Your First System
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Category: Other Chat
Forum Name: Golden oldies
Forum Description: Post all historic interesting items, stories and photos here (no, not your Nan)
URL: https://forum.speakerplans.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=101995
Printed Date: 30 March 2023 at 6:41pm
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Topic: Your First System
Posted By: Aman Gebru
Subject: Your First System
Date Posted: 31 May 2018 at 8:50pm
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http://forum.speakerplans.com/babys-first-rig_topic6877_page1.html" rel="nofollow - http://forum.speakerplans.com/babys-first-rig_topic6877_page1.html Maybe this thread should go into speakerplans classic threads section |
Replies:
Posted By: RC1 Sound System
Date Posted: 31 May 2018 at 9:14pm
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Brought a few childhood memories back of valve amps, hifi amps and Maplin kit amps all working together driving whatever random mix of speakers I had managed to knock up! Happy days! Just recalling the main difference between children and men is the size of their toys. So true, still building speakers and amps to this day, just now this hobby is starting to get really out of hand! Haha!
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Posted By: nickyburnell
Date Posted: 31 May 2018 at 10:39pm
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2 x 12" Fane Disco Specialists 80watts, one in each big cab chipboard cab built with no glue! Sound City Valve amp and a Discosound Console after I messed up the Saxon one using Bakers fluid to solder on the board. (Dad used it when soldering a pipe, what did I know)! Circa 1975, I was 15. Rapidly replaced by a pair of HH 15 and Bullet run by a Fal PA amp with, "Presence" control.... Disco was called, "Girosound" as the Post Office had just started Giro (not the dole) and we nicked the Logo, well Letraset did. Transport was by 62 mini traveler, the wood one, two or three trips, then Dads Maxi........ There were disco shops all over, even a big barn, the Disco Barn in Iver, full of used kit. Categorically better times.  ------------- It's everything, not everythink! |
Posted By: markie
Date Posted: 01 June 2018 at 12:48am
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Pair of Garrard SP25s, Discosound DJ70 integrated mixer/amp which offered..... wait for it 70 watts rms. Speakers were a pair of 2x12 cabinets bought from RSC which we loaded with Goodmans Axiom 401s which they sold at Comet for a fiver each. The mixer amp had a pair of mic inputs, each with a volume control, but shared treble and bass, and a pair of ceramic cart inputs with the same, separate volumes, but again shared treble and bass. The deck inputs also had switchable PFL and output for cans.
We built a console to house the decks and DJ70, from chipboard and covered it with red marble pattern Formica. Transport was a 1968 grey mini van reg NUY 214E. ------------- If it's got wheels or tits it's gonna cost a fortune |
Posted By: jbl_man
Date Posted: 01 June 2018 at 8:57am
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Home made (well school woodwork lesson made) chipboard 2x12 with goodmans 12PG 60 watt chrome-dome drivers, and a separate HF cab with a pair of Goodmans Hi-fax (to date, the worst sounding things i have ever heard) and 4 maplins Peizos. Mixer was home made affair,running off a 9v battery,and turntables were a pair of miss-matched Pioneers.....a PL12D and a PL112D. Amp was a single HH ic100 guitar amp, but did have the very cool glowing green front. How advanced was I? Pair of Pioneers with a mixer inbetween,and this was 1976! ------------- Be seeing you. |
Posted By: supremesoundz
Date Posted: 01 June 2018 at 10:28am
brilliant  Love these threads, most of us didn’t have a lot of money but were happy!! Memories of my Binatone all in one hifi which was totally shite. The source selector knob was screwed and if you put it carefully between phono and tape you could here both sources! My 1st mixer !!
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Aman Gebru wrote:Posted By: JonB67
Date Posted: 01 June 2018 at 11:27am
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Old sony tape deck, nad 3020 and a pair of speakers one with a blown woofer. I loved it! First pa rig was 2nd hand peavey pro 15 tops and subs and a couple of numark amps. Actually ran pretty well for the money spent. Yeah, good times but i wouldn't swap any of it with what i have now. Except the nad... its still going strong!
