the first woodstock PA
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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=104156
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Topic: the first woodstock PA
Posted By: kedwardsleisure
Subject: the first woodstock PA
Date Posted: 19 August 2019 at 9:28pm
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Can't see it anywhere else on the forum so here's a link http://fohonline.com/articles/milestones/woodstock-50-years-after/" rel="nofollow - the first woodstock ------------- Kevin North Staffordshire |
Replies:
Posted By: jazomir
Date Posted: 19 August 2019 at 10:20pm
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There was a documentary on BBC at the weekend that focused on the 'organisation' of the festival. Complete cluster f**k by the organisers although the local council behind the original planned site must take a lot of the blame. The whole thing was saved by the US military who supplied helicopters and medical teams, the local population - mostly farm folk - who provided food and supplies for free to help feed the masses helped in no small way by the 'security advisors' - The Hog Farm Commune - who also prepared the donated food for everyone as well as helping with pretty much everything on site. Probably it was all helped by the amount of drugs taken that stopped people caring about things too much! I've read the Hanley article before - it was amazing that anyone could hear what was being played and could only have worked due to the shape of the site and the decision to lift the PA well above the ground. Wedding DJs pay heed - peoples knees don't have ears!! ------------- For sidefills, can we have two enormous things of a type that might be venerated as Gods by the inhabitants of Easter Island, capable of reaching volumes that would make Beelzebub soil his pants. |
Posted By: woody2
Date Posted: 20 August 2019 at 9:54am
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went years ago, the site is a massive bowl, wouldn't of worked otherwise |
Posted By: jazomir
Date Posted: 20 August 2019 at 2:11pm
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So, stepping back a few years and almost certainly repeating the question on this forum - if you had to supply the sound for the festival today, with same time/access restrictions that existed back then and the various other problems that pesented themselves at the time, what would be your choice of system to give the best sound for the 400,000 crowd? The restrictions would probably mean no delay towers (IIRC there were supposed to be delay stacks in 1969 but the tape delay driving them wouldn't work) and I would imagine that everything would need to be mounted on scaffold or flown using cranes. ------------- For sidefills, can we have two enormous things of a type that might be venerated as Gods by the inhabitants of Easter Island, capable of reaching volumes that would make Beelzebub soil his pants. |
Posted By: madboffin
Date Posted: 20 August 2019 at 11:00pm
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People's expectations have changed a lot since then, and that needs to be taken into account. I wonder just how well that system really worked. No consideration seems to have been given to the drastic changes in sound propagation that occur as the air temperature gradients change during the day / evening. And nothing appears to have been angled downwards enough to cover a large crowd of people, each generating at least 100W of heat to warm up the air above them. Modern workplace safety standards make scaffolding-mounted systems problematic to rig. Gone are the days when I would (and be allowed to) climb around on PA towers like a monkey in a tree... Time and access wouldn't be a problem, they had days to build the rig. Even assuming the site is bowl shaped (like MK, but bigger) it would be tricky to do without delays. You would have to use something like the system referred to here and the discussion that followed: https://forum.speakerplans.com/70s-showco-clair-festival-pa_topic85604_post852785.html?#852785" rel="nofollow - https://forum.speakerplans.com/70s-showco-clair-festival-pa_topic85604_post852785.html?#852785 and here: https://forum.speakerplans.com/can-martin-215-mk3-or-f2b-keep-up-with-es18-or-usb_topic89467_post896832.html?#896832" rel="nofollow - https://forum.speakerplans.com/can-martin-215-mk3-or-f2b-keep-up-with-es18-or-usb_topic89467_post896832.html?#896832 (Sorry, the pictures have moved, I can set up a new link if anyone's interested.) But even that rig used delays, and we had to turn them up more when the air cooled down late in the evening. I also had to go up the main PA towers and adjust wood blocks to reduce the downward tilt on the long throw stuff at the top of the arrays. But that was a flat site - propagation would have been more consistent if it had been a bowl shape. But with the adjustments the system coverage was amazingly good and would probably have been OK for a crowd double the 200,000 (or more) that we had. |
Posted By: studio45
Date Posted: 21 August 2019 at 3:06pm
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Well I guess what would actually happen is that you'd get Danley on the job and fly two Jericho from scaff towers. And a few of his other boxes to cover the front of the crowd. But me, I know where there are a couple of barns full of Martin Modular rig that was built about five years after Woodstock, so I'd try very hard to deploy that, and I'd be pretty confident of a good result! I wish there were more "Vintage powered" stages at big festivals. Sure old Martin and Turbo turns up at small things, doing small things. But why can't eg Boomtown have an old-skool rave stage c/w massive 90's Turbo rig turned up to *maximum hoof*... well I'd go to it :) ------------- Studio45 - Repairs & Building Commotion Soundsystem -Mobile PA |
