Things we didn't know or do in the 60's and 70's

[buldog5151bass]

Ever notice how puny the sound system at the original Woodstock festival was compared to today's rigs are?

We've gotten louder and more complex.

 

[Frankula]

We didn't know basses needed to be set-up. We just played them.
We assumed intonation had been done at the factory.
We had two cords. We used them interchangeably between speaker and instrument.
We didn't carry a spare bass. If we needed to change a string we had drum solos.
We thought a 15" folded horn could be used full-range. We didn't need anything over 300 Hz. anyway.
We didn't know you couldn't put any speaker in any cab, so we put a JBL or an EV in everything- It didn't matter which model. In 1978 we decided Fender bass cabinets sucked (they did), and we took out the speakers and put them in TL 606 cabs. This was the single biggest improvement in bass sound since the invention of the electric bass.(not including the Fridge, which is still cool)

If we did so many things wrong, how come we made the best music of the century?

Best music of the century? No, some of it was great, but the ratio of great music to crappy music has always been about the same for every era. The only thing that was different about those times is that things were still fairly new and a lot of experimentation was yet to be done. Instruments and amps and pedals, etc. are much, much superior today. The current crop of average musicians can play circles around those of yesteryear. I knew those little screws on the bridge were there for a reason, and I haven't used a curly cord since 1973!

 

[Nevada Pete]

Ever notice how puny the sound system at the original Woodstock festival was compared to today's rigs are?

Warning: Unapologetic Rant!

Hang on there a minute, partner. Okay? I understand why you said what you said, not having provided sound for live concerts at the time and therefore, not knowing how much work everybody did including myself to get us where we are now with concert sound. So there are a few things your overlooking regarding the Woodstock system. This is perfectly understandable. But just to set the record straight, the "size" of a sound system isn't as important as for one thing how loud it plays, and for another, the audio quality of the sound itself. Bill Hanley's system at Woodstock was lacking in none of these characteristics.

Nothing Bill Hanley ever did was "puny", certainly including the system he provided for Woodstock which was far from "puny" in its performance. With the possible exception of German audio engineers during the third reich who were able to project intelligible sound to what were at the time astonishing numbers of persons, Hanley's magnificent accomplishment at Woodstock had never been seen or done before at the magnitude he did it in the history of audio engineering. The facts are that at the time, Bill Hanley was the only person in the world who knew how to do what he did.

To understand the system Bill Hanley designed and implemented at Woodstock, it is important to realize that those were huge, tightly horn loaded bass cabinets with multiple loudspeakers in each one, so they punch way above their weight compared to the direct radiators commonly employed today. Hanley pared the gigantic folded bass horns he designed with Altec Lansing 290e compression drivers that utilized phenolic diaphragms, same as were employed in Civil Defense systems by municipalities during the height of the Cold War for massive public address purposes. [Note: They finally figured out that if hydrogen bombs / warheads were ever detonated in war, it wouldn't matter what anybody had to say about it just ahead of time. So they gave up on civil defense.] When a 290e compression driver was mated to an Altec Lansing multi-cellular horn, they could clearly broadcast the human voice or music for that matter at what we used to call broadcast quality (equal to a good AM radio) and in so doing, be heard intelligibly for several miles or more. Try that with a big line array system.

I'm not sure anybody had ever put so many 290e's in one place before, much less played music through them. If there's one thing that could be said of Hanley's Woodstock system, it is that it was LOUD! Just to give you an idea of what a system like that can do, I regularly did big shows (being a gopher apprentice at the time) with Swanson Sound at the Frost Amphitheater on the Stanford University campus where we employed only 2 JBL 4550 bass horns and 2 Altec Lansing 290e's on each side of the stage, one 290e on a 2 X 5 multi-cellular horn and one 290e on a 1 X 2 multi-cellular horn. The entire system was driven bi-amped by only two Crown DC-300A's. At the time, the amphitheater held over 5,500 people and that system which astonished everybody that heard it could have easily covered 10,000. Depending on who was running it, it could be made to sound very good indeed.