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Posted By: njw
Date Posted: 02 June 2018 at 10:08pm
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My first 'rig' was a a pair of 12 + piezo mid tops built from parts from an old car boom box and wood recycled from an old wardrobe, although I did fork out for a genuine motorola piezo for each cab too! Bass was a pair of cheap pressed steel basket generic 15's in some random cabs built from 12mm chipboard. Amps were an HH S130 per bass bin and a Technics hi-fi amp (which is now in my living room!) on the tops all strung together with phono leads and jack to jacks and not a crossover in sight. When I upgraded the amps to a Peavey CS1000x I thought I'd really made it (it's a THOUSAND watts)! What is slightly scary and/or depressing is that I would rather use that lot than what some of the 'dj's' around this way use currently. Oh, and I've still got the Realistic ssm-2100 mixer from those days in the garage, and everthing on it bar the cross fade still worked perfectly when I last powered it up! I've just remembered that if we wanted a little bit more oomph we would use a pair of HH 212DC's, one each side on it's side between the bass bins and tops, except they weren't technically 212's, they were a 412 that had been cut in half, badly.... They would get powered by whatever amp was going spare, normally some random old 100w pa head. |
Posted By: jbl_man
Date Posted: 03 June 2018 at 8:51am
I would just like to add...around late 1976 we had managed to save up enough pocket money to buy a pair of ILP electronics HY200 modules (120w each from memory) together with the ILP power supply to run them. Yippee,stereo at last. I put them in a nicely made cabinet,even fitted at 4 inch cooling fan,just to be sure. Running into 8 ohms load each. Within a month,both had erupted black smoke and died. Now the fun started. Sent them back to ILP under warranty (they were only a month old remember). Nothing. No reply. Weeks went past. Months went past.I sent many letters and phone calls. Finally on threat of legal action against them, a replacement pair finally arrived. One burnt up immediately,the other a few weeks later. If anyone from ILP ever reads this,you should be taken outside and publically egged or pelted with rotten fruit for having the cheek to sell such rubbish, and also having the worst customer service i have ever experianced in over forty years! ------------- Be seeing you. |
Posted By: odc04r
Date Posted: 03 June 2018 at 9:34am
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Hah, love it. A good reminder that not everything made in the era of simpler electronics was bombproof. I wonder how they managed to screw up that design so badly. |
Posted By: Hemisphere
Date Posted: 03 June 2018 at 9:53am
Of course we couldn't afford music, but we got the mains hum going through the woofer and the noise floor going through the tweeter and took it in turns to wave our arms in front of them for rhythm. ------------- Phase 1: Post on Speakerplans Phase 2: ????? Phase 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zc4bGkU05o" rel="nofollow - Profit! |
Posted By: djeddie
Date Posted: 03 June 2018 at 12:33pm
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Squire cabs with a single 12" McKenzie twin cone, to which I added a pair of Motorola piezos. Powered by a JPS 1002L amp, which I still have and which Mucker gave the once over and found it's still giving ~140W into 4Ω a channel. (Was a gift from an uncle who purchased it in the late 70's) The decks were Citronic CL12D's with an NJD DM600 (?) mixer. All in a home made chipboard case that was made from the base board of my brother's train set. It was finished minutes before being sent off to duty on it's first gig... meaning you could clearly work out the layout of said train set! It was painted black the next day though!!! Lighting was a pair of FAL columns and a pair of fuzz lights. A pin spot scanner was added shortly after. Moving lights! Yay, I was the mutts nuts! Ian, I have a box of HY60's here, 8 of them I think. They've been used, nay, abused and are all still working!
------------- Chas n Dave : it's like Drum and Bass but with beards. E=mc² ±3dB |
Posted By: Bams
Date Posted: 03 June 2018 at 8:24pm
| my first OWN speakers were Stage accompany c29s, but the first rig was at our youthcentre.. a velleman mixer, jb systems turntables, four 3 wayspeakers from the fane book and a folded Horn from the same book, 18” fane collosus loaded. No sub near the monster but two classrooms away everything came off the wall. The tops kept blowing their bullets everything usura- open your mind was played so that 12” got banned until the same started to happen with get-a-away from maxx.. |
Posted By: GAZ.