Posted By: madboffin
Date Posted: 21 August 2019 at 11:54pm
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Well yes, if we are to use modern state of the art kit, a call to Mr Danley to design the system would definitely be the best bet. The reason you don't see giant vintage PA's at festivals is because they didn't come with modern flying hardware. It took a whole day to rig such systems, using large numbers of local crew stacking boxes on scaffolding platforms on the PA wings, which themselves took several days to put up. As mentioned above, modern safety standards preclude this type of work. A modern line array can be flown very quickly by a very small crew, with no need for working at height. And *if properly done* it works better than most of the old systems did. But hopefully Mr Danley's work will bring us into a new age of high power point source systems, which is really the proper way to do things. |
Posted By: woody2
Date Posted: 22 August 2019 at 10:09am
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the first thing i thought when i went to woodstock was how small the site was, just used the measurement device on bing maps and woodstock is about half the size of pyramid stage arena. |
Posted By: jazomir
Date Posted: 22 August 2019 at 10:28am
I never realised that! It always looks so much bigger than other festivals I've seen. ------------- For sidefills, can we have two enormous things of a type that might be venerated as Gods by the inhabitants of Easter Island, capable of reaching volumes that would make Beelzebub soil his pants. |
woody2 wrote:Posted By: woody2
Date Posted: 22 August 2019 at 2:13pm
the site has changed from when i went but it now only holds 30000 people for events. |
Posted By: godathunder
Date Posted: 22 August 2019 at 2:21pm
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I'd have to say that glastonburys pyramid stage usually sounded good in the point source days but the last time I was there (I forget the year) the Martin line array sounded spectacular. However, I would be very surprised if any of the current line arrays could match the sheer spl of the turbo tms system used at donington in 1988 ------------- LOUDER THAN LOUD |
Posted By: studio45
Date Posted: 22 August 2019 at 3:27pm
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^Every time someone mentions that I curse the fact I was only 6 at the time. It seems unlikely to ever be repeated, except in some post-apocalyptic scenario where we've killed and eaten all the noise police. ------------- Studio45 - Repairs & Building Commotion Soundsystem -Mobile PA |
Posted By: jazomir
Date Posted: 22 August 2019 at 4:51pm
Same for me for the first two Glastos - other things going on that at the time seemed more important. Well, at 17/18 there are always things that seem more important at the time, aren't there? ------------- For sidefills, can we have two enormous things of a type that might be venerated as Gods by the inhabitants of Easter Island, capable of reaching volumes that would make Beelzebub soil his pants. |
Posted By: jbl_man
Date Posted: 22 August 2019 at 4:57pm
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Interesting to watch the BBC4 documentary....loving all the old 60's american cars at the beginning driving to Woodstock, people pilled on top of them! ------------- Be seeing you. |
Posted By: godathunder
Date Posted: 22 August 2019 at 5:29pm
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It was my first ever festival, I was 16. My mum tried to stop me from going I've still heard nothing like it outdoors. Similarly, I've never heard anything close to 1980s motorhead indoors ------------- LOUDER THAN LOUD |
Posted By: njw
Date Posted: 22 August 2019 at 5:54pm
I'm still yet to hear a modern line array that has the same 'oomph' in the kick region as an old horn loaded system.
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Posted By: jbl_man
Date Posted: 22 August 2019 at 6:26pm
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Found a nice photo of the Woodstock mono 350w tube amps. Hanley Sound utilized rack systems to house its inventory of McIntosh amplifiers, including the eight MC3500s and pair of MI200 amplifiers.  ------------- Be seeing you. |
Posted By: godathunder
Date Posted: 22 August 2019 at 6:57pm
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Less than 0.01 watts per audience member The exaggerations about tube watts may just be true after all The speakers were vott were they not ------------- LOUDER THAN LOUD |
Posted By: Daniel S
Date Posted: 22 August 2019 at 7:42pm
The article states: Hanley and his crew custom designed the HSI 410 (Hanley Sound Inc.) speaker cabinets out of marine grade plywood. For the upper stacks, two bass bins were strategically positioned with high frequency horns on top. This was no easy task, especially as each pair measured 6x4x7 feet, and weighed close to 1,000 pounds. These four upper bins came loaded with four 15-inch JBL D-130 drivers. The four lower bins contained four 15-inch JBL D140 drivers for additional bass. Hanley recalls, “The high frequencies were handled by model 1003B 5×2 Altec multi-cell horns (300 Hz min frequency) and my custom-built 2×2 horns, all with Altec 290 compression drivers.” ------------- Distortion is evil |