but he didn't tell porkies, the 100W slave system was what allowed amplification to move beyond the 30-50W valve amps of war surplus kit like the Vortexion Wimbledon. Clair Bros were doing stuff on another planet but we didn't have 250W Crown amps here (250W into 4 ohm claimed). 15 x 100W slaves isn't that much, we had twice that in 1972 in the combined Budgie/Good Habit rig with 2 x 5 channel Audiomasters just like Mac and Floyd.

 

Everything was funky and home made then. Crown first made tape recorders for missionaries then added a built in amplifier so they could play hymns to their victims then blues men fed pickups through those tape recorder amps and "Muddy Waters invented electricity". Our first guitar amp was a tape recorder and our first PA amp a war surplus metal beast that might have been a Vortexion with two 12 inch home built Goodmans speakers.

 

This is all very "Four Yorkshiremen" but I do actually remember things going solid state, the invention of wedge monitors and drum micing being Roger Daltry pointing his vocal mic at Keith Moon.

 

E2A

I have seen somewhere, when the Beatles infamously played the Shea Stadium they had a 1000w sound system, someone on here will tell me if this is true.

Total wattage about 3,000 with the 4 or 5 specially built VOX 100W guitar/keys amps onstage.

Edited August 24, 2019 by kerry davies

[paulears]

Remember the WEM stuff well. My first system - 40w, 2 Shure 515 High impedance mics, and 2 4X12" columns. 1973 - I think and my school caretaker lost the mains cable. I bodged it feeding in a piece of cable through the line output jack socket. Still in use in 1995 when I did a little job there. In 76 we had Slade with 1 WEM 100W mixer/amp and two or three 100W slaves in old beer crates with a pair of 4X12" on each amp. We thought that mega loud.

[Junior8]

Remember the WEM stuff well. My first system - 40w, 2 Shure 515 High impedance mics, and 2 4X12" columns. 1973 - I think and my school caretaker lost the mains cable. I bodged it feeding in a piece of cable through the line output jack socket. Still in use in 1995 when I did a little job there. In 76 we had Slade with 1 WEM 100W mixer/amp and two or three 100W slaves in old beer crates with a pair of 4X12" on each amp. We thought that mega loud.

 

Very easy to lose the mains cable - 13A to Bulgin iirc. They did a really neat PA where the columns (4x12 inch high) split in half and then clipped together grille to grille for transport. 100w mixer amp and slave did seem mega loud though personally I thought the sound was better when they'd been running for around an hour. During my college years I think the biggest sound system brought along was by Emperor Rosko when he was running his roadshow - all by Orange ??metamp??. Most bands on the non-uni circuit turned up with 100W PA and backline and one roadie/driver..

Edited August 24, 2019 by Junior8

[paulears]

Matamp! Still got two empty cabinets somewhere, and a working 500W amp too. Rosko and the Orange gear with SP25 Mk2, or was it 3? Amazing the daft things you remember - Blue Fuzz lights and 3 channel sound to light boxes! Rosko had an afghan coat he refused to take off and it stank like a camel!

[adam2]

In my youth, I worked for a company that manufactured and serviced radio frequency heating equipment for industrial uses. The power supply for such equipment was typically several amps at several KV.

 

I recall an order for several of the power supply units "with extra smoothing" The input was three phase and the output about 3 amps at about 2,000 volts. The intended application to supply HT to a very large audio amp. That was in about 1975, when valves were still used for some high power equipment.

 

 

 

[sunray]

Anyone we know?  😊

[kerry davies]

Think it is the same Bill Hanley that is pictured above. Woodstock, Shea Stadium, Bill Graham's Fillmores and the Bloomfield/Butterfield/Dylan electric gig were just some of the notches on his fader. He was the US version of Charlie Watkins though younger. If still with us he would be 84.  

 

[Ynot]

Old topic resurrected for that pic, but worthy one...

Back in my teens (late 70s) I was nowhere near anything professional, but do recall that following a design courtesy of a good friend of mine (who was a couple of years older than I and a bit of an electronics whizz) I built my own solid state amp for a home-built twin deck + cassette DJ console, and I did a handful of local discos before the theatre bug took hold proper. I think it was a mahoosive 200W per stereo channel, which then was WAY louder than we thought I'd ever need.

He also gave me a design for a 4-ch, 2 x 5A sockets per channel single master dimmer desk - he built one too, and we did a fair few school productions with those mini-beasts side by side (one of the am-dram directors was a teacher so we tended to go in and kit their hall out with loads of the society's lanterns).

When I moved up to the venue I've now been at for almost 40 years, a 250 seater volunteer run theatre, we used to have rock gigs in with a guy who ran a music shop up t' road (name of Bram) who brought in sound rigs then of 10 to 12kW PA. He never got to turn it 'up to 11' but even on half power it made the wall between the auditorium and the control room vibrate like an Australian wobble board! You could literally see it moving with each bass thump!

(And that was when we ran LX cues on a Strand SP60 - 60 channels on 3 master faders with A/B selectors - we got it off to a fine art sliding both the masters and selected channels in beat to the music at times, and man you knew you'd done a night's work on that when it was done 🙂

NOT one of the R & R ops - Patrick here was far too sedate for THAT sort of gig, but that's the very desk - in a way it was a shame to let it go, but technology advanced, so we did. 🙂