Sound Systems & Amps in the old days???

Jerry Hayes · From: Virginia Beach, Va.

This is for you older guys who played back in the 30's, 40's, & 50's.... I started my pro music career in '63 so Fender Twin amps and Shure Vocalmaster PA's were already in use. I see old photos sometimes of bands like Bob Wills, Pee Wee King, and some of the groups of the time playing very large dancehalls to very large crowds. What kind of sound systems did you use and what kind of amps for the players. Also what sort of wattage ratings would these systems have used. I was a kid in the 40's and early 50's and did go to some dances with my parents and I remember some of the bands were pretty loud. How did they do it? Thanks in advance....JH in Va.

------------------
It's all on 12, who needs 20!

Jack Stoner · From: Kansas City, MO

When I started, in 59, we used a Silvertone guitar amp with a 12" speaker for the "PA". We had one mike, for the singer.

D Schubert · From: Columbia, MO, USA

Some of my oldest pickin' buddies (now in their 70's or gone) pooled their money to buy a Fender Pro Amp with a 15" speaker and ran all their mics and guitars through it.

In my youth, I can vaguely remember seeing bands using two of the old outdoor PA horns for vocals, probably driven with a Bogan PA of some type. The same kind of thing you'd see installed permanently at old fairgrounds and rodeo arenas.

Alvin Blaine · From: Picture Rocks, Arizona, USA

I kind of collect old PA gear.
I have mics, speakers, and amps from the '20's to the '50's.
I have Bogen, Stromberg-Carlson, Webster Electric and others. The smallest is a 3 watt battery powered PA with built in 8 inch speaker. The biggest is a '50's Stromberg-Carlson that came out of an old high school gym. It runs four 6L6 power tubes for about 50 watts of power and the amp weighs about 50 pounds, and doesn't sound to bad into a pair of JBL D-130 speakers.

Most of the stuff before WWII was low power, around 5 to 10 watts. They were just to get the singers voice above the acoustic instrument volume so they didn't need much. Some of these PA systems back then were in rooms or halls that were designed to get the best acoustic sound(before the days of electricity) so it didn't take much to amplify things.
Then after WWII groups started playing to bigger audiences and bands got bigger and started adding electric instruments. So now the PA systems had to get bigger, so now they were getting 15 watt amps all the way up to 50 watts. Some of those school gyms and old dance halls had some nice sounding systems. However after saying that, you could go down to radio shack and buy a mister microphone karaoke machine that would sound better than some of these old sound systems, and it would weigh a fraction of what these old tube amps and speakers weigh.

Earnest Bovine · From: Los Angeles CA USA

Many old sound systems were not hi-fi. They had only a high-frequency transducer and horn, which required very little power to make a loud noise. I don't think you would like that sound today.

Rick McDuffie · From: Benson, North Carolina, USA

I know your question has to do with earlier times, Jerry, but it brings back memories. When I started playing about '65, we just used high impedance mics plugged into guitar amps. Later we got a Bogen Challenger 25-watt amp with 2 12" speakers. I never sang through any kind of decent PA until about 1971, when we finally got a Vocal Master.

People didn't have the kind of money back then that they do today.

I remember going to big Nashville road shows in Fayetteville, NC in the mid-60's. They just used Twins and sang through the house PA, which was some Altec Lansing horns which were arrayed in the center of the arena. As Mr. Bovine said, there were no LF drivers of any kind.

Jerry Hayes · From: Virginia Beach, Va.

A couple of posts mentioned using a guitar amp and plugging mikes and guitars in the same unit. That brought back memories of my Army days in Germany. In 1959 while stationed there I played in a band where we did that. We had an amp made by a jukebox company! I think it might have been a Wurlitzer or something like that. The dang thing was about 4 feet wide and about 3 feet tall, was all tube, and had an 18" speaker and a couple of smaller speakers on both sides of the main one. We plugged two mikes and an electric guitar and an electric mandolin in the thing. Our lap steel player had a German built smaller amp that distorted quite a bit as I remember. The bassman played an upright with no amp. I really thought playing that way was great back then, who knows, maybe it was! JH in Va.

------------------
It's all on 12, who needs 20!

Bill Hatcher · From: Atlanta Ga. USA

You are talking about an entirely different sonic mindset in the 40s 50s and 60s.

Concerts and dances and meeting halls and such just were not amplified that loud, and had no reason to be. Let's take a big band for instance. With just a modest PA for the vocalist and a touch of piano any dance band could work just about any venue and be heard just fine.

