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Who has the most Hellishly Obnoxious rig?
- Thread starter Markamb1
- Start date
There is a lot to learn about before you can stop with the eye listening.
Basically the more speakers involved the bigger the compromises from pure audio.
The Grateful Dead wall is a bunch of line arrays for each mic and instrument. Todays wall of doom kids have no idea.
And weren't there actually two rigs? One in use one night while the other was being set up at the next venue?
I saw them in Boston, maybe 1977. They had a similar setup, but the bass bins were something like 4 X 8 feet at the big end of a straight horn. They had 8 of them. I'm guessing you might get 4 in a tractor trailer. They weren't particularly loud, but the sound was unbelievably clear.
Which is significant if your intent is pure audio. But most mega-rig players want anomalies and weird fx. Sounding powerful and loud and focused isn't the point. Sounding tectonic is.
And for all the talk of eye listening, they listen to their rigs every day, and you're looking at them and saying they wouldn't work.
This would be a cooler thread if it were, "Post Your Insanely Obnoxious Rig."
That needs to be in itty bitty type. If word gets to the Choad he will be over to your place to fart in your face.
- Oct 18, 2012
- 6,683
- 5,538
- Disclosures
- Endorsing Artist: Fender, Spector, Ampeg, Curt Mangan, Nordstrand Pickups, Korg , Conquest Sound
Ok. I got a few words in there, like “as” and “while” and “year”. But most of the rest? Mmmm...Not so much.
I’m officially old.
Now, get off my lawn!
You clearly have no idea what the artistic intent of a band like Jucifer or Sleep or Boris is in using all this crap. There is not a specific source of sound that is supposed to be reproduced. There isn't even one sound that everyone in the room is supposed to experience in the same way. It's supposed to take the anomalies inherent in guitar distortion and expand them to the nth degree, so that weird harmonics, comb filtering, etc are part of a big swirling thing. There's no there there. No intended sound other than thet mess coming out of the speakers. That can be a good thing or a bad thing. But the people who are doing it know what they're doing.
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You say “noise” like it’s a bad thing. I guess you never owned any Black Sabbath or Hawkwind records. They were unredeemable noise to someone at some point. Oh, and record sales? That has anything to do with anything because....?
His point is that The Wall of Sound was "merely" the prototype of modern FoH sound reinforcement. It was only assembled and used because FoH as a concept did not exist at the time.
Every "wall of doom kid" has been to a show (even if they haven't played one) with flying subs, folded horn cabs built into stages, etc.
Because we have the luxury of relying on those things, our onstage rigs are free to fulfill other roles - and it's not that of an on-stage monitor.
We also have the luxury of forfeiting it all in favor of calling back to a more primitive time. Face it, the guitar itself is an anachronism. For some musicians, decrying their rig for trying to do the job of a PA is like asking the jousters at Medieval Times why none of them brought a gun. You've missed the point of the exercise.
So, nobody over, say, 30, should be posting here, because they shouldn’t have any reason to since they shouldn’t be playing in a band?
No, I haven't. But other than that, the video that was posted is pretty literally noise.
Not to sidetrack too much but the last tube amp I had was this ones little brother: the mighty Fender 300PS. Despite the weight it was awesome and could give any Ampeg a run for its money as far as tone, volume and warmth. I probably should've kept it, but I couldn't afford to have it shipped to me when I was living in Hawaii so I sold it.
OTOH those cabs apparently were very inefficient considering the size and weight. You had to run 3 of them to get the full wattage from these amps, but these were designed for touring bands with the money for roadies and thus weren't too popular with the average gigging musician.(at least this was how I heard it). I guess these cabs didn't sound too good either, but this is only what I've heard from others.
As much as I have a soft spot for this particular amp, it is a prime example of how far technology has moved in the last 40 years, you can get that same volume with a fraction of the weight now.
Whoa! Where did that come from? Some major assumptions there. I’m 69 and I play in a band and don’t intend stopping until I’m no longer physically capable. Where did you get the idea that I was suggesting playing music is only for the young?
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