I had good gear, from the very beginning and built up a system slowly at first. I ran a Yamaha PM1000 16x4x2 (later replaced by a proper monitor board) on the stage and a PM2000 24x8x2 (later I expanded it to a 32 channel) for the house mix. I also had a couple of other boards that were great for clubs, a twenty four channel Peavey and a Allen and Heath (baby one 24x8). Lots of Yamaha, Crown, UREI, Alesis, White, dBx, Rane, and even some Peavey rack gear. Power was McIntosh at first, but as I expanded, I went with Crown and Yamaha power, mostly. Speakers were JBL, 4550s 4560s and eventually I bought some EV Eliminator bass bins, with eighteen inch drivers, for low end.
The EVs led me to learn about horn theory and I designed a dual fifteen "W" bin, for the JBL 2205 drivers, which I switched to, exclusively, and a couple of years later I had many of them, built. In addition, I made up the mid-bass horns, for the twelve inchers, to JBL spec, and away I went. Used a bunch of JBL baby butt cheeks, too, for near field venues, but mostly I used their bi-radial horns. I would have loved to use the Altec Mantaray horns, but I always had problems getting them.
I had mostly Shure SM57 and SM58, some Audio Technica, and few fancies, like Sennheisers, Nuehman, AKG, but the fancy ones were too fragile for "the road". SM58s rule! I also carried a number of accessories, like extra drum parts, Leslie speaker, Hammond B3, Marshall head, Fender Twin Reverb and a Rhodes, and other stuff I picked up used. My little junk pile saved the day more than once.
Some where along the line I ran into John Meyer and he got me interested in Linear Arrays and I studied up on how to make those work. I had gotten my first linear array system built, when I finally got so fed up with fighting, (the Nashville scene, at the time) that I made the decison to get out of it completely. Now, I look back and some of my mild autie behaviors got in my way, at times, but I had no idea what all that was about, back then.
No lights, though. I always subbed them out. I hate stage lights!
I had the idea that I might get back into it, for years, but I sold my vintage PM2000 last summer, to a guy in Nashville for his practice studio. I still have a few odds and ends, but all the valuable stuff went fast, in '89 when I gave it up. A lot of the gear was leased and it was easy to deal with, but I owned enough equity to keep a decent grubstake, for the future.
I still have a McIntosh MC2500, that I use on my HT LFE channel, across four fifteens. Five hundred watts per channel (Not impressive by modern standards, but it was tits in its day) and it will drive a 1/2 ohm load. I had six of them at one time, but I needed more power and went with Crowns at half the price per watt. The Mac still rocks:
(stolen pic)
I agree that Bob Ludwig could have done a marvelous job on the tapes from the Hendrix archives, but the family wanted to have the original guy re-do them for digital. (Not his realm) Another name I associate with the best in engineerig, or at least mastering, is Steve Hoffman. Rudy Van Gelder, too, but he's a jazz cat.
