Pa-systems in the "good old days"

Max Laine · From: Pori, Finland

As everything else "vintage" seems to be reissued these days (guitars, amps etc) and certain people rave over vintage equipment, drums, saxophones (and even steel guitars!)etc. etc., no-one speaks a word about the old PA equipment! There has been books about vintage gear, guitars mostly, but not a single article on PA gear. I would like to know something about the stuff, what was it like, and especially was the PA provided "by the house" or did all the bands carry their own equipment like they do now? All the old pictures show only one or two microphones with the cords disappearing somewhere... I understand instrument amplifiers were sometimes used to amplify vocals, how common was this? What kind of pickups/microphones were used for fiddles and pianos?
I know there are gentlemen in this forum who have "been there" in the fifties and sixties, I'd like to hear your recollections! Let us know what the equipment was like in those honky tonks, dance halls etc.
If you know any links about old PA gear please let me know!

Max

Jack Stoner · From: Kansas City, MO

The "good old days" were not really that good. I started working in bands in 1959. We used a guitar amp for a PA and had one microphone for the singer. Back then it was OK but and bands did not play loud like they do today. The PA systems of the 60's and early 70's were great in their day, such as the Altec systems but by today's standards they were not that great in power or fidelity. Microphones also left a lot to be desired and many were omni directional and feedback was more of a problem.

I was working as an electronics tech and doing amplifier repair in the late 60's and early 70's and I had plenty of repair business back then.

I don't want to go back to the "good old days".

Fred Murphy · From: Indianapolis, In. USA

In the middle sixties we use a Bogen amp, about 35 watts, I believe, and a couple of outside horn type speakers, with one microphone. No Effects of any kind and a lot of feedback. It wasn't very good, but neither was anyone elses' that I knew. When Kustom came out the the 500 PA system, we thought we had died and gone to heaven. It was the first good one we had and used. No one even thought about monitors back then, we were lucky to just have a PA of any kind.

Donny Hinson · From: Glen Burnie, Md. U.S.A.

I junked my old Bogen many years ago, but I still sometimes use my old Fender 6-channel solid state unit. I guess it's about 25 years old, but it still works great! My old Shure "Vocalmaster" is still around here somewhere (that one's over 30 years old, but it 'shure' was purty, with that backlit front panel!)

Dan Tyack · From: Olympia, WA USA

I played many a country fair in the old days with the only PA being a Shure 'Vocal Smasher'. THose sure weren't the good old days.

But those little Marshall PA heads make great rock and roll amps!

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www.tyacktunes.com

Ken Lang · From: Simi Valley, Ca

Oh, man. Bogen amps. Totally forgot about those things. I had one as a kid in the mid 50's and with a friend's fathers help built triangle speaker boxes that would latch together for carrying, using stuff from the local hardware store. There was no such thing as reverb then so it was all straight from the box.

By the late 60's we were using altec-lansing voice of the theater components-speaker, cross over, and seperate horn. Ea set cost nearly 200 dollars, so we built our own cabinets, based on the regular voice of the theater design. They were about 3 ft square and took 2 people to carry one cabinet, with similar hardware store handles on each side.

When the band trailer was down, I carried one on the roof rack of my Mustang. Pulling out of a motel with a low underpass I forgot about the cabinet. It ripped the rack off the car and the whole shebang smashed to the ground. I think the asphalt had the worst of the deal. The cabinet was scratched, but worked just fine. To this day I still have the componets of one in my shed, minus cabinet.

Tim Rowley · From: Pinconning, MI, USA

Prior to the 1970's, many of the old honky-tonk places had their own "house" systems, generally consisting of a 35W Bogen (or similar make) tube-type PA amplifier, one old cheap speaker baffle up in the corner with a 12" Quam (or similar make) awful-sounding speaker in it, and one banged-up Astatic, Electro-Voice, DuKane, Turner, or Shure microphone permanently mounted to a mic stand. Everything was Hi-Z of course, the mic cable was always taped-up with friction tape and had a short in it, and the cable connectors were the old troublesome screw-ring Amphenols. But hey, we thought we were in heaven. Three guys (all right, occasionally a woman) would crowd in close around that mic and make some great music!

When I began to get serious about playing music, the early Shure Vocal Master PA was new on the market but I could never have afforded to purchase one back then. So I went to Lansing and bought a 100W Bogen amplifier (big guns!) that probably came out of some church or army barracks and also a cheap 4-channel mic mixer. I sent away and got 4 of those fold-up suitcase type speaker baffles and put some decent 12" speakers in them. I ran heavy-gauge "juke box" zip cord for speaker cables. With four 8-ohm speakers wired series/parallel, the system ran at a nominal 8 ohms impedence. We would hang the baffles up on the wall or on the support posts in the joints where we were pickin'. We never ran more than three microphones in those days, because the so-called cardioid pattern mics of yesteryear seemed even more feedback-prone than an omni-directional mic is nowdays. Monitors were something completely unheard of!

