Grateful Dead Wall of Sound from early 70s - I wish I had heard it.

[TF from MN]

I am sure this has been discussed many times, but here is a great article on the Grateful Dead's amazing and gigantic early-70s Wall of Sound PA system. There has been nothing like it since.

The Grateful Dead's 'Wall of Sound' Helped Change Live Music Forever

Forty-eight MacIntosh MC-2300 amps producing 28,800 Watts of continuous RMS power (48 x 600) that drove 586 speakers and 54 tweeters. The bass rig had a separate amplifier and speaker array for each string!

us.kef.com

 

[NoTeleBob]

I am sure this has been discussed many times, but here is a great article on the Grateful Dead's amazing and gigantic early-70s Wall of Sound PA system. There has been nothing like it since.

The Grateful Dead's 'Wall of Sound' Helped Change Live Music Forever

Forty-eight MacIntosh MC-2300 amps producing 28,800 Watts of continuous RMS power (48 x 600) that drove 586 speakers and 54 tweeters. The bass rig had a separate amplifier and speaker array for each string!

us.kef.com

Good article.

 

[Peegoo]

The origins of that setup came from a cat named John Judnich--a sound engineer who designed the first-ever sound reinforcement system for a touring rock band. It was piles of JBL speakers and Macintosh amps. His first contract was with the Beach Boys. Many bands used his services, including The GD. The organization morphed into Tychobrahe Sound Company.

 

[Chester P Squier]

There was a photo of the system in the old "Seldom Seen Pictures of Musicians" thread or whatever it was called.
I commented in June 2021 that I remember having read about the two out-of-phase microphones on each stand in a magazine back in 1973. One or more of y'all were aware of this setup.

 

[KC]

I helped load that rig in and out of the field house here in Missoula. Sounded pretty good.

 

[Ricky D.]

It sounded good, which is to say there was no perception of listening to a sound system. Just clear intelligible sound. They must have had a really good man running the mixing board.

 

[Ted Keane]

I was at one of the shows.We got there in the morning,ate some paper thing,and played frisbee while they set up everything.Really cool to see and hear.Roosevelt Stadium in NJ(?).

 

[Ted Keane]

 

[swarfrat]

I realize TGD fans may have nostalgia distorted by time and .. other things but that always looked like a logistics and phase cancellation nightmare

 

[dkmw]

I heard/saw it, the only Dead show I ever attended. August of 74 in Philadelphia. I was visiting a friend in LBI NJ and we drove over. Visually jaw-dropping, never seen anything like that. Sound was very good but I was a little too altered-waltered to be a quality evaluator

 

[Chiogtr4x]

View attachment 1182952

Love it!

By the way, for those of us that have no life,
there is a fun 'Grateful Dead Gear' book ( softcover) that covers chronological order, all the stuff the guys used, live and in in studio. Pretty conversational delivery, and good photos

 

[drmordo]

One thing that I learned a while back that blew my mind is the science of speaker box design and port tuning to the woofer didn't really come together until the early 70s, and then it was in the late 70s/early 80s before speaker manufacturers starting using the newly understood math of speaker box design.

Meanwhile, tweeter design also progressed a huge amount in the 70s as they developed dome tweeters that could reach to higher freqs.

By the 1980s, both tweeter and woofer/box design had made a huge difference and extended both the high and low frequencies that speakers could produce by a lot.

So, in closing, I am fairly certain that the GD's wall of speakers sounded like a deafening wall of midrange frequencies that was truly nowhere close to the fidelity that modern PAs can achieve.

 

[Nightclub Dwight]

Some guy in Connecticut built a half scale recreation of the Wall of Sound.

Wall of Sound

 

[RandomKaren]

Revolutionary but ultimately impractical for touring as it took so long to rig up. I read they actually had two rigs so one could ahead to be ready for the next gig.

 

[NewTexican]

The origins of that setup came from a cat named John Judnich--a sound engineer who designed the first-ever sound reinforcement system for a touring rock band. It was piles of JBL speakers and Macintosh amps. His first contract was with the Beach Boys. Many bands used his services, including The GD. The organization morphed into Tychobrahe Sound Company.

You have reference for that? I've never heard John had anything to do with the Dead or WOS. But I know far less than everything!

 

[RandomKaren]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_of_Sound_(Grateful_Dead)

The Wikipedia article cites the WoS as an early example of the use of line arrays.

 

[bsman]

So, in closing, I am fairly certain that the GD's wall of speakers sounded like a deafening wall of midrange frequencies that was truly nowhere close to the fidelity that modern PAs can achieve.