By comparison, Hanley was using Altec Lansing's double driver adapters on each horn, meaning he had 8 290e's on each side of the stage on the lower level and (what looks like) 4 to 6 on the upper level, with the bass horns to keep up with them. Unless you have actually worked with this equipment, you simply can have no idea just what that meant in terms of sheer SPL. "Puny" my #$%$#! The biggest system I ever worked on putting up at Swanson had 4 4550's and 4 JBL 2440's (aluminum diaphragms) on radial horns per each side of the stage plus several 4560 / 2440's for good measure, and that system was a monster! And not even close to a match for what Hanley had at Woodstock.

Moreover, each of the reportedly 20 McIntosh MC3500's Hanley employed could produce 500 watts RMS all day long. That is, there was 10kW of RMS audio power to run that system. Not much, you say. Correct. Not much for a modern direct radiator system, either point source or line array given the very low efficiency of these modern systems. But considerable when you consider the extreme efficiency of the loudspeakers Hanley was using. When I entered the concert sound business after I ended my playing career, I had four McIntosh MC3500's to power my bass bins and I can assure you, the venerable Crown DC300A's were no match for them. I don't want to start another flame war (did that already on TB) but that was 10,000 watts of McIntosh tube audio power, my friend. McIntosh rated their MC3500 at 350 watts, but they easily made 500 watts RMS before clipping appeared on the scope (which you couldn't hear).

Here's a link to an article where the photo above came from in FOH magazine, "Woodstock, 50 Years After", by John Kane, if your interested in more info:

Invalid Link Removed

Nobody, certainly not me, is saying that a modern line array when properly operated doesn't have absolutely spectacular audio quality now equal to FM broadcast quality. They do. And I've heard plenty of them that for what ever reason did not rival the audio quality of the Swanson system we used at Frost. So just to set the record straight, there was nothing "puny" about Hanley's Woodstock system, and to say there was is just plan [forget it, figure out the word yourself]. Since there aren't many people still alive who were doing concert sound at the time and therefore would know this, I thought I would say so. I could say a lot more, believe me. Rant over.

 

[Jhengsman]

In high school I sat right next to drum set in the jazz band. And when the marching band's drumline was celebrating after a football victory nobody gave a thought to earplugs.

 

[jerry]

Warning: Unapologetic Rant!

Hang on there a minute, partner. Okay? I understand why you said what you said, not having provided sound for live concerts at the time and therefore, not knowing how much work everybody did including myself to get us where we are now with concert sound. So there are a few things your overlooking regarding the Woodstock system. This is perfectly understandable. But just to set the record straight, the "size" of a sound system isn't as important as for one thing how loud it plays, and for another, the audio quality of the sound itself. Bill Hanley's system at Woodstock was lacking in none of these characteristics.

Nothing Bill Hanley ever did was "puny", certainly including the system he provided for Woodstock which was far from "puny" in its performance. With the possible exception of German audio engineers during the third reich who were able to project ineligible sound to what were at the time astonishing numbers of persons, Hanley's magnificent accomplishment at Woodstock had never been seen or done before at the magnitude he did it in the history of audio engineering. The facts are that at the time, Bill Hanley was the only person in the world who knew how to do what he did.

To understand the system Bill Hanley designed and implemented at Woodstock, it is important to realize that those were huge, tightly horn loaded bass cabinets with multiple loudspeakers in each one, so they punch way above their weight compared to the direct radiators commonly employed today. Hanley pared the gigantic folded bass horns he designed with Altec Lansing 290e compression drivers that utilized phenolic diaphragms, same as were employed in Civil Defense systems by municipalities during the height of the Cold War for massive public address purposes. [Note: They finally figured out that if hydrogen bombs / warheads were ever detonated in war, it wouldn't matter what anybody had to say about it just ahead of time. So they gave up on civil defense.] When a 290e compression driver was mated to an Altec Lansing multi-cellular horn, they could clearly broadcast the human voice or music for that matter at what we used to call broadcast quality (equal to a good AM radio) and in so doing, be heard intelligibly for several miles or more. Try that with a big line array system.

