EX MoS Rig Restoration Project |
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madboffin
Old Croc Joined: 03 July 2009 Location: Milton Keynes Status: Offline Points: 1537 |
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What wonderful news!
Massive congratulations to all concerned. |
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burningbush
Old Croc Joined: 25 May 2009 Location: Pictland Status: Offline Points: 5897 |
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Wow, she really is a thing of beauty. Inspirational.
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music is the message
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Timebomb
Old Croc Joined: 11 October 2004 Location: Lancaster Status: Offline Points: 2716 |
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Nice one i bet it put a huge smile on your face after all that work.
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James Secker facebook.com/soundgearuk
James@soundgear.co.uk www.soundgear.co.uk |
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njw
Old Croc Joined: 26 March 2010 Location: S. Wales Status: Offline Points: 2572 |
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+1 to all the above, great stuff!
p.s. Those levan horns are huuge! Edited by njw - 02 August 2014 at 7:55pm |
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wiz247
Registered User Joined: 04 February 2014 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 262 |
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What a journey!! That's one hell of feat you've pulled off there, and I doff my hat off to you sir.
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Edd Jordan
Young Croc Joined: 10 January 2008 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 1364 |
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Amazing, what a great accomplishment you must be super proud!
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I do a sideline in ply wood wheels.
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TONY.A.S.S.
Old Croc Joined: 21 February 2007 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 6878 |
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Excellent stuff, the old systems still get me going.
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bitSmasher
Old Croc Joined: 23 June 2012 Location: Melbourne Status: Offline Points: 2296 |
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Impressive, hope it gets the attention and accolades it (and you) deserves
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Irie Lion
Registered User Joined: 02 January 2013 Location: Bucks, UK Status: Offline Points: 97 |
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Wow thanks so much for all your heartfelt comments and good wishes, it is great to get to this point at long last, although there is still a long road ahead for this project, we're nowhere near there yet. Now you've had some pics it's time for the tales.
We arrived the day before the gig to make things easy on ourselves and were welcomed like royalty it felt. Bristol hospitality was quite moving and we all felt immediately at home there. The promoter even cooked an amazing stew for our whole gang of 5 which sealed our love affair with the weekend. We unloaded the truck at the earliest opportunity which was midnight on the Saturday night, after that nights function had finished. This itself took 90 minutes due to a couple of factors, the first being I had problems securing a truck for the weekend. A week and a half before the gig I phoned up the hire company to rent a truck and slowly found that most hire companies were booked up for 3.5T trucks with taillift. Only 1 of about 15 companies I tried had a truck for the days I needed so I had to take it, great you may say and yes grateful to have a truck secured, even if the back door only opens to 5'11" and the method I have devised for making this system transportable has resulted in boxes 6'4" high for transport. With no other option than to make this work we managed to load the truck but it was a hard arduous task involving hand loading cabs in off their wheels and restacking them inside on their dollys. Also the Berthas had to be laid down and then restood up in the truck which was fun in a small space. 2 hours later the truck was loaded and cheeks were flushed, the unload was down to 1hr20. Similar antics had to be deployed to get the gear through the stage doors of the venue. The doors were wide enough but not high enough, as I transport all the cabs except the Berthas stacked two high on one dolly board. So again destacking and ferrying each one in individually. Then the Berthas at 5' wide could go through the door, but with a wall 4' away in front of the door meant we couldn't turn straight to fit through the door. The Berthas had to be upended on their sides and wheeled in carefully with mm to spare but we did it. So half the setup time is unloading and we managed that the night before so we were chuffed. Sunday at midday we are allowed into the venue.
In preparation for this outing my crew and I had practised building the stacks in the workshop, as these were never designed to be constantly stacked up and taken down, they were built to sit forever in one place and she's by no means a doddle to assemble in a hurry. Over the years I have devised many ways of making this task possible with nothing but props I have built out of ply, ratchet straps and 4 trained men. Practising beforehand taught us a few new improvements to our battleplan, and in the workshop it took us 2hrs5min to build two stacks (with a ten minute cig break) no cabling, just the physical build. Back to Sunday afternoon and from getting in the venue, with the gear already inside it took the 5 of us 2 hours to build both stacks, set up the deck table, wire everything and have it turned on making some noise, so the practise definately paid dividends. I was particularly chuffed as I am very conscious that all the cones in the system havn't been used for 4-6 years, so I really wanted to warm them up gently for as long as I could before asking them to perform hard. Happy that I had noise coming out of the cabs it was time for a cup of tea and we'll come back and get on with the processing in detail. Grins aplenty from everyone at finally actually hearing something come out of these cabs that we have worked on and looked at for so long and there is definately magic in the air. As explained in the pics two hours later the power board in the DBX gives up and the rig goes quiet. Thankfully an hour and a half later it's back on thanks to a local soundman coming to the rescue. I had never clapped eyes on a Nova 8000 before as I only know my own gear, as a hobbyist I don't get to work on other peoples gear I've just learnt my own and got on with my thing. Now it was fairly easy to understand but the interface drove me nuts. Like many DSPs it has one 2"x1" screen and everything is done through millions of menus accessed by turning a knob smaller than a