• TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
    Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
    Join free Log in
    Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.

Grateful Dead - Wall of Sound

#24
rickdog said:
Does anyone know where to find the specs for the cabs Phil used? I think the drivers were JBL 15s (D140 maybe?) but how big were the boxes?
Click to expand...

PM TB'er Rusty the Scoob. He posted dimensions on another forum (25.5" deep x 20" wide x 30" tall) and mentioned that he was looking to build one for the Dead tribute band he plays in.
 
#25
Passinwind said:
PM TB'er Rusty the Scoob. He posted dimensions on another forum (25.5" deep x 20" wide x 30" tall) and mentioned that he was looking to build one for the Dead tribute band he plays in.
Click to expand...

Wow, I didn't realize those were so big!

After I posted about Bob Heil, I looked him up on the web. Interesting stuff with him and the Dead's PA. The Dead REALLY wanted to buy the Fox Theatre in St. Louis back when it was kind of a dump (saw Springsteen there in '72... didn't know who the heck he was... amazing). Bob put the 'concert level' PA in there, and moved on to do sound for the Who, etc. Cool stuff back then!
 
#26
From that previous thread:

bag_End_Catalog_07.jpg


bag_End_Catalog_03.jpg


Bag_End_Catalog_01.jpg


bag_End_Catalog_05.jpg


The above photos are from a Bag End Catalog Archive.

The photo below implies that they are indeed Bag End cabinets making up the Wall of Sound:

Phil_Lesh_WallOsound_MacIntosh_TubeAmps.jpg
 
#27
Only heard it twice, both times outside, and it produced a really full sound, with total clarity. Being a long time Deadhead, one thing I always appreciated was how good their sound was, so the audience could hear all that was going on. I was always really disappointed when I went to see a live act and the sound sucked. I once heard Cheap Trick where the sound was one loud bass solo, with little or no vocals and minimal guitar.
 
#29
I saw them play through this rig a few times; was a bit of a deadhead back in the day. It sounded pretty amazing to me at the time, probably still would. It was a huge enterprise, but they had the freedom to follow whatever wild notions they chose. Some tidbits of info from an old printed tech sheet that was in circulation way before the internets. It describes the system as used in 1974:

"The number of people going on the road to handle all the sound equipment, light, scaffolding and staging varies, but a typical configuration is: band - 6, sound - 10, lights - 4, staging and tucking - 7, road management - 3, The sound system travels in a 40 foot semi, and staging and scaffolding on two flatbed semis and the lights in a 24 foot van. All this weighs about 75 tons."

They used two sets of scaffolding and staging which would leapfrog from teardown to the second upcoming show, lights and sound system would go directly to the next venue where staging and scaffolding were already set up from previous show.

I like this too:

"THE ELECTRIC BASS Phil is using a new quadrophonic bass, the electronics of which were designed and built by George Mundy and the body and pickups by Rick Turner. The new bass has the same versatile qualities as the old bass: three pickups (bass and treble low-impedence pickups covering all the strings, and a quad pickup which has a separate signal for each string): on each of the bass and treble pickups there are controls which enable him to select 1) the band width of the filter, 2) the center frequency of the filter, 3) the kind of filtering being used, and 4) mix unequalized unfiltered direct sound with the filtered sound. The variety of sounds which can be achieved on the bass is the result of many {No S**t!} different combinations of these variables which can be used. The new bass has a frequency response with a crisper tone, and two quad pickups instead of one, the new one being a frequency-detector pickup. The main addition to the new bass is a Digital Decoding Circuit such that ten push buttons on the bass allow Phil to select any one of sixteen quad spatial arrangements of his speakers, and eight in the stereo mode."

Through 4 channels of 36 - 15" JBLs total. Yeah.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Seth Miller
#33
Philonius said:
"THE ELECTRIC BASS Phil is using a new quadrophonic bass, the electronics of which were designed and built by George Mundy and the body and pickups by Rick Turner. The new bass has the same versatile qualities as the old bass: three pickups (bass and treble low-impedence pickups covering all the strings, and a quad pickup which has a separate signal for each string): on each of the bass and treble pickups there are controls which enable him to select 1) the band width of the filter, 2) the center frequency of the filter, 3) the kind of filtering being used, and 4) mix unequalized unfiltered direct sound with the filtered sound. The variety of sounds which can be achieved on the bass is the result of many {No S**t!} different combinations of these variables which can be used. The new bass has a frequency response with a crisper tone, and two quad pickups instead of one, the new one being a frequency-detector pickup. The main addition to the new bass is a Digital Decoding Circuit such that ten push buttons on the bass allow Phil to select any one of sixteen quad spatial arrangements of his speakers, and eight in the stereo mode."
Click to expand...

around '81 I was at a Luthier's Convention in San Francisco, and had the pleasure of going to Rick Turner's new shop (I forget where). He had left Alembic and was just starting to make the short lived Model 1 (?) instrument line. For whatever reason the bass was in his shop, and I took a bunch of pictures of it - including the insides. The back came off in two halves, each the length of and "split" along the edge of the body. The insides was pretty much nothing but circuit boards ... and a stash holder.

I still have those slides around here somewheres - when they show up I'll post 'em.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Seth Miller
#36
Followed the Dead for a while a bit later, for bits of '77-'80. They always sounded great to me. Though for a lot of reasons the sound was all ... swirly... and there were a lot of colors that went along with it...
Excuse me, gotta go, the floor just started moving again... :D

I got to do a few shows with Geof Cook doing our sound. He was one of the Dead's sound guys back then. Very trippy character, with very, very big ears and a great heart. He always made us sound great. I actually got to play a show being mixed through the very sound board that mixed the first Dead concert I ever saw (at the Tower theater in Philly). We were playing the Arlington theater in Santa Barbara (about the same size as the Tower, come to think of it). It was a huge analog board, and he made us come out to his storage and help him move it. I got a huge kick out of playing through that board.

Miss you Jerry. And Pigpen and Keith and Brett.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ThisisCraigP
#38
I was in Santa Barbara and remember Geof Cook, he had a custom built FOH system and a series of huge tube amps that were questionably reliable (I recall a BB King show at the Santa Barbara County Bowl where he fried the entire FOH speakers and had to do the show with just stage monitors).

He was a gentle soul, and he inherited some of the wall of sound, particularly parts of the big array of 4" vocal speakers.​
 

Latest posts

Top Bottom
Back