70's Showco/Clair Festival 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=85604
Printed Date: 26 March 2026 at 8:17pm
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Topic: 70's Showco/Clair Festival PA
Posted By: Nachural
Subject: 70's Showco/Clair Festival PA
Date Posted: 03 March 2014 at 9:16pm
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Just an interesting read:- http://www.prosoundweb.com/article/print/us_festival" rel="nofollow - http://www.prosoundweb.com/article/print/us_festival ------------- it's all just cardboard and magnets really |
Replies:
Posted By: jbl_man
Date Posted: 03 March 2014 at 9:22pm
Yes,good find that Chris.  
------------- Be seeing you. |
Posted By: burningbush
Date Posted: 03 March 2014 at 10:33pm
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Nice racks ------------- music is the message |
Posted By: Robbo
Date Posted: 03 March 2014 at 10:54pm
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S4 boxes were never the best of speaker cabinets even in those early days---Mix position was only 50 yards from the stage as the fall off after this distance was terrible/ This was an American problem in those kind of days as they only did direct radiating boxes as they could never get their heads around the benefits of horn loading like us Brits did. System would not even come anywhere near the Iron Maiden Monsters of Rock Festival at Donnington with 360 blue boxes(mainly TMS3s)which was giving a peak of 124db at FOH mix position 100yds from stage---entire system was 525kw of power and you could feel the kick drum hit your chest up to a mile away from stage. I am glad that I was there to witness it as it will never happen again in UK. |
Posted By: madboffin
Date Posted: 03 March 2014 at 11:18pm
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Yes, those S4's sounded OK in singles or vertically stacked pairs or triples, but the more you put horizontally in a stack, the worse it got. The 18"s coupled nicely, but nothing else. Close to the stacks was OK, but any more than 10 yards away was always a real mess. "Mushy" was how I would describe it. And they weighed 30 stone each too... |
Posted By: Nachural
Date Posted: 03 March 2014 at 11:42pm
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The
line I found amusing was:- “We wanted something that would pack well in the trucks, that could be
easily handled, that looked clean, and would give all of our systems a
consistent sound. The S-4 weighs approximately 425 pounds fully loaded, and
measures 43 by 45 by 22 inches deep” I can think of easier things to handle ------------- it's all just cardboard and magnets really |
Posted By: jbl_man
Date Posted: 04 March 2014 at 9:40am
You can say that again John,all the Health and safety and enviromental muppets would have kittens if someone did that today. ------------- Be seeing you. |
Robbo wrote:Posted By: TONY.A.S.S.
Date Posted: 04 March 2014 at 9:46am
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Can you imagine how many Crown DC300's were sold. They seemed to have been the Holy Grail back in the day. Great amps, and they still sound good on Hi Fi. ------------- http://www.facebook.com/tony.rossell.3" rel="nofollow - http://www.facebook.com/tony.rossell.3 |
Posted By: Robbo
Date Posted: 04 March 2014 at 9:50am
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The Americans have always had this thing about direct radiating cabinets Chris---and they still do to a certain degree in this modern day. The only time that they have ever been at the forefront of touring pro audio was in the sixties with JBL and Altec and they seem to have stayed there ever since. I know when I was doing the really big tours in the seventies and eighties, we always used to look forward to the European gigs because we knew that we would be using the best horn loaded systems that were available worldwide. When it came to the USA legs of tours which were usually at the end of big tours in those days, everyone would be totally p-ssed off with the sound in large venues over there and the outside amphitheatre type venues were even worse. It really was bad over there due to touring europe for a few weeks with great sound quality right in your face and then going to the USA and having to work on real mickey mouse rigs that the Americans thought were brilliant and in fact they were terrible and totally unsuitable for the venues---you were always fighting a loosing battle at FOH trying to get a half decent sound. Since those days, I have always took with a pinch of salt, anything that the americans have said about sound and PA rigs---as I said earlier the S4 cabinets were terrible, especially when squared off in stacking instead of a nice curved array to help things along---even the guys that were supposedly at the top of their profession in live sound over there had not got a clue how to set a very big rig up to get half decent sound quality. |
Posted By: TONY.A.S.S.
