When did the giant amp setup’s become available? Did it already exist or were they manufactured specifically in response the the popularity of rock concerts?
If you look at pictures of the stage when the Beatles were playing stadiums it looks like a couple of practice amps. It couldn’t have been very loud for those in the upper stands even if there weren’t all the screaming girls.
Just a few years later in the early 70’s, bands like Zeppelin and the Who had huge setups and were known for being deafeningly loud. Did speaker/amp makers start buliding this stuff at band/promoters request?
Good question about chicken/egg and what motivated amp companies. Might want to start somewhere like here.
I’d guess that the advent of outdoor rock shows was a major drive. Beatles up to and including Candlestick '66 were surely underpowered, while Monterey Pop only a year later (and forty miles away) was well amplified, I think. So there’s your temporal focus: mid-'66 to mid-'67.
According to “Rock Harware”, a fascinating book about rock and technology, larger PA systems didn’t become practical until high-powered transistor amplifiers were developed in 1965. Musicians certainly tried before then to get high power systems, but the highest powered PA before 1965 was only 100 watts. Simply putting multiple PAs together just increased feedback problems due to poor frequency response. When the transistor amp came along it offered 200 watts in a single amp, and by 1967 festival PA systems were batching multiple amps to get 1000 watts of power.
I started this thread which is somewhat related regarding why concert sound used to suck and sucks less these days if that helps. There were good responses, some regarding the early age of sound reinforcement.
I started a thread a while back asking about the sound we hear on the video of The Beatles first live US appearance. From Wikipedia: “…on 11 February 1964, the Beatles’ first US concert took place, at Washington Coliseum, a sports arena in Washington, D.C. The concert was attended by eight thousand fans. The Beatles performed on a central stage in the arena, with the audience on all sides, and there were regular pauses to enable the band to turn their equipment around and perform facing in another direction.”
When I watched the video of the show, I couldn’t see any mics for the amps or the drums, so I wondered how we are able to hear them on the video. Re-watching later I noticed in one shot a lone microphone hanging in the air high above the small stage. Maybe the same mic that was lowered down for the announcer to announce the fighter’s names and stats before each of the boxing matches which were held in the venue.
As to question two, as others have pointed out 66’-67’ was a time period that saw huge changes in PA systems.
Altec-Lansing came out with the Voice of the Theater one of the first PA systems that could produce close to 100db of both lows and highs with little distortion
introduced in 65’ the Shure SM 57 was one of the first microphones that you could handle with little noise, take high sound pressure levels(high volume) and was rugged. We use them to this day as does the POTUS.
67’ saw the introduction of the Crown DC 300, an amplifier that was capable of producing 150watts per channel at 8ohms. This may not seem like much now but it paved the way because it was both powerful and portable.
All of this came together to make a perfect storm, bands got louder, PA systems got louder and clearer and the Rock Concert was born.
There is, of course, a lot more to this. Many more people and companies contributed products and technologies that shaped and changed the concert industry but the mid sixties were “that moment” when it all began.
For reference, an Altec A7 was part of a line of equipment called “Voice of the Theater”, an one or more A7 bass cabinet/midrange horn packages would typically be used as the sound in a movie theater.
