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Author Topic: Bizarre or goofy consoles from the old days?  (Read 58030 times)

duane massey

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Re: Bizarre or goofy consoles from the old days?
« Reply #20 on: May 21, 2012, 05:16:04 PM »

I can only relate my experiences in the Texas Gulf Coast region, but there was not a market for live sound consoles (as we now know them) until the early 70's. What few "sound companies" that even attempted live sound cobbled together whatever they could piece together, mostly used studio or radio gear, and almost always DIY by trial & error. I remember a show with Billy Preston (we opened the show and did the sound) when we thought we were really ahead of the game when we mounted some paging horns on pieces of plywood and used them for stage monitors. Preston's band had never used monitors before, and were completely tickled. This was probably 1973. We were actually building consoles by then, and I think we had a 16ch with bass and treble, as well as a built-in 7-band graphic. The console was all transistors (pre-IC's) and actually worked reasonably well (at least the sliders weren't backwards).
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Duane Massey
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Mac Kerr

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Re: Bizarre or goofy consoles from the old days?
« Reply #21 on: May 21, 2012, 05:54:57 PM »


(Bad) dream rig for system techs would be a fully loaded Paragon and 20 amp racks full of CyberLogic.

Ah... Cyberlogic. Why don't I miss those amps?

Anyone remember Malatchi consoles? The McCune consoles? Stephenson Interface?

Mac
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duane massey

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Re: Bizarre or goofy consoles from the old days?
« Reply #22 on: May 21, 2012, 06:28:51 PM »

I remember Stephenson Interface. There were 2-3 of those floating around in the late 70's in the Houston area.
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Duane Massey
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Ivan Beaver

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Re: Bizarre or goofy consoles from the old days?
« Reply #23 on: May 21, 2012, 08:05:18 PM »

How about a slightly different twist on the console theme.

I had a bad habit of taking  normal consoles and turning them into monitor consoles.

I will post some photos when I find them

Typically I would put pots where the faders were.  Usually 5 would fit.  Then the other aux controls were wired pre so they were seperate.

I have had 3 such consoles over the years.

The First one I didn't actually do-the others I did.

1st  Kelsey 20channel turned into a 20x6 monitor console.

2nd  VERY RARE.  At one time Kustom (the roll and pleated company) made a "professional" console-right before they went out of business in the late 70's.

From what I was told (who know how correct this is), there were only 7 consoles like this made.  I owned 4 of them and knew where a 5th was.  These were 24channels-a 5 band eq on each channel (using true LCR filter sets)- variable high and low pass filters on each channel and a limiter on each channel/

I turned one of them into a 24x8.  The others sold as scrap.

The biggest "undertaking" for a monitor console was turning a Mackie 32x8 into a 32x12 monitor console.  This involved actually cutting off about 1/3rd of the circuit and a lot of rewiring. This was about a 2 month project.

I know that a couple of years ago this console was still being used.

I did quite a few gigs with these various consoles over the years.
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Ivan Beaver
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duane massey

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Re: Bizarre or goofy consoles from the old days?
« Reply #24 on: May 21, 2012, 11:44:32 PM »

Ivan, we built a 14x6 monitor console w/built-in splits in the mid 70's. Probably sold 6 or so. I also modified a Kelsey for monitor use, used it along with a (ahem) Carvin mixer for a while (after we quit building consoles).
For our own use we built a really goofy onstage monitor mixer/power amp rack that had individual rows of sliders for each mix out. Rack was 60" tall and weighed a ton, and was painted bright, bright orange.
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Duane Massey
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Jason Phair

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Re: Bizarre or goofy consoles from the old days?
« Reply #25 on: May 24, 2012, 05:50:25 PM »

I've got two of the original Ashly "Starship" consoles here in the shop.

Parametrics, compression, and crossover built right into the outputs, and you can lift it with one hand.

Unbelievably ahead of his time, Billy was.
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Patrick Tracy

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Re: Bizarre or goofy consoles from the old days?
« Reply #26 on: May 24, 2012, 08:32:13 PM »

Ah... Cyberlogic. Why don't I miss those amps?

Anyone remember Malatchi consoles? The McCune consoles? Stephenson Interface?

Mac

I was going to mention Malatchi (Malachi?). They made one with all slider control, right? They were made somewhere in Boulder County I think.

I had a "Nep-Tune" graphic eq that seemed to have the same engineering behind it. MEQ-230s were a step up.

Mac Kerr

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Re: Bizarre or goofy consoles from the old days?
« Reply #27 on: May 24, 2012, 08:45:46 PM »

I was going to mention Malatchi (Malachi?). They made one with all slider control, right? They were made somewhere in Boulder County I think.

I know they were from Colorado. they were popular in the theater for a brief time. I haven't been able to find any information. They also made a 1RU 4ch stereo mixer.

Mac
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Tom Young

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Re: Bizarre or goofy consoles from the old days?
« Reply #28 on: May 25, 2012, 08:00:43 AM »

How about a slightly different twist on the console theme.

I had a bad habit of taking  normal consoles and turning them into monitor consoles.

John Wendt was the "king" of this type of mod and sold PM1000 modules that had 8 rotary pots in place of each channel's linear faders. He went on to consult on circuit design and noise reduction for Ramsa/Panasonic consoles, among others.

I first saw a Stephenson Interface mixer when I workd for Bearsville Sound in 1974-75 and I later mixed many shows on the monitor board they made when I worked for Sun Sound Audo in NoHo MA, 10 years later and as part of our C rig.

In about 1976 I came close to having a console made by two electronic design guys who set up shop in Waterbury CT and later went on to design for Acoustic (as in: bass amp systems).

There was a small handfull of sound companies out my way that modified Tascam Model 5 consoles for stage monitor duty. Not very good.

warning: slight swerve ......

The first time I ventured far enough into the "big time" to use (other than every now and then) a very well designed/made monitor console was when Sun Sound bought a TAC 40x12 stage monitor mixer that had just been shipped from Great Britain to Hartford CT. I drove our 22' box truck down to pick it up and, as we prepared to get it into the truck, I noticed the sound of things rolling around inside the crate. We cracked the crate open, removed the large cardboard box and found that they (TAC) had poorly attached the beefy rack-mount power supply (in its own box) on the inside of this box. It had broken free and over the duration of its trip the power supply had slid repeatedly around and "shaved" off evey single rotary control (and being a stage monitor mixer, there were lots of these), not to mention denting some of the metal work.

100% trashed. Covered by insurance but they took 6 months to come pick the carcass up.

Major bummer !

But the power supply was in pretty good shape  ;-)
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Tom Young
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Jim McKeveny

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Re: Bizarre or goofy consoles from the old days?
« Reply #29 on: June 06, 2012, 09:07:03 AM »

Didn't Malatchi have some kind of kicking horse logo on the consoles?

Interface consoles were the real deal.

I mixed monitors on a PM1000 that had submaster switches replaced w/pots to make it 16x4 monitor.

Trouper boards?? Tangent??
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ProSoundWeb Community

Re: Bizarre or goofy consoles from the old days?
« Reply #29 on: June 06, 2012, 09:07:03 AM »


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