Date Posted: 04 March 2014 at 10:12am
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To me the biggest shock with our American friends, is how behind the times they stayed. As a kid, I always looked to America and thought how futuristic it must be and because of wealth, they must be ahead in everything. Then when I finally got there in the late '70's, I couldn't believe how old fashioned they were and of course totally insular. They themselves had been brainwashed into thinking they were the Bee's Knees, and so therefore never looked outside there own box. When you think of early American Cinema systems and the companies involved, the PA thing becomes a bit of surprise. I do remember American engineers not having a very good reputation though. ------------- http://www.facebook.com/tony.rossell.3" rel="nofollow - http://www.facebook.com/tony.rossell.3 |
Posted By: Pasi
Date Posted: 04 March 2014 at 10:21am
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:) Tony, you are adorable. That's exactly how i feel about UK, how behind the times this country has stayed and how that is what i like here. Everything seems to be done "traditional way" and no modern nonsense is accepted. Like proper insulation in the houses, underfrool heating on bathrooms, 2 taps on the sink, insisting to use land lines rather than mobiles, faxes do exist etc. |
Posted By: oldskool
Date Posted: 04 March 2014 at 12:41pm
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Bloody hell John, I didn't know there were that many TMS3s ever, never mind in one place. Ooh that must have been an awful lot of fun to play with. Pity the poor sods who had to lug them all around though. ------------- Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies |
Posted By: TONY.A.S.S.
Date Posted: 04 March 2014 at 12:52pm
Lee, we built well over 1000 TMS3's in our time. Turbosound were massive and did more than people could imagine. We usually did them 30 at a time per month along with all the other TMS models, so TMS3's would be at least 600 per year. ------------- http://www.facebook.com/tony.rossell.3" rel="nofollow - http://www.facebook.com/tony.rossell.3 |
Posted By: oldskool
Date Posted: 04 March 2014 at 1:06pm
Blimey Tony, I didn't realise how big they were either to be honest. So, apart from the Iron Maiden stash of TMS3s that was posted here a while back, and I know Jacethebass likes his Turbo too, is there anybody restoring/operating large classic turbo rigs still? I have heard a few smaller ten/twenty box TMS rigs over the last couple of years (not TMS3s though) but they sounded so bloody awful they must have been buggered somehow, or the operators were clueless. ------------- Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies |
Posted By: studio45
Date Posted: 04 March 2014 at 2:03pm
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A company down the road here, Black Magic Audio, has a medium-sized Floodlight rig, now powered from very modern Yamaha Tn series amps. Sounds bloody lovely. Gets a lot of techno-rave and live band gigs ;) What was the biggest Martin F2 system every deployed in the UK? Know someone with a couple of stacks of that, and it is one of the nicest, and certainly loudest, rigs I've ever heard. ------------- Studio45 - Repairs & Building Commotion Soundsystem -Mobile PA |
Posted By: madboffin
Date Posted: 04 March 2014 at 9:12pm
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The biggest F2 system I can remember in the UK was for a show on Glasgow Green in 1990 for around 200,000 people. The site was about 200m wide and 400m deep. There were two main stacks and three delays. The two outer field delays used a mixture of F2 and old Martin Modular as there wasn't quite enough F2 in the country to do everything. The F2 came from Capital and Encore in London and For Music in Vienna, and the Martin Modular from Concert Sound in Luton. The total speaker count was: 40 x BSX Subs 134 x F2B Bass 49 x F2-3M Mid boxes 21 x F2-3H2T HF boxes 38 x F2-2H3V HF boxes 22 x F2-MHT Combination boxes 24 x MH212 Philishave mids 16 x Concert Sound 2" JBL horns 12 x Concert Sound 1" JBL horns 8 x Concert Sound 3T JBL tweeter boxes (3x 2402) So the driver count was: 80 x 18" 268 x 15" 217 x 12" 177 x 2" 126 x 1" 72 x 2402 bullets = 1084 drive units in total Bear in mind that the F2 concentrated a lot of speakers into a small space and maximised coupling between the drivers, so it was very efficient for its size and speaker content. In fact, the first few F2 Festival and Stadium tour systems were bigger than they needed to be, simply because the clients (FOH engineers) didn't believe a smaller (physical) size rig could do the job. Here's another system list from 1989, Wembley Stadium. Being an early F2 festival deployment, this is an example of a rig that would have worked just as well with less boxes, (and the extra JBL long-throws, which were insisted on by the FOH engineer): Main stacks and understage fills: 40 x BSX Sub 129 x F2B 46 x F2-3M 8 x F2-2H2T 10 x F2-2H3V 18 x F2-4H (4x 2" horns) 8 x F2-6V (6x 1" horns) 10 x F2-4V (4x 1" horns) 21 x F2-MHT 8 x JBL 2356 40 degree horns with 2440's (above split into SL & SR stacks plus frontfills) Plus delays (split into 1 mix tower and 2 outer field stacks) : 12 x F2B 8 x F2-3M 8 x F2-2H3V 4 x F1M 6 x F1H These "F1" boxes were the original F1 system, a big heavy flyable rig of which only one prototype was built. The Mid was 2x12" like a bigger version of a Philishave, and the High contained a splayed pair of narrow dispersion horns with 2445 drivers. Must get the pictures scanned sometime... |