If you talk about the late 50s and early 60s, a couple of Altec A7 cabs would put out plenty of vol for a concert up to a size of several thousand in a theatre.

The style of music has a whole lot to do with the amount of level needed in a live situation.

Rick McDuffie · From: Benson, North Carolina, USA

I can well remember when 2 Altec A7's and a Crown DC300 would enable you to play in a football field.

Monitors? Fuggedaboutit!

Ray Montee · From: Portland, Oregon (deceased)

During late 1940's thro' mid-1950's....I had the pleasure of playing for one of the most popular "dance halls" in the region. It was the Division Street Corral and all of the Opry Tours made it a point to play here on their travels thro' the Pacific Northwest.
It was a huge hall with an arched roof top and had not a single post on the dance floor. You could see the large beams that held the roof up as their was no false ceiling.
The PA System was about the size of a very small tackle box; perhaps 10" x 15" x
10" with a small Bakelite handle. It had maybe 5-7 tubes.

One mike was for the vocalists and the fiddler. The lead guitar and steel played "unmiked" thro' our amps.

The hall's speaker system was mounted in the overhead beams and consisted of (who knows how many!) small little speakers, measuring perhaps 4 to 6 inches.

The regular weekly crowds of 1,000-1,500 persons always had fun and never a complaint
about "loudness" or, not being able to hear clearly.

A far cry from todays heavy duty sound systems that are being used, including huge sized, multiple stage monitors, etc., even in the smallest of rooms of the day.

Not sure the "sound" has actually been improved by all of this electronic additions.

Gene Jones · From: Oklahoma City, OK USA, (deceased)

PA System...what's that? In the 1940's and early 1950's the mic was plugged into the steel player's amp (along with the guitar player who didn't own an amp)....Or whoever happened to own an amp!

...in the 1950's everything became "high-tech" with those big speaker cabinets on each side of the bandstand! ...but of course there was no one out front to monitor the sound so heaven help anyone who happened to dance past one of those speakers!

------------------

www.genejones.com
The Road Traveled "From Then 'til Now"

David Doggett · Posted 15 Jul 2005 4:40 pm

In the pre-electric guitar, big band era, if you needed more volume for a big venue, you just hired more horns. The best description I ever heard of Stan Kentons sound was, "he sounded like he hired a hundred guys, and they all showed up on time."

Ken Lang · From: Simi Valley, Ca

In the late '50s I had a Bogan amp and 2 12's for speakers that we put in home made cabinets that could be hooked together for carring. A Sure mike , the round grill type so familiar of that day.

In '58 my dad bought me a used Les Paul goldtop and a small amp-(don't remember the name of the amp) for $100.

Some of you Jamestown, NY folk might remember Joe Vario-a bass player-who my dad bought the stuff from.

The biggest dumb thing was trading the goldtop for a Jazzmaster which I traded off as well. Who knew?

My second goldtop I gave to No 1 son as a wedding present. At least that one will stay in the family.

Charlie McDonald · From: out of the blue

The old days are not so old for me (except I'd love to have A7's in my living room. My wife wouldn't.)
Best PA for small venues? Bose 800's, hands down. We swept the stage with a pair, working well as monitors, and no feedback.
NOW, they're old.

Papa Joe Pollick · From: Swanton, Ohio

My 1st PA was a little Bogan with 2 10's which we hung up on each side of the band-stand. 1 mic.The entire PA including amp,speakers,mic.,mic.stand,cables,was all packed in-to a compact case..Carried it in one hand..I felt like a a "STAR" when I got my Vocal Master..What was so "good" about the good old days? Oh yeah I remember,I had hair..P.J.

------------------
ZB DS10 3\4
Stringmaster D8
Nationals Rocket One 10 ,Chicagaon
Dobro 8 string
Strats,Teles,Gibson,Ibanezs
Old Fender & Gibson tube amps.Little bit of talent.

Jerry Gleason · From: Eugene, Oregon, USA

As a young lad in the mid-sixties, I remember that if you could afford a PA system for your budding rock & roll band, it usually consisted of a 35 watt or 60 watt Bogen amp and a pair of Atlas horns, which could all fit nicely in the back of your Mom's station wagon.

When the Shure Vocalmaster came along, it was a step up in sound quality, but probably not as loud as those big bull horns.

