Another 60s flashback system photo...

Lee Brenkman

Lee Brenkman

Junior
Jan 13, 2011
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Oakland California USA
Here, courtesy my friend AC Smith, here's a shot of the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival showing the stage right speaker rig.

The boxes with the reddish "television screen" grill cloth are Altec "utility" cabinet that could have been fitted with either a 604 coaxial speaker or a model 515 15 inch woofer.

Since there are two of them, under a model 1003 multicell horn I'd guess they have the woofers inside.

The A7 cabinet has a long throw model 203 horn on top and the cabinet on the onstage side of the A7 with the horn on the bottom is a model 9844 studio monitor for "near fill" coverage.

All pretty standard McCune inventory in those days. They'd been doing the Monterey Jazz Festival for nearly a decade by then and probably used a similar set up for that in the mid 60s.

I attribute my memory of all this to not really "taking part" in some of the recreational activities of that decade.

cheers,
gramps
 

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Re: Another 60s flashback system photo...

Whoa! Great picture. I like how the lady from the future in the lower left is texting.

What is the contraption in the center top that is partially out of the frame?
 
Re: Another 60s flashback system photo...

Jack Arnott said:
Whoa! Great picture. I like how the lady from the future in the lower left is texting.

What is the contraption in the center top that is partially out of the frame?
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She looks like the dolly tart alien in the White House in Tim Burton's Mars Attacks!

Isn't the contraption an old-style theater light switching system?
 
Re: Another 60s flashback system photo...

There's a theater here in town with Altec 816 home brew boxes in it that have HF horns stuff in the mouth of the cone's horn. By today's standards, they don't sound too great. The don't extend down very low and don't extend very high either.
 
Re: Another 60s flashback system photo...

Yes, it is Big Brother and The Holding Company with Janis Joplin. This is the show that "made her famous". The audience reaction was so overwhelming that the band was added to the evening performance the next day.

Yes, that is the Monterey Arena's "lighting package" top center in the picture and it was one heavy mother!

But we were all a lot younger then.

Yes, 203 horns will throw a lot of vocal bandwith sound a long way. They were also the least "colored" sounding of the big Altec multi-cells.

And the A7-500s that "insprired" the home brew cabinets that Greg describes did not go down much at all below 80 hz at any "contemporary" volume but those 808 HF drivers would go up to at least 16 kHz but not for long at Rock and Roll volume levels. Maybe those home brew cabinets have some other kind of phenolic driver on their horns

But I don't think the girl lower left is actually texting ;-)
 
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Re: Another 60s flashback system photo...

Frank Koenig said:
View attachment 7265
My first "real" speakers used Altec 515Bs. Note the 35W power rating, modern sensitivity spec, and low Fs.

The HF consisted of Altec 802D drivers on Altec 511B horns. Circa 1973.

--Frank
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We used to drive each pair of 515s with a model 1569 amp, Eighty Watts RMS from four EL34 tubes.

Four 802, or 808 drivers (the 16 ohm versions) on each 1569.

Two 288 drivers on 1003 or 202 horns on each amp.
 
Re: Another 60s flashback system photo...

Lee Brenkman said:
We used to drive each pair of 515s with a model 1569 amp, Eighty Watts RMS from four EL34 tubes.

Four 802, or 808 drivers (the 16 ohm versions) on each 1569.

Two 288 drivers on 1003 or 202 horns on each amp.
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Hifi guys called the 1569 "the poor man's Marantz 9".

I've got a pair of 1570Bs just gathering dust. 160W monsters. The big 811A output triodes glow like light bulbs.
 
Re: Another 60s flashback system photo...

Dave Barnett said:
Hifi guys called the 1569 "the poor man's Marantz 9".

I've got a pair of 1570Bs just gathering dust. 160W monsters. The big 811A output triodes glow like light bulbs.
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We had a pair of those later on when we changed the 15s in the bass cabinets to JBL D140s.

They lit up impressively and, when used in the shop for "recreational playback", took the chill off of the space under my workbench nicely ;-)

Dave, have you ever seen one the very early Ampeg SVTs with, if I remember correctly, SIX 811A output tubes?
 
Re: Another 60s flashback system photo...

Lee Brenkman said:
We had a pair of those later on when we changed the 15s in the bass cabinets to JBL D140s.

They lit up impressively and, when used in the shop for "recreational playback", took the chill off of the space under my workbench nicely ;-)

Dave, have you ever seen one the very early Ampeg SVTs with, if I remember correctly, SIX 811A output tubes?
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Earliest SVTs I've seen had 6146 outputs. They have top caps like the 811As, but they're beam tetrodes, not direct-heated triodes like the 811s.

The fun part of the 1570 is that the B+ is just shy of a kilovolt.

I would LOVE to see an amp with six 811As. Or something even more impressive like 211s or 845s.
 
Re: Another 60s flashback system photo...

Dave Barnett said:
Earliest SVTs I've seen had 6146 outputs. They have top caps like the 811As, but they're beam tetrodes, not direct-heated triodes like the 811s.

The fun part of the 1570 is that the B+ is just shy of a kilovolt.

I would LOVE to see an amp with six 811As. Or something even more impressive like 211s or 845s.
Click to expand...

My understanding that the 818A equipped SVTs were made in the prototype stage and that a mixture of those and the 6146 version were sent out with the Rolling Stones. The 818s were, "on paper" more powerful but the 6146s "sounded louder". Keith Richards found a way to drive his 6146 SVTs hard enough that an alarm about long term reliability arose and they quickly changed to the 6550s for the main production runs.

A pair of those prototype 811A SVTs were shipped to the sound company where I worked. The owner was interested in possibly adapting the power stage to a PA amp to replace his 1570s and hoping that Ampeg would sell him that part of the amp in quantity for him to re package.

That deal never worked out for a number or reasons and he, and Charlie Butten eventually designed and built their own "proprietary" 400 watt per channel transistor amps.
 
Re: Another 60s flashback system photo...

Lee Brenkman said:
My understanding that the 818A equipped SVTs were made in the prototype stage and that a mixture of those and the 6146 version were sent out with the Rolling Stones. The 818s were, "on paper" more powerful but the 6146s "sounded louder". Keith Richards found a way to drive his 6146 SVTs hard enough that an alarm about long term reliability arose and they quickly changed to the 6550s for the main production runs.

A pair of those prototype 811A SVTs were shipped to the sound company where I worked. The owner was interested in possibly adapting the power stage to a PA amp to replace his 1570s and hoping that Ampeg would sell him that part of the amp in quantity for him to re package.
Click to expand...

Neato!

I bet the real reason they axed the 811A SVT is that The Stones' lighting tech complained that he couldn't black out the stage.
 
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