Date Posted: 04 June 2018 at 7:04pm
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If I remember rightly very first sound was about 8 big old hifi speakers powered by a Ferguson amplifier I think it was, and part of a broken midi system. Music came from a Ferguson turntable, and later a portable CD player. Lighting consisted of a pluto ropelight, and 4 par 38 downlighters that were made into a wooden box, plus 4 R80 spotlights that were fixed to a piece of scaffold board. There was a device made from a motor unit which I think was from some sort of kitchen food mixer. It had 4 microswitches that were wired up to the lights fixed around the rotating disc that was on this motor with a bit cut off it so it pressed the microswitches as it went round to “chase” the lights! There was also a couple of orange flashing lights that were “borrowed” from local roadworks too! This lot was only for friends party’s we did, never played out back in those days. ------------- 100% Earth Moving Bass |
Posted By: IainB
Date Posted: 04 June 2018 at 9:47pm
First system would have been built around a realistic ssm-2200 a couple of tandy turntables (and probably an amp) and a set of Dunstable Sound and Lighting 15" full range speakers, probably late 80s / very early 90s  those were the days!
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Posted By: mini-mad
Date Posted: 04 June 2018 at 10:43pm
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Pair of jamo 3way jobbies. 8.. maybe 10" bass driver... some no name brand mosfet amp that we had to drive down to the coast to buy in the late ish 90s. A soundlab shitty 4 channel mixer with a couple of home hifi CD players and a dodgy Mic... Lights were borderline bugger all and we carried around about 150 cds with all sorts on. Within a few weeks one of the tweeters blew and it sounded lop sided. No tripods or anything. We stuck the speakers on tables... on chairs on tables.. on beer crates on tables... it's was fun ------------- If it sounds like a gorilla is trying to escape, turn it down. |
Posted By: partya
Date Posted: 05 June 2018 at 2:48am
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My first non-domestic set of speakers were Pyle PADH212s, which seemingly you can still buy! '7 way, 800 watts RMS heavy duty speaker'. Putting 800 watts into them blew all of the 12" drivers and all of the piezos on one box. A relatively expensive lesson on cheap speakers and false advertising..... ------------- Turn it up! Turn what up? |
Posted By: knet94
Date Posted: 05 June 2018 at 3:35am
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My first system circa 1977, was very hi-fi consisting of 2 x Pioneer PL12D turntables, an Audiotronic's amp pre-amp section into a Hitachi 2 x 400 watts power amp feeding 4 Wharefedale Airedale speakers. Fantastic sound but totally lacked the spl required for the disco work I was getting, so was constantly blowing drivers. Moving towards more PA type equipment I always tried to keep the system sounding as hi-fi as possible over all the years of change. |
Posted By: APW
Date Posted: 05 June 2018 at 10:46am
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My first system (mid to late 70s) had a homemade rotary mixer that used mullard
PL1184/2 and PL1183/2 modules ( http://www.electrojumble.org/data/mullard_lp1180-1402.pdf" rel="nofollow - http://www.electrojumble.org/data/mullard_lp1180-1402.pdf ); it was only rotary as I didn’t have a clue how
to make neat slots for faders!! The turntables were a pair of modified BSR P128’s.
