Foam microphone covers because if the ground wasn't right between our amp and P.A., we would get the crap shocked out of our lip when we sang.
Or the old black/grey ones
Or the old black/grey ones
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Things we didn't know or do in the 60's and 70's
- Thread starter Paulabass
- Start date
I am guilty of all of the above plus I played my first bass through a 1962 Gibson Explorer amp.
I am grateful for the improvement in live sound. Note that: GRATEFUL. So I get really, really aggravated when bandmates or someone in a band I am watching gets all bent out of shape when their monitors are not perfect. "More vocal! Less guitar! More bass" and whatever.
Like many of you I can still recall singing without monitors. Trying to "cheat up" close to the VocalMaster columns. (How did one drummer I played with sing so well without being able to hear himself?) I can even recall the first time I encountered a monitor!
Now it's everyone waving and screaming at the sound man for changes in their individual monitor mixes.
Krikey, be happy you can hear yourself at all.
Like many of you I can still recall singing without monitors. Trying to "cheat up" close to the VocalMaster columns. (How did one drummer I played with sing so well without being able to hear himself?) I can even recall the first time I encountered a monitor!
Now it's everyone waving and screaming at the sound man for changes in their individual monitor mixes.
Krikey, be happy you can hear yourself at all.
Somehow, somewhere one of the guys came up with this. Back then it cost a fortune.
It was the best thing ever because after the first set nobody could hear good enough to get in tune. Before every set we would all line up, 2 gits and myself, and tune up. And, barring a broken string, that had to do for the set.
It was the best thing ever because after the first set nobody could hear good enough to get in tune. Before every set we would all line up, 2 gits and myself, and tune up. And, barring a broken string, that had to do for the set.
Um, the draft numbers corresponded to the days/dates of the year. I believe that, as there are now, there were 365 days, not 366 or more... unless... leap year? It was leap year AND you had THE HIGHEST possible number? And were already in the army?
There's a song about that. It's called "Born Under a Bad Sign."
Because we didn't have the Internet.
I built my first speaker using formulas from a book, that turned out to be wrong. It was the only book I could find in the entire library system.
I restored an upright bass with absolutely zero books or guidance, save for a violin making book from a past century.
Some things are better now.
I built my first speaker using formulas from a book, that turned out to be wrong. It was the only book I could find in the entire library system.
I restored an upright bass with absolutely zero books or guidance, save for a violin making book from a past century.
Some things are better now.
There was no vintage basses. We called them used basses.
Amp power plugs didn't even have the molding for the ground prong. They looked like this:
When the plug was put in the wrong way the amp ground become "hot" and holding your guitar and touching someone else's guitar that was plugged in to another amp with the line reversed immediately gave you a big shock! When the microphone was plugged into an amp with the line reversed from your guitar's you got shocked in the lips!
That's why Fender had these "ground" switches in the back to reverse the line:
Usually, when the line was reversed, there was a lot of hum and you flipped the "ground" switch to the position with the lesser hum. But, sometimes it was hard to tell and you still ended up with a big shock! I found out that holding one lead of a neon bulb and touching the other lead to the amp chassis was a good way to find out if the "ground" switch needed to be flipped. If the bulb didn't light up, then you were good.
Amp power plugs didn't even have the molding for the ground prong. They looked like this:
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
When the plug was put in the wrong way the amp ground become "hot" and holding your guitar and touching someone else's guitar that was plugged in to another amp with the line reversed immediately gave you a big shock! When the microphone was plugged into an amp with the line reversed from your guitar's you got shocked in the lips!
That's why Fender had these "ground" switches in the back to reverse the line:
Usually, when the line was reversed, there was a lot of hum and you flipped the "ground" switch to the position with the lesser hum. But, sometimes it was hard to tell and you still ended up with a big shock! I found out that holding one lead of a neon bulb and touching the other lead to the amp chassis was a good way to find out if the "ground" switch needed to be flipped. If the bulb didn't light up, then you were good.
Oh, I remember those scary lamp cords too! While I wasn't around to do this in the 60s, in the mid 90s before guitar center came to town we all made do with whatever was in pawn shops, tiny mom and pop places, or (the best option) our garages! A lot of that stuff was the same as what I see in this thread.
You guys bring back so many good memories. We used to use an 80 watt Dynacord all valve PA with two column speakers, everything ran through that and we did gigs outdoors too.
I still have that PA with the tape echo but I haven't turned it on in years so I don't know that it still works. The column speakers were very heavy so I'm grateful that the JBL 735 three ways we use now are only 35Kg and 1500 watts each.
I still have that PA with the tape echo but I haven't turned it on in years so I don't know that it still works. The column speakers were very heavy so I'm grateful that the JBL 735 three ways we use now are only 35Kg and 1500 watts each.
Back then I didn’t know there *were* different kinds of bass strings. We liked curly cords. PA speakers were columns. We heard that Led Zeppelin II did weird things to your mind. Anybody who had a van was automatically the band’s “manager”.
Because the music was recorded and memorialized in a studio. The quality of studio albums back then was very high.
On stage, everybody just did the best they could. The crowd / audience didn't know any better. They were making the scene (among other things!).
I remember some of that since I had a sister five years older than me. Girl groups like the The Shirelles, The Chiffons, The Orlons. Martha and the Vandellas...I still have a lot of her old 45s in my record rack. And the big folk scare -The Kingston Trio's heavily political songs, Dylan with Masters of War, and Barry McGuire's Eve of Destruction that got itself promptly banned off US airwaves despite us "not having censorship in the USA,"
Elvis's and Buddy Holiday's heyday was before my time though. Chubby Checker and the "Twist" dance craze and Sing Along with Mitch (Miller) and the Hootenanny TV music shows were probably my earliest musical memories.And definitely radio. AM in the early 60s and then the FM stations in the later 60s until well into the late 70s before MTV changed the musical landscape forever even if that was anticipated by the late 60s summer afternoon replacement music proto-video show The Now Explosion and The Smothers Brothers artsy early music videos which weren't always that well received. People still wanted to see the actual bands back then. Not some video interpretation of a song. IIRC The Beatles (I forget which song) was one of the very first music art videos to debut on television on the Smothers Brothers Show.
Boy have we ever journeyed a long way...
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That's an awesome bill and I love the Tralf! I grew up in the Buffalo area. My Tralf highlight was seeing Hot Tuna there, but that was only about 10 years ago
...because Big Pharma hadn't taken over the world yet, and sugar cubes were King.
