that sucks. paul fucking mccartney, of all people, gave me tinnitus.
I friend of mine used to have a Vox/Hofner combo. That thing would fucking kill you!
I doubt if he can still hear much.
well, the hofner didn't kill me. his fucking techs did--the sound was awful to the point where i considered leaving. but in the end, i couldn't resist the beatles stuff and so i was punished.
Please, tell me you didn't go to a modern day concert without hearing protection.
It only takes one.
Dawg, what model of Vox amp? Do you remember?
Also, When I ran sound, I would do soundcheck w/o plugs, and then use a set that removed 12DB off the top end during the show. I always wanted to find a set of earplugs that reduce volume and maintain flat frequency response.
Another thing about loud shows, in 1992, I managed to score free tickets to see Kiss. I saw the size of the PA system that they were using then, ( I think it was either a Showco PRISM, or a Clair Bros. system in Grey Ozite) and figured that I would be best off pretty much front and center, thinking that their system was fairly directional, and I'd be out of harms way. --Boy, was I wrong, my ears rang for two days after.
I don't remember the model, but I remember it was a hybrid, with tube pre and transistor power. It was only two fifteen inch drivers in the cabinet, but he had also replaced the speakers with JBL D130s and later K130s (actually I did it for him, because he was too dangerous with tools). I can't remember which tubes it used but they weren't very big at all. It always got hot as hell!
It sounded really a lot cleaner and more punchy with the JBLs, which he liked, but with the Celestions in there, it had a fuzz bass sound that was better than anything else I had heard, unless you plugged your bass into a Marshall stack. Did that in the studio sometimes. Take a direct line off the instrument and compress it heavily to get the body, then mix it with a lightly, almost uncompressed Marshall sound breaking up on accents.
BTW, I never found a set of earplugs that would maintain flat sound. I tried everything on the market, too. I mixed without them, during sound checks, but I wore them all night. I had a 1/6 octave UREI analyser from the seventies plus my rack mounted scope that would allow me to scientifically set average volumes and an occasional open ear peak at the sound to clear up nuances kept me going. I got used to mixing with plugs, eventually and kept them in all night, except for a short listen every so often. I also had some big closed cell AKG Studio headphones that cut about twelve dB out of the overall SPL, but they weighed like five pounds or something.
Some of those old Showco systems used the Altec Mantaray horns for mids and highs. A very cool design, that had an acoustical center midway between the mouth and the throat of the horns. Most horns have an acoustical center that is just forward of the throat entrance. It's also called the "apparent apex" of directivity. Having it farther forward allowed them to stack the horns closely and get near perfect 180
o coverage, with a very fast roll-off beyond that.