Tracy Sheehan · From: Fort Worth, Texas, USA

Back when i played in large western swing bands i don't remember what amps i had then.I never played in Bob Wills band but got to go to a few of his dances when he had a 14 or more piece band.You could sit five feet from the band stand and carry on a consvertation at a table.They went for quality back in those days,not volume.You either picked it or packed it. Reece?? Chime in here and tell em about it.lol Tracy

John Bechtel · From: Nashville, Tennessee, R.I.P.

If I remember correctly, when I started working with a band inthe mid-’50's, we considered ourselves very lucky if we had an old (used) Bogan P.A. Amp. and hopefully (2)-Shure(?) Mics! As for a steel-Amp. I had a Premier-88 (2)-piece Amp. and I think the guitar players probably used Gibson Amps. and I think the Bass-man used something he had put together himself, with a home-made speaker-cabinet containing a 15” Jensen Speaker or sometimes a Fender 4/10 Bassman Amp. Volume was pretty pleasing to the ears in those days!

------------------
“Big John” Bechtel
’04 SD–10 Black Derby w/3 & 5 & Pad
’49-’50 Fender T–8 Custom
’65 Re-Issue Fender Twin–Reverb Custom™ 15” Eminence
web site

Tony Prior · From: Charlotte NC

It's quite an amazing circle we have all been in..

Early systems were the compact Bogen or Shure type systems with two tall and thin ( 10" or 8" speakers ) cabinets . If we had 4 cabinets we "arrived"...

Then we all went on to bigger and better things. 2 Voice of the Theater cabs and perhaps a McIntocsh power amp with some sort of a multi channel preamp and feedback eliminators etc...

The McIntosh by itself weighed more than everything else in the band all together...

Then we realized we couldn't carry this stuff without Medical Insurance and a new Van so we got rid of the Voice of the Theaters and used some smaller cabs with a single 12"/horn or single 15"/horn as they were gaining popularity on the market..

Then we got rid of the McIntosh amps and went to large powered multi channel boards with effects etc..and started adding monitor amps and floor wedges.

Then we got sick of carrying that large powered board ( 36 " x 24" ) along with the monitor amps and ended up in 2005 with a Peavey, Behringer or Macki 600 or 800 watt compact ( 12" x 8" ) unit which handles the Mains and Monitors with multiple channels and effects, all the sends and returns you can imagine, it weighs 8 pounds and you carry it to the gig with one hand and a cup of coffee in the other hand both at the same time.

Just like the early Bogens and Shures !

t

ps..ok lets talk about Fender Twins now..

[This message was edited by Tony Prior on 18 July 2005 at 07:53 AM.]

Drew Howard · From: 48854

Jerry,

Great topic!

Speaking of full circle (at least for stage mic'ing) watch the Del McCoury Band work their one mic! They mix themselves!

cheers,
Drew

------------------

Drew Howard - website - Fessenden D-10 8/8, Fessenden SD-12 5/5 (Ext E9), Magnatone S-8, N400's, BOSS RV-3

Webb Kline · From: Orangeville, PA

The first PA we used when I was a kid in the 60's was a pair of EV Musicasters. They were metal casings, around 20 inches or so square, about 8 inches deep and mounted on stands. We used those EV "gun mics," and a Bogen amp. The day I moved up from my twin 12 Silvertone to a Fender Super was a day that shal remain in infamy for me. I was king-rat that day; yes I was I tellya!

[This message was edited by Webb Kline on 18 July 2005 at 03:39 PM.]

Rick McDuffie · From: Benson, North Carolina, USA

Webb, those gray tube Silvertone 212's weren't that bad!

Webb Kline · From: Orangeville, PA

Rick, I agree. My guitarist used a single 12 Silvertone tube amp for years as a preamp. It sounded great.

Unfortunately, my Silvertone twin was one of the "new, improved" solid state amps. Not exactly a Super Reverb.

[This message was edited by Webb Kline on 19 July 2005 at 05:23 AM.]

Jerry Hayes · From: Virginia Beach, Va.

At one point in the middle sixties I bought a Standel Artist 15 piggy back amp with a 15" JBL. It was a solid state and sounded pretty good as I remember but was just a tad muddy. I traded it straight across to a bass player who had a Silvertone all tube piggyback unit which had a speaker box with six 8" speakers in it and reverb in the head. It was a pretty decent sounding amp for sure. JH in Va.

------------------
It's all on 12, who needs 20!

Webb Kline · From: Orangeville, PA

After that came the Altec 1205 cabinets. Boy were we proud of those babies.

I read where Greg Mackie actually designed the SRM 450s based on the Altecs. I have a pair of 450s and they are about a 1/4 the size of the Altecs, much louder, and sound infintely better.