Biggest Rig

[Professor Thump]

Here is an earlier news clip about Jimmy Page

Jimmy
Page made his return to the stage for his first live
performance since the historic Led Zeppelin reunion concert of December
10th 2007. Page, along with Led Zeppelin bass guitarist John Paul
Jones, had accepted an invitation to perform as one of the Foo Fighters
'Special Guests' at the Foo's June 7th 2008 gig at Wembley Stadium in
London. Page and Jones strolled onstage during the encore of the Foo's
concert set proceeding to tear into the Zep classic 'Rock and Roll'
with Dave Grohl doing the drumming while Taylor Hawkins took over as
vocalist. As Wembley Stadium shook with absolutely thunderous applause,
Hawkins and Grohl quickly switched positions to join Page and Jones in
a rousing rendition of 'Ramble On' (from the Led Zeppelin II album)
before the ecstatic capacity crowd of 85,000 plus rabid rock fans.
Page and Jones then exited the stage before the Foo's final song of the
night. The evening was capped off nicely with fireworks exploding in
the sky above the stadium as the Foo Fighters bandmembers headed off to
the after show party. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001C0GZ4C?ie=UTF8&tag=jimmypageonline&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B001C0GZ4C' target="_blank">

[Professor Thump]

Jimmy with a nice LP sunburst. This may be a 1958 which would now be worth at least 1 Million Dollars. Even if Jimmy hadn't played it the guitar would be worth $100-500K. Not a bad investment if you can find one.

[Professor Thump]

Another double 1275 picture.

[Professor Thump]

Jimmy and Robert in the early 70's.

[Professor Thump]

I wonder if Robert has that frilly blouse now.

[Professor Thump]

Jimmy with a Dan Electro U-1. I am not sure how often he played with this guitar. Dan Electro's are an odd looking guitar that sound great and have a decent neck on them. I could never get over on the looks though.

An interesting fact... The pickup covers were made from lipstick cases. Dan was into using common materials to lower the price of the guitar.

[djk]

Sorry, dB Sound took all the links down and blocked wayback machine access too.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A friend of mine, Bruce Knight, went to work with dB Sound in the early 80s. Bruce told me about these four 18" driver manifold boxes that had as much low end as their much bigger four 15" horn boxes.

• Manifold Technology •

At the heart of these systems are the world renowned Electro-Voice“MT” enclosures. The “Manifold Technology” enclosures were co-developed by EV and db Sound to combine all of the sonic and cost advantages of reducing system size.

http://www.dbsound.com/images/MTStkLgo.jpg

Here's Bruce's small convex arrayed system for Aerosmith:

http://www.dbsound.com/images/Aeropic1.jpg

When Bruce did our hometown with Aerosmith he brought the 80,000 seat stadium rig into our 10,000 seat auditorium. Jackal opened up with their 'Chain Saw Boogie', I've run jackhammers that were quieter and had less impact that their mic'd chainsaw. I couldn't handle it, even with plugs.

The typical stadium system consists of 54, EV MTH4, Mid/Hi enclosures, 54, MTL4, Lo enclosures, and 16, MT2, Hi and Lo enclosures(a total of 248, 18" woofers). 56 Crest 8001 amplifiers are utilized to provide the system with 168,000 watts of power.

I told Bruce it was stupid to run a convex array, and that trap cabinets ought to face in, not out. He said it would be an all day afair to rig the fly-bars, but he would try it when he had an extra day to set up the gig.

"db Sound has taken the development of the MT system one step further with the introduction of the unique Concave Line Array. By arranging the enclosures in 40° opposing angles to one another all lobbing is eliminated horizontally. This results in 180° of side to side coverage without the “dead” or “hot spots” that are normally experienced with other systems.

The system effortlessly produced levels of 126db at the mix site as well as 110db, 450 feet from the stage, with no delay towers. Implementing a combination of proven acoustical principals, the Concave Line Array is virtually unrivaled anywhere in the world.

