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[duane massey]

I was really into electronics and built a lot of stuff in my youth. As a teen, I built a pyro system with a six circuit control panel and foot pedal with double keyed lockouts, in attempt at adding some safety features. I used thick pipe welded to some heavy plates and had them set up to do flames, a mushroom cloud or combination the two. I even experimented with additives for sparkle and color. It was really pretty impressive every time I used it. And as safe as I thought I was being, it only took a little too much humidity to compact my loads, one time, turning them into- you guessed it- pipe bombs. Minus the shrapnel, of course. After blowing a couple of three foot holes in the lawn at the party we were playing at, I dismantled those things, or what was left of them and the remaining loaded pots and destroyed the control system. Other than some ringing ears, no one was injured that day. I figured I dodged a pretty big bullet that day and vowed never to touch that stuff again.

In a less dangerous incident, I built a low hanging fog generator and distribution system out of a 55 gallon drum, blower fan, some dryer hose and Y pipes painted black to distribute to the stage. We had a gig at a second floor all ages club and took this thing upstairs and emptied their hot water heater into it (they weren't happy about that!) about a half hour before we played. Open the top and drop in some dry ice. Thing worked like a champ and looked great. Nobody had seen an effect like that with a local high school band! Had a great show. When we got done I realized i had no way and no place to empty the dumb thing out. So I left it there. I think it sat up there for a couple of years, serving as an ashtray/garbage can. In retrospect, I probably could have siphoned it off to the street below, but I was probably on to the next thing anyway.

We built several dry ice foggers with 55g barrels back in the 70's and 80's, including one for Astroworld. We installed 2 heating elements and had a pump to pour the water over the dry ice, which was in the top of the unit. For our band's use, we built a double-barrel machine. Lower barrel held the water, top barrel held the ice. We played at one club that had a stage with a 16' ceiling and a curtain that came all the way down to the stage. The curtain would be closed, we'd turn on the pumps, let the machine flood the stage, and open the curtain. One night the relay for the pump stuck on, and the fog built up almost 10', completely covering the band and the stage. We couldn't see to star the song, and when they raised the curtain there was a huge wall of fog. It quickly fell down, revealing the band basically just not moving at all. Drummer kicked off the tune, crowd loved it. Wish I had pics or a video.

[Douglas R. Allen]

How many of us have done DIY projects in the past that would be best left unmentioned? I suspect the old-timers like myself have quite a few, as we have been in "the business" before it was even a legitimate industry.
In 1968 my band needed a new bass cabinet, but couldn't afford to buy anything, so...... we found some leftover wood at a construction site and built our own. My brother "designed" it, based on the available materials. The sides and tops were made from 2x12's. The backs and front baffles were made from 1/2" plywood from an old billboard. The shape was "pyramid", in that the top was approx 16" and the bottom was approx 36". at the top it held one JBL 15", which had the silver dust cover. The bottom was supposed to hold 2 12" JBL's, but we couldn't afford them so we used 2 aluminum pie pans painted with black paint with unpainted circles in the middle to look like the JBL 15.
It was covered in blue sparkle pleat&roll (my brother dabbled in car upholstery), and sounded every bit as good as you can imagine, powered by a 38watt Bogen amplifier. Also took two people to move.

Although not that long ago in 1991 the bass player needed a monitor for her. I purchased a Sledgehammer 15 inch dual 4 ohm voice coil speaker wired in series for a 8 ohm load with a realistic horn of some sort. I believe it was around 3X8 in size. I used 2 realistic crossovers for the box. A 2 way crossover rewired for a steeper slope for the horn. A 3 way only using the low out for the woofer. Chip board sealed box with 1/4 inch input with a fuse wired in for protection. Sealed box with fill to the speakers recommend box volume. That was one ugly box. Only one picture survived. I brightened it up quite a bit. Its the huge box in the chair in front of the base player. If you look at the drum kit you'll see in front of the bass drum a Fender PA100. This was the amp I was using to power her mix.  As a side note to the left you'll see the main PA. It was what I called a SP1 and SP2 sandwich. I had a FH-1 folded horn with the SP2 on top of it with a larger MFX-1 horn on top of that. I move the SP2 forward and back outside with a 80hz test tone to get the best output and then did the same with the top horn compared to the SP2's. The horn had a 600hz and below output if I remember right that went down to the FH-1. So the total full range load was around 4 ohms. I had a massive 12 channel self power board that had 250 per channel. So going out with this gave me a 500 watt stereo system!  Later I picked up a cs400 then to Cs800 for the mains and put the boards amps into monitor use. 28 years later I guess I'm not really proud of that monitor or the SP sandwich but back in the day it was a killer VFW system!  A few years ago the band got together to have a fun 4th of July back yard show. The bass player brought that box in. All beat up and dirty. Plugged it in and away we went. Good times..

Douglas R. Allen

[Ivan Beaver]

My first lighting rig was 4ea. colored screw socket PAR 48's (?) into ceramic sockets mounted into #10 tin cans... painted the cans flat black and bolted to a hunk of 2" x 4"... also painted flat black. 

My first "par cans", were 1 gallon cans I dug out of the dumpster behind the cafeteria at college.  I left one with the bottom end (that I mounted a light socket), and cut out the bottoms of another one and brazed them together. 

