Anyone interesting in concert touring sound by now must have watched the Grateful Dead documentary “Long Strange Trip”. To many Owsley “Bear” Stanley’s audio system of 1973 was and remains one of the finest sound systems ever implemented.

First, let’s give credit where credit is due: Bear’s team of Dan Healy, Mark Raizene, Ron Wickersham, Rick Turner, and John Curl along with Jerry Garcia’s significant financial largesse helped define the performance quality expectations for today’s large venue touring sound systems. They wanted and got the best sound possible with a system throw capability of 600 feet to a 1,500 plus feet with no delay towers.

For some perspective, a mere seven years earlier The Beatles toured the USA with what was basically a distributed movie theater system never intended to support large crowds. Note the sea change in audio system design in the two images. Again, this is only seven years later. Rarely does performance and technology advance so quickly.





The Wall of Sound

There was no separate monitor system. The Wall was the monitor system.

A differential pair of microphones was used on all vocals to eliminate feedback. Top mic was used for vocals; the other to create the differential signal so they could sing right in front of the stack.

Each instrument was reproduced by its own dedicated sound system, resulting in exceptionally clear sound due to lack of intermodulation distortion. Jerry’s voice was not telling the cone to move in one direction while Phil’s bass guitar argued the opposite. In fact, each of Phil Lesh’s bass strings was piped to a separate set of speakers. All in all, it amounted to eleven independent sound systems.

While several different configurations of the 75 ton Wall of Sound are documented, one consisted of 586 JBL speakers and 54 Electrovoice tweeters powered by 48 McIntosh MC-2300 Amps (48 X 600 = 28,800 Watts of continuous (RMS) power).

Alas, the Wall of Sound was wildly impractical from a logistical (i.e. monetary) standpoint. Installation and repacking required two separate sound systems be leap-frogged between venues. Four semi-trucks were required to transport each system, along with a crew of twenty-one.

Updated Halloween, 2017

Sometimes you just get lucky. Friend and industry colleague Jerry Hogerson wrote me,

Hi John,

Really enjoyed your article on the Grateful Dead. In July, 1974, while working at Altec Lansing, Dan Healey with the Dead called me up and said they needed to repair/swap one of the Altec/ Hewlett Packard 8050A real time analyzers. He invited me to come up to the Hollywood Bowl to see the new system. they were also using Altec's 9860 active 1/3 eqs, but all JBL speakers.

He gave me free range on the stage to take any pictures I wanted, and I thought you might enjoy these. BTW, the system was GREAT on stage, (incredible vocal monitor) but had no throw for the far seats on the bowl.

One of the real downsides to the system was the limited working distance on the microphones. I remember Maria Muldair trying to "work" the mic distance for dynamics and like an SM58, but once she got back about 3 inches...it shut off. But the guitars sounded amazing."

Now about those photos (all copyright Jerry Hogerson, 2017)

The Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound, Hollywood Bowl. Note the upper additions.





Central Cluster- Mostly JBL. Perhaps a few Electrovoice tweeter or two.





Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen roll on in in front of the stack.





The Drum Kit.





McIntosh 2300 Amplifiers in Lockheed Equipment Racks.





The Drum Kit.





The Differential Microphone- No Need for a Monitor System





Overwhelmed?





Fast forward a generation.





Transition Time- Early 80’s and ‘90’s.

There were several immediate advantages from Roy Clair’s early ‘70’s concept of hanging speakers from a truss rather than stacking them from a floor. Most importantly, artists got their floor back with only small stage monitors. Coupled with the ability to rent a system for the duration of their tours a better and more more consistent sound quality was available at a lower cost. A new business was born.

No longer did artists have to buy their own system to avoid less than ideal local house systems. Rentals became the name of the game with no more storage or transportation issues for bands, and the deal included trained techs and operators. These were indeed salad days for the sound system owner.

All great apple carts eventually get tipped, and this was no exception. Concert promoters took over the business with pre-packaged deals for the artists, guaranteeing them profits with virtually no risk. Once their control was cemented ticket prices went up by a factor of five and every other aspect of the tour was quickly ground down, including sound system providers. Firms and systems folded and merged rapidly when rental prices decreased 50% or more overnight.





The Line Array

Inevitably, clawing back into profitability meant playing the game smartly. Line arrays at their core are a brilliant piece of mechanical and electrical packaging, allowing for a minimal crew in a single truck to deliver and rig a system comparable in performance to The Dead’s Wall of Sound in a couple of hours. Yes, they require a monitoring system and do not have a dedicated set of amplifiers and speakers per instrument. But the total cost of system ownership is significantly less, primarily because of decreased labor and transportation costs.

But they do get a similar number of drivers in front of the audience quickly. Their development required a new generation of speaker drivers, amplifiers, structural design, and power distribution.

Those 48 Mac 2300 amplifiers in the Wall of Sound alone weighed 128 lbs. each, or over three tons. It’s no wonder an emergency delivery of more amplifiers to a Watkins Glen Dead concert almost crashed the helicopter when the crowd overflowed the facility.

Today’s single rack unit amplifiers (many with included DSP processing capability) deliver six times more power at one-sixth the weight and one-sixth the size for roughly the same amount of money than those Mac behemoths.

It was Bear's vision that showed us what needed to be done. It was a number of smart businessfolks that followed who show us how it needed to be done.