The system was critically acclaimed by the press as “the best outdoor sound system ever heard”."

http://www.dbsound.com/images/CLACntr.jpg

[wildturkey 2oo0]

Loved to see the picture of the Grateful Deads system on this forum.I would like to add some info on the "Wall of Sound": Mac lovers will get a kick out of this. The system had a total output of 26400 RMS watts driven by 48 macs 2300's in the beginning of 1973, towards the end of 1974 it got up to 64 macs. It was fully quadrophonic and had 89 15' inch jbl's as well as 178 12" jbl's plus 320 5" drivers and 54 electro voice tweeters and "their" sound company Alembic did a lot of custom work for them .The wall produced in open air "quite an acceptable sound at a quarter mile, fine sound up to 500 or 600 feet, where it begins to be distorted by wind". The Dead were pretty well the first band who had two have two of these systems as it took two days to set it up. In the end the costs to run this system were too expensive and the oil crisis of 1974 put an end to it. The Clair brothers did rentals systems for them and the amps were phase linears 700's series 2 (eventually even a revised phase linear amp was produced just for them), however jerry garcia always kept his mac on stage with him even after they changed to Meyer sound systems (John Meyer did some work with the dead way back, he left for switzerland to study sound) which they descriped as superior in sound and compared to the wall very easy to set up. Anybody interested should check out the Grateful Dead movie to put this system in perspective, even looking at the movie now i can't believe the set up. Blair Jackson did a magnificent job on his Greatful Dead Gear book - gives all the information on the instruments, sound systems and recording sessions of the Grateful Dead, but also what was available at that time and what the limitations and inventions were. Of course nowadays 26000 watts are like a ghetto blaster compared to some of these rigs shown in this thread. I still use the phase linears 700's from the 70's to power my system at 1/10 of the Grateful Deads power ( enough for me now - getting older might fix that status quickly - lol). Keep on Rockin'.

[colterphoto1]

Planties

[Professor Thump]

Sorry, dB Sound took all the links down and blocked wayback machine access too.

djk,

Do you have any of these pictures? I am assuming that we can't access them from your links that you have posted.

My recollection is that Harry Witz was one of the owners but he has since moved on to Clair Bros. Is this correct?

A friend of mine, Bruce Knight, went to work with dB Sound in the early 80s. Bruce told me about these four 18" driver manifold boxes that had as much low end as their much bigger four 15" horn boxes.

• Manifold Technology •

At the heart of these systems are the world renowned Electro-Voice“MT” enclosures. The “Manifold Technology” enclosures were co-developed by EV and db Sound to combine all of the sonic and cost advantages of reducing system size.

This is correct. I was a tech when David Carlson, David Gunness, and Paul Fidlin (my old boss) worked closely with dB Sound to develop the original MT4 system in the 80's. The box size was devised around semi-trailer pack dimensions. The goal was to pack maximum SPL with the minimum trucks, since gas prices were dictating part of the concert ticket price. dB Sound started looking at Macrotech Crown amps and eventually used Crest 8001's.

Aerosmith was one of the bigger bands using the system but there were other big acts such as Prince.

I told Bruce it was stupid to run a convex array, and that trap cabinets ought to face in, not out. He said it would be an all day afair to rig the fly-bars, but he would try it when he had an extra day to set up the gig.

"db Sound has taken the development of the MT system one step further with the introduction of the unique Concave Line Array. By arranging the enclosures in 40° opposing angles to one another all lobbing is eliminated horizontally. This results in 180° of side to side coverage without the “dead” or “hot spots” that are normally experienced with other systems.

The system effortlessly produced levels of 126db at the mix site as well as 110db, 450 feet from the stage, with no delay towers. Implementing a combination of proven acoustical principals, the Concave Line Array is virtually unrivaled anywhere in the world.

The system was critically acclaimed by the press as “the best outdoor sound system ever heard”."