The bracket was aluminum flat stock that I bent.

The gels were colored report covers I got from the book store.

Crude, but it worked OK with the 150 watt flood lights I used.

[Craig Leerman]

My first light show consisted of 2 floor boxes made from particle board that held 4 porcelain sockets loaded with colored par38 floodlights. Red,Green,Blue and Yellow. 2 “trees” made from outdoor umbrella bases and black pipe held up more floodlights on each side. They were Blue, Red, Yellow and White lights.   The floor boxes and trees had bundles of brown zip cord for the power and they plugged into a homemade console. Some white lights on wooden bases were also placed behind the drummer.

The console had channels that consisted of switches to turn the lights on/off and momentary push buttons so I could flash the lights. 2 channels on the trees had rotary wall dimmers so I could dim the blue and white lights. The console also featured two footpedals that were used to bump the white tree lights and white lights behind the drummer.

The console also featured a locking switch area  for the flash pots. To fire, the key would be inserted and turned on, then a switch would be thrown to arm and a momentary push button would fire the pot.

Flash pots were made from metal electrical outlets mounted to wooden bases for stability. Inside the electrical box I screwed a wooden base, and 2 screws stuck out above the base. I soldered a power cord to the screws, black to one and white to the other. Some strands of wire were wrapped between the screws and when plugged into power, the wire would short, and fire the flash powder.

My first PA consisted of 2 cabinets I made from particle board and they each held two 15” speakers from Lafayette Radio Electronics store. The top speakers were coax models and had a tweeter mounted in front of the woofer. 2 EV paging horns (The same model as always shown on the TV show MASH) sat ontop during use for more highs.  Screw flanges were mounted on the bottom of the cabinet and 2’section of pipe were screwed in to lift the cabs in the air.

The “Soundboard” was a two channel guitar amp with the speakers removed. The lead singer got the reverb channel.

A few years later in high school I upgraded to a Peavey PA6 console and manufactured speakers followed by used Par56 cans for lights

[john lutz]

Built a pair of blinder boxes out of scrap plywood and loaded each with a dozen car headlights salvaged from local junkyards. Used drywall screws and stove wire to hold the lamps in place - pretty hi tech.  Wired in series so I could plug it into the wall via some manual on/off switch.  The rise time was a bit slow so the impact was not quite as dramatic as hoped....but hey, they were bright. The junkyard lamps were about as reliable as one might expect and we eventually tired of trekking out for replacements. Usually mounted behind the band – the drummer stated he always felt he was about to be run over when they flashed. 

[duane massey]

Built a pair of blinder boxes out of scrap plywood and loaded each with a dozen car headlights salvaged from local junkyards. Used drywall screws and stove wire to hold the lamps in place - pretty hi tech.  Wired in series so I could plug it into the wall via some manual on/off switch.  The rise time was a bit slow so the impact was not quite as dramatic as hoped....but hey, they were bright. The junkyard lamps were about as reliable as one might expect and we eventually tired of trekking out for replacements. Usually mounted behind the band – the drummer stated he always felt he was about to be run over when they flashed.

We built a bunch of curved fixtures using 10 4405 12v lamps in a row, nick-named the eyebrows. Actually sold a few as well, the effect was quite cool.

[Scott Helmke]

I've built too many goofy embarrassing things, but I learned from every one of them.

In high school I built a distortion "pedal" from an old cassette recorder and got a friend to make a sheetmetal box in shop class. 

[W. Mark Hellinger]

Here's another one:  My home made tri-angle truss... back in the early '80's as I recall.  I recall being astounded by the cost of pro-built, and figured "how tough can it be?... it's just some tubing and rod and welding.", so I got to it.  I constructed them out of 1 1/2" EMT and some junk-yard "3/8" steel rod".  As with most things, it turned out to be more difficult than it initially looked... I cut my losses on the first one and mulched it well before finishing it... and faced the fact that I needed to construct some serious jigging... couldn't do it "by eye" and a tape measure.  So after not much more than a month of working on them, the 2nd thru 5th turned out "looking pretty good"... and would actually mate if enough persuasion was used (big hammer)… and getting them back apart (unmated) was simple... just lash the end of one to the drawbar of a tractor or similar handy anchor point, and hook the end of the other to the trailer hitch on a pick-up and give it a really good tug.  I only attempted to mate and un-mate them a couple of times as I recall... otherwise one worked ok individually for laying on the stage behind the drummer for affixing PAR cans to for up-lighting effects.  As I recall, they were put to final use jammed in a ditch to hold some rotten hay bales to mitigate an erosion problem with a ditch in a field.

[Steve M Smith]

Crude, but it worked OK with the 150 watt flood lights I used.

Did you ever try this?  I discovered that if I connected a fluorescent light starter (the one with a neon and a capacitor) in series with a 100w or 150w bulb, it would flash at random.  Half a dozen like that would put on a good light show.


Steve.

[Ivan Beaver]

Did you ever try this?  I discovered that if I connected a fluorescent light starter (the one with a neon and a capacitor) in series with a 100w or 150w bulb, it would flash at random.  Half a dozen like that would put on a good light show.


Steve.

I used this exact idea for lights on my Halloween columns for the "flicker effect".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apiSEuLSuuU

https://youtu.be/8C24bA7i0nY

[ProSoundWeb Community]