At first we only used a hi-fi amp and speakers but quickly moved to the Maplin 150watt mosfets modules. Next we purchased a 2nd pair of the Maplin mosfet modules and a couple of bridging modules. The bridging modules caused nothing but problems so we ditched them and designed our own. Then we changed all the driver transistors on amp boards for higher voltage versions, changed the outputs for 2 pairs of 2SJ50 & 2SK135 per module and upped the rails to about 65Volts, the amps would then do over 500watts/channel and were able to drive 4ohm loads despite being bridged. I had no problems getting large Toroid transformers as my best mate was doing his apprenticeship with ILP, although their amp modules were utter junk and usually failed spectacularly their transformers were extremely good. We later started bi-amping and used BK electronics amps for the mid-HF cabs. This homemade amp was in service until the late 90’s when I purchased my first Crest amps. Speakers were mcKenzie studio C15-400 on bass, Studio C10-200 mids and two Motorola KSN1025 rectangular piezos per side. First lighting control was a Tuac chaser and a Pulsar 3 channel light organ, I cannot find any info on the Pulser however it was just a black box with a bulging on the top and power going in… I believe the same unit was also sold under the Fal brand. Later we had a Pulsar 4000 and also a 4 x 4 matrix lighting controller, I cannot remember who made it. Finally (late 80s) and before going DMX we had a Light Processor commander and dimmer/switch packs, again I cannot find any info on this piece of kit, It was primarily a nightclub lighting controller and I suspect they were all wrecked many years ago.. |
Posted By: jbl_man
Date Posted: 05 June 2018 at 11:32am
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Makes fascinating reading this thread..if only we had all taken photos back then..but of course that would have involved going to the chemist to buy a film, taking the pics, going back to the chemist with said film,waiting for the fat miserable assistant to fill the form in, hand you a receipt, and then wait three days for your fuzzy grainy prints to arrive back....usually a disapointment when you saw them too. ------------- Be seeing you. |
Posted By: Hemisphere
Date Posted: 05 June 2018 at 12:16pm
------------- Phase 1: Post on Speakerplans Phase 2: ????? Phase 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zc4bGkU05o" rel="nofollow - Profit! |
Posted By: James Tengo
Date Posted: 05 June 2018 at 12:16pm
The mighty pulsar zero 2250? http://www.karillon.com/Articles/pulsar/2250lf.jpg" rel="nofollow - http://www.karillon.com/Articles/pulsar/2250lf.jpg .
I remember the Light processor Q Commander, but that was dmx, and was using them in the late 90’s.
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Posted By: APW
Date Posted: 05 June 2018 at 12:20pm
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Hi James, I've just found that and yes, it was the Zero 2250.
The commander I had was much earlier and NOT DMX, it was a 4U 19" thing that was basically 4 x 4 channel chasers and a 8 channel switch bank, the whole thing was programmable. |
Posted By: SamV
Date Posted: 07 June 2018 at 2:09pm
| When I were 13 I built my first cab, it was a coaxial design of sorts, a 15" Goodmans Axiom with a 12" McKenzie built into a box which was made from the cupboard my mum was chucking away and some paper mache, none of it joined together perfectly and it was gappy as hell and after the 6th rebuild it sound fantastic. It was powered off a Hitachi HA150 amp IIRC. The box was a bit of an odd ball which to this day I have no idea how to describe it. It was a box within a box, the inner box was a rudimentary horn I suppose which the McKenzie fired into, then that sit inside a bigger box, with the Axiom on the outside firing into it but then folded back into the first horn. It went loud and everyone loved it, apart from the old lady who lived downstairs. But when summer came round we carried it downstairs to the big shared courtyard and run a very long chain of power extensions back home and everyone would come round and chill and dance. Ah good days. I'll do a sketch and post it up. The internet wasn't really around and I knew nothing about speakers but it was fun. |
Posted By: njw
Date Posted: 16 June 2018 at 9:30pm
A Pulsar Zero 2250!! We had one of those but never used it because we had an NJD SC4000  . Lights were a mixture of Fal decor boxes and home made stuff with the most dodgy of wiring with a few par 36 scanners. We thought we were the dogs bollox when we bought a couple of Twister 2's and a Martin Magnum 750 smoke machine. |
Posted By: 8x18
Date Posted: 21 February 2019 at 11:21pm
