Hill Audio Speakers and amps

I had the pleasure of working with Malcolm between 1979 and 1992 and would like to hear from anyone else was were doing the same. You know who you are!

HILL M-4 for sale on soundbroker (usa)

Edited by colint - 10 December 2008 at 8:36pm

Deadbeat wrote: The deep jungle that is known as a lock-up...you never quite get to the bottom of it.

Haven’t seen those for a while! I know a bit about these so here goes...yes they are Hill M4’s, which was a 3-way active, HF passive 1000 Watt flyable cabinet weighing 350lbs.

As someone has pointed out, the bass section comprises three 12” ATC long-coil drivers (PA74-314 BLCR) with a rubber surround, which give an excellent bass response. (I think Malcolm discovered the ATC on a visit to Dave Martin’s warehouse). These are electronically crossed over to the cone parts of the two modified 10” Tannoy speakers (there is resistor-capacitor network inside the cab which passively bypasses the HF over to the 1” tweeters of the Tannoys.) then electronically crossed over to the 2” high-mid horn. I think these were usually a mix/combination of Renkus-Heinz or Emilar compression drivers - probably whatever was available and serviceable at the time, bolted onto Renkus-Heinz or Emilar flares.

 

They put in 52 of them per side for Live Aid, plus some for side-fills, and at the rear of the FOH position/delay tower there was a small array of M3 cabinets with additional mid/top cabs, the whole rig being approximately 125kW. I believe the M3 was basically the same as the M4 but with a silver glassfibre radial hornflare instead of the aluminium constant directivity flare on the M4, plus the M4 was fitted with the steel bars you can see in Jazomir’s photo, these were to enable the cabinets to be used in a flying system.

 

http://i490.photobucket.com/albums/rr268/dannyxb70/M3SaxonBrighton.jpg

 

The M3’s predecessor was the M2 which utilised the same bassbin design but with 2 bass drivers, then some odd arrangement with a 9” ATC midrange driver, four (SEAS?) 4” or 4 ½” speakers and a 2” horn. (Someone once told me that the M2’s or B212 cabinets may have been Gauss loaded before Malcolm discovered the ATC, don’t know if that’s true though).

I guess these were derived from the original modular systems, the bassbin of which I assume is what one of the other members is describing. Oddly enough, I owned some of these until the last year or so. A typical 2k rig would comprise (PER SIDE) two 2x12 bassbins on their sides, with two horn-loaded 9” ATC mid drivers on top, then on top of the mids two 2” compression drivers in individual enclosures. They would have probably been driven by Hill DX700’s throughout. A good old fashioned 3-way rig at about 4’ wide by about 7’ 6” high. But that’s why I had to get rid of them, just too big to store and transport (for me anyhow). Someone from a small pa company in Dorset or somewhere bought them so maybe they’ll see action again.

I must admit that the only time I heard a Hill system at a large venue was with Robert Palmer at the Rainbow Theatre in Finsbury Park many moons ago, and I wasn't impressed with it - everything was muffled (and un-musical). However, I don't ever remember hearing anyone sound good there - IIRC the coverage of the circle where I was sitting was from cabs stacked on top the proscenium arch (no flying points?) which may have caused the problem. As has been mentioned before, you can't judge a system by one experience and there could have been so many (of the usual) reasons for the poor sound.
At the Live Aid event, the system was set up and tuned day before the big day, but the heavy, painted scrim was a late addition to the stage set and apparently took out all the top end from the system, much to the operators annoyance as they had no time to add extra HF units.


Edited by jazomir - 04 January 2009 at 10:43am

Jazomir - you're correct about the sequence of events at Live Aid... The scrims were added during the night before the gig and therefore all the setup/soundchecks took place without them!

I would personally single out Marillion mixed by Chris 'Privet' Hedge and Frankie Goes To Hollywood mixed by Mike Scarfe as two examples of this system (M4/6) firing on all cylinders. Compare these shows to... well, any number of festivals that I have done in the last 10 years and they sounded pretty good.

I'm talking about what the SYSTEM is capable of...

Also, consider these were FULL RANGE systems - no additional subs. I was involved in the Pyramid Stage system this year where we installed 56 2 x 18" subs in addition to the arrays! So when you consider that the bass section of these cabinets also handled that 'difficult bottom octave'...