Posted By: burningbush
Date Posted: 05 March 2014 at 12:36pm
134 F2b, that is kick.  ------------- music is the message |
Posted By: jbl_man
Date Posted: 05 March 2014 at 3:13pm
Yeah,two stacks 67 cabinets high. Stick that in yer line array!  ------------- Be seeing you. |
Posted By: madboffin
Date Posted: 05 March 2014 at 4:33pm
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The F2B's were arranged as line arrays 40 feet high and 7-1/2 feet wide, all done by stacking 4-wide on four levels of decking. The subs were underneath, filling the gap between the stage level and the ground. Everything else was arrayed around the LF column, and carefully angled and tilted to cover the field. The mids and highs on the upper levels were in vertical arrays too. It was possible to adjust the vertical coverage during the event, to deal with changes in air temperature gradients, by moving the wood blocks that tilted the cabinets downwards. |
Posted By: burningbush
Date Posted: 05 March 2014 at 4:38pm
No dsp steering of the sound then, whack the two blocks a bit and bingo.  ------------- music is the message |
Posted By: madboffin
Date Posted: 05 March 2014 at 4:58pm
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DSP would have been a whole lot easier. I suppose this system was more or less equivalent to two splayed hangs of MLA per side, but with only limited vertical beam adjustment. These big F2 systems were a hybrid of line array (before it turned into a fashion item) and curved array. The best thing was that they were very flexible. The stacks could be designed to put sound where it was needed, for example in a stadium venue there would be extra boxes on the outer ends to cover the nearby side stands. The disadvantage was that it took a whole day to stack the rig, which was accepted as normal for all systems in those days before suitable flying methods were developed. |
Posted By: discosucks
Date Posted: 05 March 2014 at 5:41pm
| would love to see a snap or two of that :-) |
Posted By: jazomir
Date Posted: 07 March 2014 at 9:31am
Same could be said about their cars - hardly surprising the Top Gear lads always take the mickey out of them, especially their 'live rear axles' (read: 'steel girder'). I think it is rather like the Russian old school way of thinking - only use things that can be 'easily repaired, by a monkey, in a field'. Trouble is, things have moved on so much that most modern cars with their high tech, self adjusting innards that can't be repaired easily by an amateur are now more reliable whilst also being having far more in the way of refinement. It's a shame really, 'cos the Americans are really very good at old fashioned engineering (read 'tweaking') of any sort but the big corporates are very stubborn in their response to any sort of change which even the hi-tech companies seem to fall prey to given half a chance. It seems only the companies with visionaries at the reins are able adapt to change easily whilst all the others simply rest on their laurels and keep releasing minor variations of the same tired old ideas. ------------- 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: TONY.A.S.S.
Date Posted: 07 March 2014 at 10:02am
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Talking of Cars though, (bit of a diversion here) My good friend the Bass Player, had some yanks, and one of them was a '56 Cadillac Eldorado. I was absolutely amazed to see so many gadgets. It had power everything, but operated with levers. It was only then I realised how behind we were at one stage with driving aids. Unfortunately, after the '50's and '60's they let themselves down badly.
Bt the way, as some of the old folk might know, the Who were big Clair users. That would be after they ditched their own\ Tasco stuff. ------------- http://www.facebook.com/tony.rossell.3" rel="nofollow - http://www.facebook.com/tony.rossell.3 |
Posted By: 4D
Date Posted: 07 March 2014 at 10:52am
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James Barden has just refurbished a 32 stacks flashlight/21" system. Should be out and about soon. ------------- DMZ. "The bass was intense. Girls were literally running up to stand next to the subs" |
Posted By: jazomir
Date Posted: 07 March 2014 at 12:18pm
I had a 66 Mustang back in the day. Even when I had it (late seventies) it seemed antiquated by the standards of the day. Built like a brick s**t house (had a couple of shunts and it literally destroyed the other cars) but was exceptionally easy to work on both in terms of access to bits and ease of replacement. The Borg Warner gearbox it had was used for years afterwards in UK Fords and other makes but then the Yanks seem to hit a design and development wall in the car (and other industries). It seems that it is only the small new companies that do anything new or radical - perhaps it is a mainstream American fear of the new/different that prevents the big corporates from introducing anything too different onto the market. ------------- 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: 4D
