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[Mike Sveda]

Does anyone have details on the amount of cabinets and amps used for the "wall of sound" from 1974? I was watching the movie the other day and they had this center speaker that must have had around 30 woofers, 60 midrange cones and about as many horn tweeters.  They also had these custom dual microphones for reducing feedback from playing in FRONT of the stacks.  I imagine doing a SMAART on that system today  would be interesting....

[Al Limberg]

Those 'custom' mics were a pair of 57s on an A26M stand adaptor (still available). The two mics were wired reverse polarity from one another so any signal arriving from the "wall o' sound" was cancelled.  From there it was simply a matter of the vocalist singing into only one of the mics.


Al

[Lee Brenkman]

Sorry Al,  the microphones were NOT SM57s.

Initially they were Sennheiser MD201 dynamic omnis, later replaced by small diaphram B&K instrumentation condensers.

For the differential microphone thing to work the two microphones had to  be as closely matched as possible and the singer needed to stay right on top of the "working" microphone element.

The better matched the microphones were the more of the "difference" was the vocal.

It was found after a while that the condensation from the singer's breath on the the top micrphone threw the mikes out of calibration mid show.   So, in typical, "over the top Grateful Dead crew style :-)"  a way was found to heat the diaphram of the top mike to keep the condensation from building up.

The curved center cluster was the vocal array.  Woofers were JBL 2202 12 inch, cone mids were JBL 2105 5 inch, and the tweeters were EV T350s.

The smaller curved array over the keyboard position was the mixed keyboard system.

Every other instrument on stage came out of it's own dedicated "line array" of speakers.  the Guitars, Bass, and kick drum came out of really TALL columns of 12 or 15 inch speakers.

Power amps were mostly McIntosh MC3500s, really HEAVY 350 watt tube amps.

If you poke around the Web, some really obsessive Deadhead probably has posted more about the system than you ever wanted to know.

It sounded pretty "hi fi" in medium large venues.  It took more than a full work day to set up.  It cost a lot of money to truck around during a fuel shortage.

It was replaced by a system based around Meyer MSL3s which went up faster, took up less truck space, and sounded better more of the time.

Cheers,
Lee "audio archaeologist" Brenkman

[Al Limberg]

oops   thanx for the correction(s)

?;o)
Al

[Mike Sveda]

Thanks, any idea what kind of foh mixer they had back then?

[Lee Brenkman]

Mixer?  I don't got to show you no stinking MIXER!

Actually there wasn't one.  The vocals keyboards  and drums, minus the kick, if memory serves were premixed to their respective sub systems, probably with the Ampex MX 10 rack mixers that were used in the previous band owned sound system.

Dr. Don or Dan Healy would know the particuars, but there wasn't a big FOH console as we now see all the time.

You might be surprised at the number of big shows that were still being mixed with rack mount mixers at that time.  Remember this is at the time that a 16 channel Yamaha PM1000 was a big deal, and bigger sound companies were still trying to build their own consoles in house.

The idea was that the system and "monitors" were one and the same and that the band could "mix themselves" based on what they heard where they were standing.   I'm sure though therre was input from the crew, light show personnel and others out front.

Cheers,
Lee

[Marc Schwartz]

Another reason for the demise of the "wall of sound" was that, according John Meyer, Jerry Garcia complained that standing in front of all those speakers was making him deaf. John Meyer made these comments during a speech he gave at LDI in Orlando a couple of years back. Apparently this is what prompted the development of the MSL-3 and the Meyer Sound Labs company.

-Marc

[Lee Brenkman]

"Another reason for the demise of the "wall of sound" was that, according John Meyer, Jerry Garcia complained that standing in front of all those speakers was making him deaf. John Meyer made these comments during a speech he gave at LDI in Orlando a couple of years back. Apparently this is what prompted the development of the MSL-3 and the Meyer Sound Labs company".

All of the above, plus my account of long setup days and trucking cost.

AND, John Meyer had learned some things during his stay in Switzerland that meant he could improve greatly on the JM3 he designed for McCune Sound.  And most of all a market existed with a client that was willing to make the investment.

Enter Dr. Don, Howard Danchick and UltraSound is born.

Footnote, how many musos would think that their concerts were too loud if THEY had to be, say, 15 feet in front of the FOH system for the entire show?

[Mike Sveda]

Most guitarists with thier multiple 4x12 cabs behind them on "11" would not complain  

[Mike Sveda]

http://www.photog.com/gdead/70s/Dillon/wallofsound.html