3 ms·

> It was totally impractical to tour with and they lost money doing so. The whole system travelled in two articulated lorries; but it took so long to set up th

> It was totally impractical to tour with and they lost money doing so. The whole system travelled in two articulated lorries; but it took so long to set up that eventually they used four lorries, and two systems. One set would be for tonight's gig, the other would be on the road to tomorrow's gig, or starting to set up. I think the mikes for the vocals were three mikes, not two (you can see triple mikes in The Grateful Dead Movie). I can't remember the rationale for using three mikes. The movie also shows the WoS being set up, under the direction of Ramrod, with Garcia gently urging him to get the speaker stacks hauled up higher, because that would be "really cool".

TylerE 2y ago
The problem wasn’t so much the raw amount of gear, is that it was bunch of small components that weren’t particularly well integrated. A lot cabling to run every night, etc. They had to more than doh le the size of their crew, Which was the biggest expense.
ssl-3 2y ago
The reason for three mics when filming might have been this: Two for the PA, and one for recording. It's still very common to use largely-separate signal chains for the PA, and for recording (and/or broadcast). These days we often do it with analog or digital splits, but analog splits can [still] be problematic and digital splits didn't exist yet back then. Analog splits might have been particularly problematic when the source is two microphones fighting eachother. And it's often [still] the case that a microphone that works well for PA is not a microphone that is ideal for non-PA use. (Sure, we like to think of live recordings or broadcasts as being "being there," but that's almost never actually the case. When recording and/or broadcast is involved, those things are often handled as separately as is practical -- often with gear and engineers that are outside of the walls of the venue. This allows the FOH folks to get it sounding good in the room, the recording folks to get it sounding good on tape/DAW, and the broadcast folks to get it sounding good on radio/TV. They're different goals, and they've each got different approaches.)

TylerE 2y ago

The problem wasn’t so much the raw amount of gear, is that it was bunch of small components that weren’t particularly well integrated. A lot cabling to run every night, etc. They had to more than doh le the size of their crew, Which was the biggest expense.

ssl-3 2y ago

The reason for three mics when filming might have been this: Two for the PA, and one for recording. It's still very common to use largely-separate signal chains for the PA, and for recording (and/or broadcast). These days we often do it with analog or digital splits, but analog splits can [still] be problematic and digital splits didn't exist yet back then. Analog splits might have been particularly problematic when the source is two microphones fighting eachother. And it's often [still] the case that a microphone that works well for PA is not a microphone that is ideal for non-PA use. (Sure, we like to think of live recordings or broadcasts as being "being there," but that's almost never actually the case. When recording and/or broadcast is involved, those things are often handled as separately as is practical -- often with gear and engineers that are outside of the walls of the venue. This allows the FOH folks to get it sounding good in the room, the recording folks to get it sounding good on tape/DAW, and the broadcast folks to get it sounding good on radio/TV. They're different goals, and they've each got different approaches.)