Knowing that this massive system was designed and built by a hodge-podge group of roadies and friends of the band, Kruetzmann’s reluctance is understandable.īasically, the Wall of Sound was six separate sound systems mashed together into 11 individual channels. When drummer Bill Kruetzmann saw the massive winch resting over his drum kit for the first time he refused to play until his kit was moved forward out of the danger zone. The stacks were too high for hand-stacking so a winch and lift system was devised. Weighing in at 75 tons, it took four semi-trailers to transport.įorty-eight MacIntosh MC-2300 amps produced 28,800 Watts of continuous RMS power (48 x 600) that powered 586 JBL speakers and 54 Electro Voice tweeters.
The logistics were so difficult that two Wall of Sounds were built so that the systems could leap-frog each other to the next shows: One would be setup and performing at that night’s show while the other was traveling and getting set up at the next venue. The Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound was so large it took a team of 21 roadies four hours to set up the speakers and another four hours to wire them all up. You can still spy this system on concert videos all the way up until the early 1990s! Truly, modern concert sound was invented with this singular bit of ingenuity. The two signals were then run through a differential summing amp which eliminated any of the common sounds between the two mics – including the feedback.
Owsley and his team devised an ingenious two-mic system: The singer would sing into the top mic while the bottom mic (taped to the stand just a few inches below the vocal mic) would pick up all the other sounds.
Until DSP came around, things like mitigating onstage feedback were nearly impossible except for placing the microphone in the very tight onstage spaces where feedback didn’t occur. The first technical hurdle the Dead’s sound team encountered because of the rear placement of the speakers was feedback from the onstage vocal mics.
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