A couple or resources that many of you are probably familiar with anyway, but topical: Taperssection (msg board with all sorts of taping discussion, a descendant from the old Oade board): Taperssection.com - Index rukind: a resource mostly for the playing of Dead music. Has chord charts and some tabs for most songs, but more importantly a msg board that gets into all sorts of details about Jerry/Bob/Phil gear (guitars/amps/effects). Not so much PA or drums. : Index page - Grateful Dead Music Forum Mike Wald ("waldo") is a participant there and he builds guitar buffers for installation in Jerry-like guitars for driving the effects loop. He also has fully detailed schematics of the electronics of Jerry's various guitars: www.wald-electronics.com
I'm both a drummer and a guitar player and have played Dead music in bands on both instruments. I really love Blair's equipment book (though it's been years now since I read it), but I was somewhat disappointed about how little information it had about the drums that Billy and Mickey played. hey, drums are equipment, too. Sorry for all the posts, but I am trying to get up to 50 so I can see the classifieds.
Everything he says in that post from eBay that is on that Worthpoint site matches what has been said elsewhere EXCEPT that the console was clearly Heil's before he was involved with the Grateful Dead. At least according to Heil as quoted in multiple places. But this guy says he knows Bob really well. Only Bob can clear that up. Nice find, though; wish the pic was bigger.... For sure those Duncan faders were the real deal back then.
Ask and you shall receive If you click on the picture in this prosoundweb post it will expand, or clicking the link below the picture opens it in another tab/window Heil Sound - Mississippi River Music Festival house mixer Plus what was written on that post makes a lot more sense and it sounds like it was a Bob Heil quote: "The Mississippi River Festival 'house' board was a Langevin recording mixer that I purchased new in 1970. It was much too hot for live shows. Tomlinson Holman (THX fame) had just graduated from U of I. He helped me rebuild each of the inputs with larger stepped pads to handle the high SPL. This was the board we used for the Grateful Dead show at the St Louis Fox and ended up on tour with them. It was used on dozens of high profile shows after and we then moved it to the back of the tent at the MRF." Another thought is perhaps that night at the Fox Theatre is what caused someone in the GD to say maybe we need a SS console, let's put Wickersham and Curl on a project.
Another nice find! Agreed that the timeline here makes better sense and is more consistent with other reports. That site History of Concert Sound has a lot of great historical stories and pictures, including many more with Bob Heil. The author/moderator, Doug Fowler, lives in St. Louis which is apparently not far from where Heil is, and got Bob to describe what's in the pictures we've seen here: Who systems, Sunn mixer, Langevin mixer as you found, etc. The site link above is to page 5, as the Heil articles were almost first on the site. Specifically on topic, this History of Concert Sound thread links to this very long article that I don't think is in this thread yet about the Wall of Sound. Clicking on the video in it where Owsley talks about kinesthesia gets to a bunch of other videos about him. The last part of that last article devolves into some kind of disco system discussion, but there's several great pics and videos before that which are on-topic for this thread.
Thanks I will dive into those soon. Just so you and anyone else knows, as I don’t think it ever got directly cited in this thread, we have a pretty good Wall of Sound thread going as well which I think you will enjoy. I jumped in around page 2 and I think some of the best articles I have found on the WOS are those americanradiohistory links. By the end we were getting into PA history and other-years GD PA territory enough that it was suggested that we get this thread going. The Grateful Dead's "Wall of Sound".*
The brand new issue of Live Sound International has a reprint of an article that originally appeared in Recording Engineer/Producer in June 1983. It covers the history of the Wall of Sound (called The Sound Test in this article) and has a lot of quotes from Dan Healy , and discusses the Meyer system they were using at that time. It's not available for public reading, but you should be able to subscribe to the digital edition here. Get the Digital Edition of Live Sound International – Live Sound International
Is there any documentation of Betty Cantor-Jackson's recording chain? If I understand correctly, the most popular 'Betty Boards' are from a dedicated eight-channel (?) mic feed separate from the soundboard? Is that for all of the recordings? Thanks in advance.
Aside from the recent Cornell show, does anyone know how many Betty Boards have made it to physical release? Is there a resource somewhere?