I'm not sure anybody had ever put so many 290e's in one place before, much less played music through them. If there's one thing that could be said of Hanley's Woodstock system, it is that it was LOUD! Just to give you an idea of what a system like that can do, I regularly did big shows (being a gopher apprentice at the time) with Swanson Sound at the Frost Amphitheater on the Stanford University campus where we employed only 2 JBL 4550 bass horns and 2 Altec Lansing 290e's on each side of the stage, one of them on a 2 X 5 multi-cellular horn and one of them on a 1 X 2 multi-cellular horn. The entire system was driven bi-amped by only two Crown DC-300A's. At the time, the amphitheater held over 5,500 people and that system which astonished everybody that heard it could have easily covered 10,000. Depending on who was running it, it could be made to sound very good indeed.

By comparison, Hanley was using Altec Lansing's double driver adapters on each horn, meaning he had 8 290e's on each side of the stage on the lower level and (what looks like) 4 to 6 on the upper level, with the bass horns to keep up with them. Unless you have actually worked with this equipment, you simply can have no idea just what that meant in terms of sheer SPL. "Puny" my #$%$#! The biggest system I ever worked on putting up at Swanson had 4 4550's and 4 JBL 2440's (aluminum diaphragms) on radial horns per each side of the stage plus several 4560 / 2440's for good measure, and that system was a monster! And not even close to a match for what Hanley had at Woodstock.

Moreover, each of the reportedly 20 McIntosh MC3500's Hanley employed could produce 500 watts RMS all day long. That is, there was 10kW of RMS audio power to run that system. Not much, you say. Correct. Not much for a modern direct radiator system, either point source or line array given the very low efficiency of these modern systems. But considerable when you consider the extreme efficiency of the loudspeakers Hanley was using. When I entered the concert sound business after I ended my playing career, I had four McIntosh MC3500's to power my bass bins and I can assure you, the venerable Crown DC300A's were no match for them. I don't want to start another flame war (did that already on TB) but that was 10,000 watts of McIntosh tube audio power, my friend. McIntosh rated their MC3500 at 350 watts, but they easily made 500 watts RMS before clipping appeared on the scope (which you couldn't hear).

Nobody, certainly not me, is saying that a modern line array when properly operated doesn't have absolutely spectacular audio quality now equal to FM broadcast quality. They do. And I've heard plenty of them that for what ever reason did not rival the audio quality of the Swanson system we used at Frost. So just to set the record straight, there was nothing "puny" about Hanley's Woodstock system, and to say there was is just plan [forget it, figure out the word yourself]. Since there aren't many people still alive who were doing concert sound at the time and therefore would know this, I thought I would say so. I could say a lot more, believe me. Rant over.

Jeez, I must have forgotten the smiley face, I said "puny" in size, not sound as I wasn't there to hear it. This thread was a humorous look back at our past gear I thought.

 

[wmhill]

70's stuff getting me through the 80's

 

[Nevada Pete]

Jeez, I must have forgotten the smiley face, I said "puny" in size, not sound as I wasn't there to hear it. This thread was a humorous look back at our past gear I thought.

pu·ny (adjective)

1. small and weak. Poor in quality, amount, or size.
2. synonyms: undersized, underdeveloped, undernourished, underfed, stunted, slight, small, little, diminutive, dwarfish, pygmy;

No problem, Jerry. Like I said, it's perfectly understandable. I think I know what you meant though, what puny means, and I just wanted to set the record straight. That's all.

You weren't belittling your past gear, you were belittling someone's efforts, life's work and career who fell on hard times.

 

[GreyBeard]

In the early 70's I was playing Trombone in a BS&T/Chicago cover band. We had what was considered a state of the art PA at that time. We had 4 Altec A7's driven with a Crown DC300A. We ran the vocals, horns, and the drums through with everything else coming off the stage. We took our original pa which was a Sunn with a pr of 4x12 columns and laid them across the front tilted back for monitors. Feedback was a big issue at time.

 

[LBS-bass]

If a dead horse is beaten by an ignored user, does it still make a sound?