When the "Tijuana tuck-n-roll" Kustom PA systems hit the market, we purchased a so-called "150 watt" 4-channel system complete with tubular chrome-plated legs and all. If we needed a monitor, we would run a cord to a guitar amp. We considered this a professional system! Several guys in our area bought the little "Kasino" PA systems that came out at the same time. These units were built by the same firm that built the Kustoms. They were a pretty darn good little unit in their day.

I dealt the old Bogen head off 25 years ago and never missed it. The Bogens ran about 15% T.H.D., that's why they sounded so "edgey". With a good microphone they WOULD cut through a noisy crowd though. I still have the four fold-up speaker baffles up in the rafters of my garage. They are in surprisingly good shape after all these years but the speakers themselves are long-gone. If I can get four decent full-range 12" speakers someday, I may bring these old baffles out of retirement for nostalgia sake. Certainly it won't be for the sake of good sound, these old baffles sound about like some old WW-II military system in a mess hall quonset (crackle, crackle, squeal, "ALL RIGHT, NOW HEAR THIS", squeal, crackle), and will rattle at certain frequencies. But this old stuff was all we had back then, and it was pretty reliable. It was "good enough" until the better equipment came along! Tim R.

Lefty · From: Grayson, Ga.

My first group saved our money and bought the Kustom 4 channel 150, it had the chrome head stand, and 2 columns with 4 12" speakers in each. The red sparkel tuck and roll was an eye cacher, and it sounded good for the time, with reverb for each channel. Wish I still had it just to look at.
Lefty

John Lacey · From: Black Diamond, Alberta, Canada

The P.A. du jour in the 70's in my potato patch was the Shure Vocalmaster. I went to see John Hughey backed by Conway Twitty once in Massey Hall and they had the same P.A. Was it adequate? Not!!

John Russell · From: Austin, Texas

I missed out on the Bogen era but began my career around 1971 when the Sure Vocalmaster was the standard.

For you young guys who "missed" it, The Sure system was a large powered mixer, tube driven if I recall, with four channels and a reverb spring. Hi-impedance, of course. (I guess this was for guitarists who lacked an amp and needed to plug in somewhere.) The output was around 100W. Feedback was a problem. Mikes were dicey. EQ control was non-existant, effects: forget it. Monitors were something we'd heard about but never actually seen. The speakers these tall skinny columns each had 4 to 6 "speakers", no horn tweeters, no bass ports. The sound was really lame. Well it was once we heard Altec Voice of the Theatre speakers driven with decent power and a mixer.

The first PA I owned was an old Kustom 150 4-channel with two column speakers, each had four Utah speakers (maybe CTS). Also hi-impedance. A better system than the Sure, but crude by today's standards. Mine was black tuck and roll vinyl.

A valid point mentioned earlier was that we didn't play nearly as loud as most concert and dance bands do today. Steel players sounded fine thru their 90W Twins and bass players didn't need 400 watts of power. The standard bass amp of the late 60s was the 50W Fender Bassman. Nobody needed to mike up the drums then either. Monitors were almost unnecessary. You could pretty much hear the vocals coming out of the mains.

Nobody in their right mind would go back to those crude systems but I do miss the simplicity of the gear and the mellow, low volume of music.

John

John Russell · From: Austin, Texas

Oops, Make that Shure Vocalmaster.

Jim Mathis · From: Overland Park, Kansas, USA

Max, I think you get the idea. The reason you don't hear much about "Vintage" PA's is that they were all pretty lousy. I went the through the Bogen era and had a big Kustom, too. One of the biggest changes in the last twenty years is good PA systems, and at bargain prices compared to the 50's, 60's and 70's.

Max Laine · From: Pori, Finland

Many thanks for everyone for your input, great stories! It’s surprising that companies like Fender didn’t offer any kind of PA until the late 60’s…
I’m still wondering what did the “professional” bands in the 50’s use, for example Bob Wills’ Texas Playboys? I know they “field tested” Fender amps but did they carry a PA?

Max

John Russell · From: Austin, Texas

Which reminds me, I saw Willie Nelson right after I moved to Austin in '73 play on a flat bed trailer using a Shure Vocalmaster. It was in the repair shop at McMorris Ford of all places and the Shure sound was pretty thin but the vibe was good.

Jimmy Day was with him at that time, playing his Sho-Bud thru a ragged sounding Twin but playing real soulful.

JR

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