Date Posted: 07 March 2014 at 1:32pm
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I love my Snap-ons, back in the day, they wissed all over draper & the such like the only thing that came close were King Dick….. ------------- DMZ. "The bass was intense. Girls were literally running up to stand next to the subs" |
Posted By: shagnasty
Date Posted: 10 March 2014 at 12:09am
IM OWNED 100 TMS-3 boxes with 26 TSW-124s to go with them, read the 12" Live after death jacket for some fairly funny facts about that tour... |
Posted By: Dub Specialist Sound
Date Posted: 10 March 2014 at 12:56am
King Dick his allways with me!  ...sorry  ------------- Musical Roots Reggae Vibration is Life! for music is sound...sound is vibration...vibration is energy... and energy begets life. Therein lies my passion!...MUSIC IS LIFE... |
Posted By: toastyghost
Date Posted: 10 March 2014 at 1:34am
Likewise, I had the pleasure of hearing a decent sized F2 rig when I was but a lad and it was definitely the main callback when I started to get a whiff of the sound boy bug. |
Posted By: jacethebase
Date Posted: 10 March 2014 at 7:36am
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Turbosound is a real odd one. As there was soooo much of it in circulation you would have thought there would be used flood and flashlight everywhere. That really is not the case. Somewhere someone has a massive shed full of all the old systems. Who has the following systems is what I would like too know! BRP flashlight system (I know where the 21"s went) BRP and maidens TMS3 system Skan's flashlight / floodlight system Bluebox's flashlight system And there is prob a lot of companies that had more that I don't know about as the majority of tms3's are older than me! ------------- www.wedding-production.co.uk www.stage2sound.com |
Posted By: Jimmer
Date Posted: 10 March 2014 at 8:44am
 what id give to be able to hear that lot....when sound systems were real sound systemsWould love to see the pics Dave ------------- http://connect-av.co.uk" rel="nofollow - http://connect-av.co.uk |
Posted By: Jimmer
Date Posted: 10 March 2014 at 9:00am
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Similar to this I imagine? Got this from the Martin fb page.....EPIC! 
------------- http://connect-av.co.uk" rel="nofollow - http://connect-av.co.uk |
Posted By: TONY.A.S.S.
Date Posted: 10 March 2014 at 9:05am
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There is a great photo of Daves' stuff somewhere out there, it's at an Italian Stadium. That's all I can remember. Mentioning the amount of TMS3's Iron Maidon owned reminded me of a Styx tour in the States. The company that did the Tour took a similar number. Her's a Geeky fact that probably no one will be aware of. At on point the 3 had to be shortened from front to back by, I think it was 7/8's of an inch. 3/8" came off the front and the rest off the back. This was so that the cabs could be loaded 4 across with their covers on. At the same time the square front retainer for the Grill Foam disappeared and was replaced by a solid wood piece that was tapered, and from then on the Foam was cut with tapered edges. ------------- http://www.facebook.com/tony.rossell.3" rel="nofollow - http://www.facebook.com/tony.rossell.3 |
Posted By: Jimmer
Date Posted: 10 March 2014 at 9:40am
Jeeze, whats with the spam these days  ------------- http://connect-av.co.uk" rel="nofollow - http://connect-av.co.uk |
Posted By: shagnasty
Date Posted: 10 March 2014 at 12:10pm
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IM Holding still have most of their TMS boxes, not sure where BRPs stash went, Blue Box never carried Flash (at the time only BRP had access to that, but they did have a fair pile of Flood/TMS) Skan had a fair pile of Flood (again, I am not sure they ever owned Flash, I thought it was all BRP's) but I have no idea where that went. Jands in Oz had like 120 TMS-3s, a company in ZA had similar 9some moved to Dubai a few years back) Someone must have a HUGE rig!! |
Posted By: madboffin
Date Posted: 10 March 2014 at 4:07pm
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Jimmer: Yes, that's EML's flown version of the festival stack. I believe it worked well, although obviously nowhere near as flexible as the stacked version. Much quicker and cheaper to set up though, even allowing for the flying system being a bit of a pig (but nothing like as bad as Meyer's...). Still looking for my pictures, unfortunately some of the best ones are 2-1/2" trannies which don't fit in my scanner. The trouble with rig pictures is that black boxes don't photograph well, and on show day everything is hidden behind scrims anyway. ---------------------------- In the 1980's a lot of rigs in the UK were sold to companies in Africa when they were superseded by new designs, but there must still be a few systems stashed away in warehouses, like the IM TMS3's. There used to be a big RS1200 system in storage in Switzerland. Given that those boxes weigh almost as much as S4's and nobody liked having to move them, they're probably still there. Last year there was a thread on here about an Electrosound system that turned up somewhere in the Netherlands. I hope some of the Floodlight rigs will reappear one day when the line array bubble finally bursts. That was, and still is, an excellent system. |