Tempus Fugit: Making “The Green Monster” Come Alive In Vegas

From Robert Scovill:

This was just a really cool thing to participate in. To get to go back to my days with the Gamble EX56 and recreate the first virtual sound check rig I ever assembled in 1994 was really a trip down memory lane. To be allowed to mix live multi-tracks from Def Leppard’s Pyromania tour at the peak of their wave of popularity just took the whole exercise over the top for me.

It was very fun to recall what we actually accomplished in those days with the technology of the era. The first rude awakening was, “Wait, this is only 24 tracks!” because it was a recording done on 24-track, 2-inch tape in 1983.

Even with the advent and domination of digital consoles, I’ve continued to mix analog for certain types of shows through the years and it’s always a reminder of not only where we’ve been, but how far we have come. It’s a stark reminder of what was good and what challenges we were able to conquer with digital consoles.

Robert Scovill

As a community of passionate users, it’s very easy to fall in love with the romance of our analog past. But for me, when I get back on an analog project and it starts to grow in complexity, the analog format’s shortcomings show themselves very quickly. I immediately start yearning for features and abilities that we now take for granted on even the least capable digital console.

The KF750 was always a mysterious PA system to me. At the time of its release, given the spec and how it was arrayed, etc., I just couldn’t quite get my head around it. So I was pretty excited when Bernie started formulating this restomod idea and decided to actually bring it to fruition. Even more so when he asked me to get involved.

The night before we showed it, it was amazing how quickly we as a team seemed to get the drive and system pre-equalization up and going on this box, and in turn, the arrays. It really was like a racing team in the garage, late on the night before the big race, magically finding some gold in the engine or suspension setup and then killing it during the race the next day.

The Celestion AxiPeriodic driver was the revelation for me in this project. I’ve never heard anything quite like it in all my days of listening to PA systems. It took me a few listens to really grasp what I was hearing and experiencing.

Because of the frequency range of this driver, there was a “clarity” or “cleanliness” to the low-mid element in the system that was very easily achievable. The low-mids of the vocals, the fundamental of the snare, and the low-mids of the bass guitar were just so evenly represented and easy to sort out – literally no EQ short of a high-pass filter below 100 Hz. That’s unheard of in the vast majority of systems both then and today.

Usually that area takes some work and skill to really tidy up with cone drivers. I was speaking to Kenton Forsythe (of EAW) about it at one of the events and he quickly summed it up in classic Forsythe fashion: “Yeah, it’s just that the driver is so fast at the low-frequency range.” Absolutely.

Drum monitors, wedges, speakers on sticks – my goodness that would be something. I’d also love to hear a big, powered two-way box with that driver and a pair of 15-inch cones. And can you say soffit-mounted control room monitors? Heck yes.