(Sorry, I know I promised to be good but it's sometimes hard to resist.)

 

[Nevada Pete]

In the early 70's I was playing Trombone in a BS&T/Chicago cover band. We had what was considered a state of the art at the PA at that time. We had 4 Altec A7's driven with a Crown DC300A. We ran the vocals, horns and the drums through it be everything else came off the stage.

I'll bet that sounded beautiful!

 

[LBS-bass]

I'll bet that sounded beautiful!

I bet it did, too!

 

[GreyBeard]

I bet it did, too!

That was before subs so the kick drum was under control, the bass came through an Acoustic 370, the B3 came through a pr of leslie 900's and the guitar came through a Marshall 100 8x12's. It sounded great once we got the stage volume under control. The sound guy would just raise h#$% when the stage started over running the fronts. The band was called MaleBox. We were on our way until people started getting antsy and just had to strike out on their own. One of my best memories of playing came from that band.

 

[bassinflorida]

Ah, ok. I get it now. Yep, these became necessary around the time we began grounding things and ubiquitous sometime after that. I think the grounded plug became a standard thing sometime in the early 70's. I'm guessing, going by memory, as I was born in 1959 and I quite recall seeing them when I was a fairly young thing but I don't remember how young. So there was a time prior to that when you wouldn't have needed it. I just didn't see Paula's original post as excluding everything that was done after that date, though.

Do you recall the days of inserting a copper clad penny in a 'home fuse box' when a replacement fuse was not available? Same era.
Some lived through it. Some did not make it.

 

[jerry]

Do you recall the days of inserting a copper clad penny in a 'home fuse box' when a replacement fuse was not available? Same era.
Some lived through it. Some did not make it.

Or worse, tin foil.

 

[heatheroo1]

Was playing in one of my first garage bands in the mid 70s. A guitar player was sitting in with us and was running an Electroharmonix linear power booster into a cheesy sold state PA head. This rig was screaming until I noticed smoke wafting out the back. I grabbed the head and threw it outside in the snow. After it cooled down I got curious why the fuse didn’t blow. I pulled it and found it wrapped with tin foil. The guitar player confirmed it was the only way to get “his sound”.

 

[Jack45]

Some of my very favorite music comes from this period, but to compare '60s musicians in general to the best classical composers is just way over the top, IMO. That is nostalgia in action, isn't it?

Well I said as far as pop and rock goes.

Aside from that, classical music ain't all that, it's just nostalgia.

 

[2tonic]

Do you recall the days of inserting a copper clad penny in a 'home fuse box' when a replacement fuse was not available? Same era.
Some lived through it. Some did not make it.

Or worse, tin foil.

The Wrigley's chewing gum wrapper...... the original "emergency" 50 amp fuse!
It got a lot of guys through a gig, but I doubt many of them knew the risk they were taking!

 

[JohnN]

Ha! Sometimes the highbrow in the group would have an A440 tuning fork in their gear,

Haha. I still have (and occasionally use) one, which is kept in my acoustic guitar case.

 

[LBS-bass]

Do you recall the days of inserting a copper clad penny in a 'home fuse box' when a replacement fuse was not available? Same era.
Some lived through it. Some did not make it.

Yes, I sure do. Though my dad was an electrical engineer and he knew better, but even he would do it if we were out of fuses until he could get to the hardware store.

 

[Larry Fuller]

We didn't know basses needed to be set-up. We just played them.
We assumed intonation had been done at the factory.
We had two cords. We used them interchangeably between speaker and instrument.
We didn't carry a spare bass. If we needed to change a string we had drum solos.
We thought a 15" folded horn could be used full-range. We didn't need anything over 300 Hz. anyway.
We didn't know you couldn't put any speaker in any cab, so we put a JBL or an EV in everything- It didn't matter which model. In 1978 we decided Fender bass cabinets sucked (they did), and we took out the speakers and put them in TL 606 cabs. This was the single biggest improvement in bass sound since the invention of the electric bass.(not including the Fridge, which is still cool)

If we did so many things wrong, how come we made the best music of the century?