What was your very first PA system?

[agedhorse]

Originally Posted by JRBLE

If my memory serves me (and it does this less and less as time moves on) Dynakit & Dynaco were the same thing except that one was in kit form and the other was preassembled at the factory. Is this correct?

Yes, Dynaco was the company and Dynakit was the kit products by Dynaco. IIRC they also had the name onthe front as Dynaco but were ordered as Dynakit.

[deadringer]

[quote=HCRobe;37265805]effects? The built in spring reverb isn't good enough for you??[/QUOTE

Well, as great as that reverb is, I'd like a little compression on the cheap, maybe a little echo/delay too.

[RoadRanger]

Around 1978 we started out with a pair of Bose 802's over a pair of 4 ohm Cerwin Vega 18" bass bins. A second pair of the 802's were added soon thereafter. We had a SpectroAcoustic 800 watt amp and a pre-DDT Peavey CS800 driven from a Furman xover that was driven by a kitbuilt Paia limiter. We had the Bose processor but sometimes just used a pair of Peavey triple piezo cabs on top instead (maybe before we got the second pair of Bose and/or the processor?).

The board was a Peavey Mark II/16 and we had a 15x3x100 Whirlwind snake.

The monitors were a Traynor 4x8" column lying along the front and a homebuilt 12" + piezo for the keyboardist all driven from one of them Peavey XR box mixers that could be used as a backup and for small gigs.

I had a 200w Heathkit bass amp driving a 2x15 on my side and a 1x15 on the other side of the drummer - don't remember if we mic'd up or DI'd the bass or not.

The keyboardist's wife babysat the mixer for us.

[madjack]

First (circa '69) was a Tennyck amp (150 watts/2x15) which was pa, bass amp & guitar amp.
Next was a '67 Bandmaster head into a Monkey Ward 6x10 cabinet.
Then bought two generic 4x12 columns, built two 3x10+Radio Shack horn colums, had a Shure M68 mixer driving two SWTPC Universal Tiger kit amps.
~'74 started using two Acoustic 150b cabs with Altec stadium horns and retired the columns.
Got the first "real" pa around '75; bought a Sunn Concert Controller II (8 channels, monitor feed, 9 band graphic and 150 watt power amp) and two Sunn 4x10 columns. (Used the columns as monitors.)
~'76 finally got some good speakers-Acoustic 811/812 system (bass cab with 4x15, horn cab with 100 watt driver on metal horn and 6xpiezo horns). Also first time I had real monitors - Kustom floor monitors loaded with EV SRO12s and EV horn. I still use the monitors, although I have since replaced the passive crossovers, and I still have the Sunn mixer.

[agedhorse]

I had some Northwest cabinets, built 4 of the EV TL's that were double 15 folded horns (big as a fridge) that sounded quite good. Other "shop built" cabinets too, but it became cheaper to buy new stuff than build them.

[ckcondon]

OK, I'll play. 1987-ish. 2 well used Peavey SP3's powered by a Fender 400w amp fed by a 12 channel mixer (can't even remember the brand). Never gigged with it, but it rocked the mini warehouse!

[sailorman]

Originally Posted by agedhorse

I had some Northwest cabinets, built 4 of the EV TL's that were double 15 folded horns (big as a fridge) that sounded quite good. Other "shop built" cabinets too, but it became cheaper to buy new stuff than build them.

Were those EV cabs the ones where you could get the plans from EV; say early 70's? I built one for the bass player. The instructions let you build it as 2 cabs with a 15" in each, sort of half the full cab as I recall.?

[Harmonycat]

I started DJing in 1975 and rented everything except the cassette decks. Powered Yamaha mixer and Yorkville "Cake Pans".

In the 80s I was up to 30 gigs a year and bought a Realistic mixer, a used Dynaco amp that was 200 rms a side and weighed 55 lbs., for the tops that I built from the Celestion Loudspeaker Handbook using RTT-50s and 12" Celestion Sidewinders rated at a staggering 150 watts rms. I had to calculate the crossover components and built them myself.

I bought a lightweight, (44 lbs), Yamaha 2100 and bridged it to a single W-bin that I also built from the handbook and loaded it with a Gauss 4580 or 4581 (can't remember....the 70's were good to me). I still have the amp.

I did not have an electronic crossover and used an EQ that I dropped all frequencies below 120 hz to the tops with and another EQ that I had all frequencies above 120 hz turned off. Crossovers were expensive.

Compared to all the other gear that guys were using it sounded amazing. It was pretty serious gear back then.

I yearned for a pair of JBL Cabaret series tops but in truth the Celestions that I built were smoother.

[agedhorse]

Past boards I owned going way back included an old, very limited Cerwin Vega 8 channel mixer, Tapco, Barnum Industries, Tapco, Kelsey, Yamaha. The Barnum was 16 channels, very limited but included a built in phaser effect and was custom built for a horn band in the late 60's. In it's custom case, it weighed over 200 lbs.

[rhat]

2 Kustom tuck and roll 4x10s and a kustom head. Tin box 3 pot mixer, with a gibson external echo reverb.

[soundministries]

Pair of JBL TR125 (?), an older Soundtech amp boat anchor, and a Peavey Unity 12 channel. Not the best set-up but it worked for what we needed at the time.

[Shaster]

I see a few mentions of the Tapco boards. My group purchased a used 6 channel Tapco with the (8?) channel expander in the late 70's. It was mounted in a heavy wooden homemade case. I seem to recall that the pots would freeze up, especially if it was cold (we played lots on the Cdn. praires).

We also later used a Dynaco amp with the Van Alstine mod.

[JRBLE]

Originally Posted by Shaster

I see a few mentions of the Tapco boards. I seem to recall that the pots would freeze up, especially if it was cold.

You remember well. When it was cold the pots would get MUCH stiffer (as if they had some kind of wax/grease in them (like super hydralic dampening)). Funny.

[agedhorse]

Yup, so stiff that they wouldn't turn. Funny now, not so funny then

[TimmyP]

A pair of very well done home made A7s loaded with EV SROs (no horns), driven by what ever could be borrowed. This was about '70 or '71. The SROs had been introduced very recently - they were more affordable than JBLs and a lot better than the "lifetime guarantee" units from Radio Shack.

[Bugzie]

LMAO 2 pairs of Klipsch LaScala's , I think it was an old Sunn mixer and a Macintosh tube amp that I think was rated at 100 watts. Bought the Klipsch's at an auction selling surplus from the local state university for something like $800. The Mac was picked up second hand and the mixer just appeared out of no where. I actually made money on that rig! I still have one set of functioning Lascala's and the amp was sold on Ebay 2 years ago for $1200. It was still in mint condition.