Every description I have ever heard of it (and it was only used for about a half-year) from folks who saw/heard it contradicts your supposition.

 

[well-strung]

I was visiting a friend in LBI NJ and we drove over.

My brother lives in LBI, goes by “Bayside Dave”, huge Deadhead. Been to over 100 shows. Maybe you know him?

 

[well-strung]

The Grateful Dead's amazing and gigantic early-70s Wall of Sound PA system. There has been nothing like it since.

Amazon Prime Video has a miniseries on the Dead. One whole episode is devoted to Wall of Sound. The series is excellent!

 

[Peegoo]

You have reference for that? I've never heard John had anything to do with the Dead or WOS. But I know far less than everything!

John was the guy that started the idea of concert-specific sound systems using hi-fi technology. Here's a FB thing from concert promoter Sepp Donahower (June 2010) that contains some of the stuff I mentioned in my post.

////////////////////
The Origins of Tycobrahe Sound Company by Sepp Donahower

In 1967, I was putting together Pinnacle Productions, a new concert company
in Southern California. We obtained a lease on the old Shrine Exhibition... See More
Hall, a large ballroom type facility adjacent to the Shrine Auditorium.
There was no concert business to speak of in Southern California in those
days, as the Fillmore and Avalon Ballrooms of San Francisco were just
getting going. We planned to promote the world's greatest rock and roll
bands....... and by god, we did.

But there was a big problem......there was no good sound equipment
available for rent anywhere for concerts. All the sound rental companies
then used 1930's and 1940's technology Altec Voice of the Theatre equipment
which sounded awful when pushed to the limits. It was not designed to work
well with Blue Cheer, Hendrix, and The Cream playing through triple stacks
of Marshall Amps. Time after time, great concerts were compromised by
mediocre sound. Then I heard of a new generation of touring concert
sound system that was built for the Beach Boys by a brilliant self taught
sound engineer by the name of John Judnich. I tracked down Judnich, and he
showed me the system......It was brilliant.....designs that no one had done
before....audiophile level equipment that was compact and powerful. I told
John Judnich that the world's greatest rock and roll bands deserve to play
through the world's greatest sound system.....and gave him a deposit to go
build it. The system consisted of identical array speaker cabinets
containing the latest of James B. Lansing professional line of
components.....two D-130 bass speakers, a compact midrange 375HP driver and
horn, and high frequency 075 ring radiators. The diaphragms in the drivers
were phenolic so that they could handle massive power and output for the
day. These compact cabinets could then be arranged and flown to make arrays
that would work in any shape room. No one had done this before !! They
were compact for efficient touring and speedy set up. This is still the
concept of Sound Reinforcement today.....John Judnich was one of the primal
architects of today's modern concert sound. The power for this innovative
system was provided by racks and racks of audiophile "McIntosh" Tube
Amplifiers.....The best power amps in the world with the sweetest sound.
The mixing was done through a studio type board with separate eq for each
input, etc, etc. One has to remember that in those days, bands were mixed
through portable Altec Mixers with six inputs each with no separate EQ.
Bringing a new generation solid state studio board to a concert hall was a
BIG DEAL ! I would put the sound quality of this system against any today
and it would hold up.

We used this system for the Buffalo Springfield, The Grateful Dead, The
Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe & The Fish, Moby Grape, Janis Joplin, BB
King, Albert King, Taj Mahal, Junior Wells & Buddy Guy, John Mayall, Jimi
Hendrix, The Yardbirds, The Jeff Beck Group with Rod Stewart, Pink Floyd,
The Cream, The Electric Flag, Traffic,Fleetwood Mac, The Who, The Doors, and
on and on and on........They all had never sounded so good.

In 1968, We gave the sound system and our engineer John Judnich to one of
our partners in Pinnacle who we owed money to, Bob Bogdanovich. I told Bob
that he was now in the sound business. He looked over at John Judnich and
asked what they should call the sound company......John thought for a
minute, and then blurted out the name of the father of modern
astronomy......... TYCOBRAHE. John was always looking into the heavens
through his telescope and loved astronomy......maybe that was what inspired
him to come up with creative solutions to so many things. Anyway, Tycobrahe
went on to become one of the largest ,busiest, and best touring sound
companies in the world for many many years. Think Rolling Stones, The Who,
Black Sabbath, Rod Stewart, etc, etc......And the design concepts pioneered
by John Judnich still prevail to this day. Thank you John Judnich.

Regards,
Sepp Donahower
////////////////////

^^^ Source:


More stuff here: https://www.dead.net/features/all-family/all-family-sepp-donahower