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this is a mint thead , the memories keep coming back i had helped another mobile roadshow for years so was the roady , seen all the mistakes , wrong songs at the wrong time , too loud , late arriving , so it was time to take the plunge my first was a soundout console ( the one with the red fins ) powered but everytime you turned it on , you prey it worked , a pair of old W bins , 15s i think with j105s in front lighting loads of light boxes , i had stereo so i had 2 pulsar 2250 running different sides so the light boxes ran not the same each side pulsar pinspots on the floor 4 channel in white , smoke pellets that smelt terrible transport landrover lwb with horse box ( this did get a lot of looks at posh hotels , manor houses ) after this it went down hill , i dechoked 4ft uv tubes putting 200v in them and adding the last 40v from a modded chaser , no one had done this before in lightboxes with 6 pygmy bulbs each side equally spaced running sound to light , horizontal on a custom frame 4 in a row , 16 feet in all long them it got worst  i always wanted to be different , sound stayed the same but lighting always had to change , if i did a 18th birthday for someone , when they had there 21st the apperance of the front was never the same , then the engagement , wedding , ect so good old pulsar , 10 way ,mmmmm i thought 10 x 4ft tubes Colored each side hanging under the light boxes 6 inches apart vertical , sorted this was the dogs , thats why the big mobile discos were called roadshows , 3+ hours to carry in and change dead bulbs , get it running , and get out as fast as you could lots more if you are interested |
Posted By: MattStolton
Date Posted: 24 May 2019 at 3:21pm
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Homemade Celestion Cook Book W Bins (1x15), in chip and carpet, one a side. Different 15" drivers in each one. 3 ibl (yes "I") 1x12" (mckensie/fane loaded) with Piezo, on each W bin. BK Electronics MXF400 3U 400W Stereo Amps. x4. MXF200 2x100W doing DJ's Wilding PowerSound 1x12 monitors. Torque 1x12" Active floor monitors. Seck 12:8:2 desk for bands (!), wacky 1202 for quiz nights and karaoke. The Seck had a nice feature where you could return an Aux return to master and separate to Pre Aux outs, so easy to bus in the Mackie for extra channels, and still get its output through the monitor auxs! Alesis 1U twin 31 band graphic, KAM GMX7 Mixer (with 4 second sampler!), LAD turntables. Vestax Twin Top Loading CD turntables (the ones with plastic lift up lids over the CDs). No X-Over. If you held each end of the GMX7's X-Fade in your hand, whilst still wired in, you could get Radio 5 Live. NAD 5.1 Processor, with line outs. Normalised patchbay to route audio all over! Some naff 2000 lumen 4:3 projector for film nights. Comb City, but I loved it. Sounded like a bag of bolts, but loadsa fun had. My Halls Of Residence "House" system! Painful and crude, but fun. Never managed to blow more than the odd rail fuse in the MXFs, and the occasional 10 Ohm piezo dropper resistor in the iBL 1x12". Loads of Abstract 1CE and Galactic moon DMX stuff, with 12 PAR56 off a ryger 12 Chn touch panel, with 12 Ways of Switch pack (not even dimmers)! ------------- Matt Stolton - Technical Director (!!!) - http://www.wildingsound.co.uk" rel="nofollow - Wilding Sound Ltd "Sparkius metiretur vestra" - "Meter Your Mains" |
Posted By: markie
Date Posted: 24 May 2019 at 4:06pm
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I remember IBL cabs, I believe they were actually made by BK electronics..... certainly they used to advertise them in their ads in practical electronics. They were advertised as having Fane Classic 300s in them. I seem to remember their largest offering was an 18" plus piezo. I expect it was a bit lacking in mids. ------------- If it's got wheels or tits it's gonna cost a fortune |
Posted By: Andylaser
Date Posted: 27 October 2022 at 3:14pm
I remember those. Mine were OK, but only used on hifi. Maplin MOSFET modules were far better for more robust use provided they had a decent heatsink. Shortly after we discovered BK electronics and their substantial amp modules which were superb. ------------- "music so loud, that if we move in next door to you; your lawn will die" - Lemmy |
Posted By: markie
Date Posted: 28 October 2022 at 2:20am
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I remember the first gig I ever did with "Proper gear" was at Barbarellas nightclub in Brum. The decks were Goldring GL75s and they had these cueing devices, which I have never seen since. The turntable had a slip mat on it and this device was mounted on the turntable base and when you flicked a switch on the console an arm came out and held the edge of the record. So, with the turntable revolving the disc was held stationery till you flip the switch again it gave an instant start. Got a feeling they were made by Ortofon but could be wrong about that. Anyone else remember them??? ------------- If it's got wheels or tits it's gonna cost a fortune |