What PA did Cliff (and Shadows) use in old days?

[Paul Childs]

When bands started to use their own P A s it became more expensive and unaffordable for any newcomers to get started (exept for the few spoilt ones whose family were on a high income) as equipment has always been too overpriced.
I can just remember back in 1961-62 seeing a local Cliff & The Shadows type band and there was only one mic for the lead singer and it was plugged into a separate combo amp beside him at the front of the stage. Don't know what it was but it probably wasn't very powerful for that period.
It was easier to get started back then as no one else had masses of equipment either.
I saw Cliff & The Shadows in March 1965 at the London Paladium in 'Alladdin' and we were 3 boxes up at the front on the left of the stage (only seats available due to cancellations) and I could hear the sound of Brian's drums & cymbals first hand almost below us and not miked. Also the three AC30s were not miked either and Cliff, Hank & Bruce were using the house mics that used to rise up and down at the front of the stage.
The sound being basic that way made it really 'live' and to hear it all accurately you could always play the records any other time.

[noelford]

In the sixties, our vocals went straight to the PA with no effects whatsoever.

[dave robinson]

Would there be any advantage to playing in a venue for 250 people or so without micing the amps? That's an appealing idea to me, but I realize the acoustic guitar would go through the PA and usually the bass guitar too, so that leaves only the lead amp.

Andy

As most of our gigs are up to only about 400 people these days, we never mike up the amps, we do it the old way as Cliff and The Shads used to do, but we carry our own PA as well as the backline, with the acoustic guitars going through there own acoustic amps. On rare occasions I put a kick and overhead on the kit. It has proved successful and our audiences love it. Over the last twelve years or so whilst being on this scene, I have rarely heard a sound engineer get it anywhere near 'right' at any of the events I have played on or visited. The exception being a couple of times at Shadowmania 2005/2006. Even on the Shadows concerts of 2004/5 I think that the sound overall was 'acceptable' at best. 99% of punters complained about the bass being intrusive and Hanks guitar sound being wooly.
It is difficult to find an engineer with 'ears' these days, they are mostly bass heavy knob twiddlers.

Sorry Dave, I am not familiar with some of the expressions you used -- and I am very interested.
When you say that you put a "kick and overhead on the kit" I assume that you mean that you place a mike on the bass drum and over the entire drum kit. Is that correct? What do you mean by "backline" . . . would that be the rhythm section, ar just the bass and rhythm?

Yes Andy you understood perfectly about the Kick Drum microphone and the overhead. When we do need to boost the sound of the drums, we use an AKG D12 on the kick (bass) drum and an AKG C1000 overhanging the centre of the kit. I must stress that this isn't too often though as we prefer small theatres which are not only easy to fill with people, but are very intimate ensuring a good band to audience interaction. Our back line consits of a couple of guitar amps (AC30 or Fender Blues Deluxe/Deville) with a 2 x 10 Mark Bass combo and a couple of Fishman/AER acoustic amps. The PA is normally two x Bose L1 rigs fed by a 16 channel Dynacord Powermate mixer with EV S200 monitors. Sometimes we just use the Dynacord Powermate with 4 x EV S200 speakers as front of house - it depends on the venue. To date we have had nothing but compliments about the sound and comfort of listening from the audience.

[Pat Seaman]

Just for reference, our band's PA consisted of a Selmer Treble & Bass 50 amp, running into 2x Vox 4x10 columns.

The lead vocalist used a Shure Unidyne mic through a Watkins Copicat and the backing vocals used those horrible old Reslo ribbon mics.

We were really pleased with that set-up, which gave a clean, crisp sound and which had a good spread, due to the use of column speakers.

The only things that let us down were the ribbons in the Reslo mics, which failed with monotonous regularity each time somebody blew into them and said "Is this working?"................Yeah, it was until you blew into it!

Pat.

[RayL]

But what about echo devices used for vocals? Surely the singers and groups of the late fifties and the sixties did not sing without at least some echo or reverb. After all, there were so many good PA systems around at the time, with fabulous tape echoes; in fact most of the Meazzis and Binsons and others were made for PA rather than for guitar.

The starting point for a good vocal PA is a good vocal mic - and there weren't any in the late '50s or early '60s! The Shure Unidyne III (forerunner of the SM57) started to appear from the USA in the mid-60s but before that the mics were rotten - fragile and prone to feedback. A lot of bands used the Reslo ribbon, a figure-of-eight mic with low output and with a fragile ribbon that the more adventurous would attempt to repair with the silver foil from a cigarette packet.

Another mic often used for vocals was AKG's D19 - a nice mic for recording but which relied on the slots down the stem to give it directional quality - cover them with a hand and wheee! goes the howlround (you can see them in the early Beatles films). Even crystal mics were sold by music shops as being suitable for vocals

Having rotton or unsuitable mics limited the amount of vocal volume (because of howlround), so the idea of anything as sophisticated as echo or reverb was not even thought about. Besides, all the gear had to be carried by the band themselves.

Does anyone (come on Jim, George, Hoffers . . . .) know when The Shadows first had a roadie?

Ray

[cockroach]

I would think that the best PA systems back then were European- Dynachord, Meazzi etc.

They were the first setups I ever saw and/or used (about mid-late '60's onwards) here in Australia, that had proper PA speakers and mixer amps, plus tape echo for vocals.

Often they were used by bands with migrant members from Europe who obviously knew about these brands and got them from dealers who imported them.

The rest of us folk (Aussies and UK migrants) used or hired either home made stuff, traditional valve PA setups hired for sports events etc, or gear which was pretty much guitar amps and speakers.

Our PA from 1967 was an Aussie made Goldentone setup- basically the usual 60 w valve guitar amp head with tapered screw in legs like a coffee table (the amp had two channels, four inputs like a Fender copy, with reverb and tremolo) and two columns each with 3x12 inch speakers.

[flingelbunt]

I saw Cliff & the Shadows at the Ritz cinema in Luton in around 1963. Their amps were definitely not miked up and all the vocals went through the in-house PA, which looked like a thin upright set of speakers either side of the stage; the individual speakers looked as if they were 8" diameter, but that could be my memory going you know (!) ..... now what was I talking about? ..... oh, yes, and the screaming Clifettes around me easily drowned out the overall sound from the stage!! John Rostill was on bass, and Brian Locking met the boys backstage in Luton- I have a cutting from the Luton News that week to prove it!

Far cry from the 10k+ rigs in use these days!!

Maurice
Lord Flingel of Buntshire MBE (My Burns Exquisite...!)

[ecca]

And...... armed only with your AC 15 and a 50 watt Marshall PA still they told you to turn it down.

[noelford]

If memory serves,our last PA, back in the sixties, was a Grampian 100W. The odd thing is that bands – sorry, GROUPS – in those days were ear splittingly loud with what would, today, be regarded laughable wattage.

[noelford]

Ha! You're SO right, Ecca. I remember once, taking our gear into the Working Men's Club we were playing and the Entertainment Secretary pointed at my AC30 and said ,"You'll only need one of those,lads, it's a small club."

Anyone remember the special sockets we were supposed to plug into which cut the power if volume peaked over a certain level? We got around that with very long extension cables that plugged into the normal sockets in our dressing room.