I found this on Reddit, who knows if true or not Official: Grateful Dead / Skull and Roses (March–April 1971) CD, Vinyl, Spotify To Terrapin:Hardford 77 (5/28/77) CD, Spotify Winterland June 1977 (6/7,8,9/77) CD Sunshine Daydream (8/27/72) CD, Vinyl, Spotify Dick's Picks Volume 3 (5/22/77) CD, Vinyl, Spotify Dicks Picks Volume 5 (2/26/79) CD, Vinyl, Spotify Dicks Picks Volume 10 (12/29/77) CD, Spotify Dicks Picks Volume 15 (9/3/77) CD, Spotify Dicks Picks Volume 18 (2/3-5/78) CD, Spotify Dicks Picks Volume 29 (5/19,21/77) CD, Spotify Dicks Picks Volume 30 (3/25-28/72) CD, Spotify Dicks Picks Volume 33 (10/9-10/76) CD, Spotify Dicks Picks Volume 34 (11/2-5/77) CD, Spotify Road Trips Volume 1 Number 2 (10/77) CD, Spotify Dave's Picks Volume 1 (5/27/77) CD Dave's Picks Volume 7 (4/24/78) CD Dave's Picks Volume 12 (11/4/77) CD Grateful Dead Download Series Volume 1 (5/30/77) Spotify Grateful Dead Download Series Volume 4 (6/18/76) Apple Music May 1977 Box Set (5/11-17/77) CD
That seems like a good list for Grateful Dead Betty Boards. There were also some from Garcia's solo projects and maybe other bands (New Riders?) that have been released. EDIT: Add Winterland October 1978 and 12/28/79 (Road Trips), I think. Also May 1977 (Cornell) and July 1978 boxes.
Not as much documentation as we would like. I would love for her to do some more interviews or one of those "ask me anything" reddit threads so we can get more info. I’d have to refresh myself but I don’t think the Gear Book gets a whole lot into specifics of her rig either. The most I have been able to find is an interview she gave cited earlier in the thread Internet Archive Forums: Re: Another history question: TMNSP I think we know for sure she had her own split feed for everything (each mic or direct feed split likely from a splitter box on stage; with one feed going to FOH, one to the monitor board, one to her mixers, it not others); also that she used the Ampex MX10 mixers until likely early 1978 when she switched to a Allen & Heath SS console (NYE ’77 is my best guess for the A&H roll-out). As far as number of channels I don’t know if I have ever seen any direct quotes. Bear talks about having 12 with his 4 MX10s in the liner notes of DiP 36 a ’72 show (you lose an input when you daisy chain I believe); so Betty using eight channels sounds a little light to me. With the Allen & Heath she had more of course, but my guess is even by stringing MX-10s together she would have likely had 12-16. She mentions using a Revox deck before her Nagra; but if I had to guess, the Nagra was pretty much ’71-’72 onward. Finally, overall when you think of a Betty two-track recording, or Betty Board, yes they were all essentially this same method with maybe slight variances in numbers of channels or very late in the game the console used [Edit or if reverb was added! ]. It is probably worth saying others recording two tracks like Kidd or Rex also used this general method until they stopped recording to reels and just took the FOH mix, around early '79 onward.
Actually, if I recall correctly, the terminal strip on the back was a direct access to the mixer's bus, and you could combine two four channel mixers to make one eight channel one. The "Mixer Couple" switch on the back is related to that function.
To follow up, I found the schematic for the MX-10, and yes - when the switch is set to "Mixer Couple" the CH A and CH B outputs are disabled, and the terminal strip provides a connector for the internal bus of the mixer. Just run a shielded pair from one set of terminals on one "slave" mixer to the terminals on the "master" mixer. It looks like this: + A + B Ground A - A - B Ground B So you could have a stack of three of them and have a twelve channel mixer. S7 would be set to "Mixer Couple" on two of them and "Mixer Normal" on the third.
I wonder if they were actual faders that long ago? The first board I touched with faders was the Yamaha PM-1000, and it's "faders" were sliders that pulled two ends of a loop of string that ran through a pair of pulleys and around a wheel on the shaft of a regular potentiometer. The first really high quality linear faders were made by Penny and Giles.