Interesting theory on array shapes. I will have to go back and look at the data I measured on many array types for an AES paper the EV team presented.

Comparative Performance of Three Types of Directional Devices Used as Concert-Sound Loudspeaker Array Elements

JAES Volume 38 Issue 4 pp. 271-295; April 1990

A number of approaches have been used in
the design of concert-sound loudspeaker arrays. The basic requirements
for large-scale sound reinforcement are introduced, and the acoustic
power summation of multiple sources is investigated in terms of
amplitude response, directivity, and time delay. Experimental data are
presented for a variety of multidimensional horn arrays, demonstrating
the effect of spacing and angular displacement between source elements
as a function of the directional characteristics of the individual
sources. This information is used to develop guidelines for the design
of large-scale concert arrays.

Authors:
Fidlin, Paul F.; Carlson, David E.

Affiliation:
Electro-Voice, Inc., Buchanan, MI

http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=6035

I suspect that the data from 1990 still applies to the radiation of sound in the 21st Century.

[colterphoto1]

I read that Prince installed all EV MT cabinets in his uber club in Minnesota. That may have been one of the first installations using that style of cabinets.

[djk]

Do you have any of these pictures? I am assuming that we can't access them from your links that you have posted.

Sorry, not on a working computer. I will see what Bruce has to share. Yes, the links are all dead.

My recollection is that Harry Witz was one of the owners but he has since moved on to Clair Bros. Is this correct?

Clair Global, I think. The only person at dB Sound that I knew well was Bruce Knight.

Interesting theory on array shapes. I will have to go back and look at the data I measured on many array types for an AES paper the EV team presented.

Bruce was impressed by a simple walk-around, no picket-fencing. He also remarked that it was the only time he ever heard the system present a stereo image, even from the FOH mix position (off-center).

His most recent gig has been the David Byrne tour with Clair Global stuff.

Did you know Tom Gallagher when he worked for EV or Klipsch?

[Professor Thump]

Oh yeah... Tom and I have put down a few beers in our days. I haven't seen him since I ran into him in L.A. at the AES convention that was about 6 years ago. He is the kind of guy that would make you laugh until it hurt. Anyone who knows Tom has a funny story about him.

[Professor Thump]

Stage shot of The WHO in 1976...

Notice the JBL Bi-radial horns for Townshend and Entwistle. Daltrey has a pair of JBL wedges with diffraction slot tweeters.

^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Who#cite_note-4'>}

[Professor Thump]

Motorhead with their rigs...

Feel Free To Use, but Please Credit Mark Marek Photography

[Professor Thump]

Motorhead Bass rig for Ian "Lemmy" Kilmister

[colterphoto1]

Stage shot of The WHO in 1976...

Notice the JBL Bi-radial horns for Townshend and Entwistle. Daltrey has a pair of JBL wedges with diffraction slot tweeters.

^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Who#cite_note-4'>}

Looks like the same monitors to me, so THAT's what was in those 'piggybacked' looking monitors from the 70's. Bet they screamed!

[djk]

"Stage shot of The WHO in 1976... Notice the JBL Bi-radial horns for Townshend and Entwistle"

JBL bi-radials didn't exist in 1976.

I stored the image, and then enlarged it. From the size and shape they look like slant-plate lenses in that photo, probably a 2312 horn with the 2308 lens.

[Professor Thump]

"Stage shot of The WHO in 1976... Notice the JBL Bi-radial horns for Townshend and Entwistle"

JBL bi-radials didn't exist in 1976.

I stored the image, and then enlarged it. From the size and shape they look like slant-plate lenses in that photo, probably a 2312 horn with the 2308 lens.

The front monitors off stage do look like lenses. The one on stage that you can see well looks like a bi-rad butt cheek but the photo is poor so you could be right djk...

[Professor Thump]

Anyone hear of the Chelsea Girls? I like this promo that mimics Guns & Roses Appetite For Distruction