mouses thimble several hundred times clockwise and anticlockwise just to change a frequency setting. I felt like a safecracker on a bankjob more than a soundman, should have brought my stethascope. It probably wouldn't have been so bad if it was running 3 channels out, but as I use the DSP as an 8 way crossover there's a lot of input and setting to setup. After a while we had the rig sounding balanced and was amazed at the JBL/BMS horns which now sit at the top. I have never seen such an efficient tweeter. I had the horns set to between -10db and -12db compared to the majority of the rest of the stack. It was only when the stack was about at it's loudest for the night that the two amps driving the tweeters even started flicking a signal light! Even at this very untroubled volume those horns filled the room with highend, pretty much wherever you stood. I was really really amazed by them and realised that on these stacks they will never need to be pushed anywhere near their limits, which is a lovely way to run a sound. Also those horns can go down to 400Hz amazingly, but as they are the top two ways in a 5 way system they really don't need to go anywhere near that low, so on the night I brought the horns in at 3.5KHz. Anyway with the cabs sounding balanced and the sound being more cohesive we had the next problem, the Crest 9001 running the Berthas stopped working, still powered up, no red lights, looking jolly as anything just keeping quiet. Ok tested a few things and definately the amp, not an input problem so swap it for the spare Sub Bass amp, this one has the same fault. Oh dear this isn't going well. My only option is to use the spare main bass amp the Crest 8001. Swap this in and ok we're running again. Obviously this is a smaller amp so won't have the headroom of the 9001 and we may not be able to take the rig as loud, but it should do the job pretty respectfully, and it does, for one hour until one side redlights and packs up, even though it's still early and I havn't pushed the amps hard yet, we had no red lights as a warning before the 8001 went half down. Oh dear dear, we really are running out of options now. One stack is sounding fine and one is rather lacking in the sub bass area. We're only on the second DJ of the night and I can be stubborn as a mule when I've got my teeth into something and I'm not letting this night go wrong. I have another little rack I'm using for the monitors with a couple of unused 7001's in there, so rather than taking one stack down I decide to chuck the 7001 into bridge and try to feed a Bertha with that, from memory I think that amp can deliver 1.2K-1.5K into 4ohms which is way underpowered for a 2K@4ohm load of a Bertha, but so determined to keep the night going I vow if I pop both my 7001's to keep the night going I will. It does the job ok, obviously better than nothing and I have to dim that stack slightly to match, so one stack was probably running 60-70% of potential. Amazingly that little 7001 ran perfectly all night, what a champion amp! So after 90 minutes of amp nightmares we are still going, albeit a bit underpowered on the bass end. These amps are all from between '91 and '97 and although I have had them all serviced they havn't been tested under pressure, so I'm not altogether shocked, and we have found out the weak points in the system now and can get on repairing. Thankfully that was the last problem to rear it's head that night and we held good to the end. After 90 sweaty minutes sorting out the amp issues I thought about going back to the processor to experiment a bit, but you know with the annoying interface, and the knowledge that all the setting I make tonight will be lost when I return it tomorrow, I could jot it all down yes, but I just wanted to rest my brain for a bit so I got to a stage where I was happy with the sound and small adjustments here and there, left it alone for the night. For the science heads out there who will surely ask. On the night the horn on top came in at 3.5KHz with the smaller compression driver taking over at 6.3KHz (exactly what Tony, God rest his soul, told me to use on the BMS) The mid covered 250Hz-3.5KHz and the sub bass I set at 100Hz on the reggae and hip hop sets and used 80Hz on the Drum & Bass sets. I used a bit of parametric on the sub and mid, and got irritated with the mouses thimble before I could apply dabs of compression to the tops so left it and I didn't notice it suffering for it. One glorious feature of those horns is that they cover so well, you don't need to have them blaringly loud to match the rest of the stack, so they're not harsh or snappy at all, so even with minimal processing on them they still sounded wonderfully clear, clean and vibrant. In fact despite the stacks not running to full volume capability the glorious clarity and balance of the rig was very evident, even without a more exhaustive effort on the processing. I've heard the sound of Richard Long systems been described more akin to a proper HiFi sound than the average sound system and I understand that totally now, every minute sound in every song was beautifully reproduced and the warm richness of the sound was more than a little pleasing. For a first effort, fraught with difficulties I was very happy with the outcome, much learnt and the next outing should be a much easier ride. |
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burningbush
Old Croc Joined: 25 May 2009 Location: Pictland Status: Offline Points: 5897 |
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The show must go on! Good work to the end.
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music is the message
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colinmono
Young Croc Joined: 10 October 2007 Location: Midlands UK Status: Offline Points: 1111 |
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Looks amazing, brilliant pictures and great to hear the story too.
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Irie Lion
Registered User Joined: 02 January 2013 Location: Bucks, UK Status: Offline Points: 97 |
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Hi Adrian, Thanks for your words. We didn't manage to get a film crew on the night (which was on the cards) so I brought a camcorder and the crew poked it around here and there, so we have some footage. I'll try to upload it somewhere and share it with you all. I didn't do any measurements as you'll realise reading the story there wasn't much point when the system was just limping through and not performing to potential. Yes that was the Trinity Centre in Bristol, a lovely place with a lovely history. Even all running properly just 2 stacks with 4 18" drivers would be no match for 8 scoops mate. The Berthas with the levan horns do make very efficient use of those two drivers, but not so efficient as to come close to 4 drivers in 4 scoops. Now 4 stacks (so 8 sub bass cones) would be a very interesting clash with an 8 scoop rig I think, I wouldn't walk into that one too nervous. |
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