I will certainly defer to you on that @Chris DeVoe and you are quite likely correct. It is weird though to read Bear say he had 12 channels with 4 mixers it doesn’t seem like something he’d get wrong. On the other hand I’m not sure the math works out anyway with the method I mentioned I remembered hearing. One thing I’d ask more than claim is, looking at your photo and also reading the MX-35 manual page 2-3 (same setup as MX-10 I believe) http://recordist.com/ampex/schematics/mx35man/mx35.manual.pdf I am wondering if they or Bear would want to resort to wiring those mixers together each time with screws and single wire from what I can see vs using xlr cables where you’d be sending the output of one mixer to one an input of the next. I don’t know if that is even possible frankly or how the stereo output is handled, but if there were any feedback control or setup ease benefits it may explain that approach. I should correct the record, Bear’s four mixer and 12 channel comments are apparently from a Flying B Bros release not DiP 36; they were reprinted here near the bottom Internet Archive Forums: Bear's Liner Notes to DP # 36 (Essential)
There's no reason they couldn't put XLR "pigtails" to each barrier strip to plug and unplug them quickly. (That's what I did when I had to wire up a DBX or Teletronix compressor.) Or more likely they had them in one rack - 3 or 4 MX-30 mixers doesn't weigh that much (a fraction of the weight of one of those McIntosh amps they used!) I'd imagine they wanted as few gain stages as possible, and connecting multiple mixers bus to bus is going to be cleaner than taking the output of one to the input of another. Anything connected via barrier strips/terminal strips is going to be non-optimum for any system on the road but the Dead were inventing most of these techniques, repurposing recording studio/theater equipment to do so and frankly something being heavy, expensive and fragile never seemed to stop them before (or after.) Edit to add: Any clear photos of the back of Bear or Betty's equipment racks?
Thanks for the info, great to learn about that. While we are on the subject you might be able to parse a comment John Curl made about Wickersham apparently modifying those to make them open loop, or no feedback. Apologies if you've addressed this before but do you happen to know what kind of a modification that would be? Also I've seen photo's of Betty's Nagra deck but never anything near close enough to any of either Bear's or Betty's mixers front or back. This might be the closest I've found but then that looks like some kind of monitor mixing setup, not sure if it'd be FOH on the stage, but who knows. Given those more makeshift phase cancelling mic's maybe that is '73 which may explain Bear having a different role. There are some MX-10's used as a drum mixer behind the drummer in the WOS but that is the only thing I've ever been able to find showing they actually used them anywhere!
I was in Muscle Shoals recently and the docent of 3614 Jackson Hwy, if I remember correctly, pointed out Tom Dowd invented faders in consoles. I have no idea if that is true, but it seems to be mentioned here and there "He was a piano player, and he wanted to be able to play the console the same way he could the piano: with several keys in each hand," she says. "With the knobs, you couldn't have more than one in each had at a time. So he found a company that was making wire slider [potentiometers] and installed them into the console at the first Atlantic Studios. Too bad he didn't patent the idea." The Engineers Who Changed Recording |
Sorry, I'm very weak on tube circuit design. But if I were to hazard a guess, it was to make them sound better at the cost of making them less stable. Those racks are totally unfamiliar to me, sorry.
Presumably the EMI REDD mixers at Abbey Road used levers controlling rotary pots: Impressive bit of equipment, but I have to say...I'm happy the "battleship esthetic" is no longer popular in studio equipment. Edit to add: I got curious. Apparently those are "Painton quadrant faders" and, in the early days were just extremely fine multiswitch/resistor combinations.
I stumbled upon this new to me and pretty meaty Mix Magazine article on the '86 Summer Tour PA. Good stuff in there. Plus IWT ITH for 7/6! https://www.toysintheattic.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/DylanPettyDead_Mix_Nov86.pdf
Wow, the mid-80's PA description is really coming together as I stumbled upon another article I have not seen before, this even more detailed regarding the fall '85 PA. Starting on page 38 https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Recording-Engineer/80s/Recording-1986-02.pdf The writers comments at the end were interesting having mixed a show there a few months prior.
