Dave Rat - Roadies in the Midst

The grueling part of the tour is done. We have done nothing but virgin stadiums and "throw and go" festivals so far. Now we have two load ins and two load outs left. Two days here in Manchester and four shows over 5 days in London and then home.

When I was a kid, I loved stereos. I loved speakers. Big speakers and power amps! I remember going with my dad to buy a receiver at Pacific Stereo and we picked on out that had 100 watts per channel, I could not wait to get home an turn it up, feel the power, push every button, feel the detents on the huge volume knob. It was not long before a slight difference of opinion regarding the preferred listening material and volume manifested itself. On one hand he favored a barely a audible duet of a flute and cello while I on the other hand felt Black Sabbath's War Pigs at full volume was more appropriate dinner music. Even the seemingly overly fair compromise of offering the soothing flute sounds of Jethro Tull's Aqualung played at 3/4 volume was rejected. We reached an insurmountable impasse and clearly his prejudicial stance left me with no other alternative than to silently rebel by huddling in the corner with headphones feeling connected and justified listening to CSNY's 4 Way Street album attempting to pick out all four guitar parts in Southern Man.

Well, I still have those headphones and 100 watts per channel, well, that is kind of like having lollipop in my pocket vs owning a candy store.

**** Start SoundNerdSpeak ****

Today c'mon, lets go look at power amps! We will start with subs. Here we have Stage left sub amps consisting of 6 Crest 7001's that each power 4 double 18" cabs. These amps develop over 2000 watts each in the configuration we run them. 12,000 watts and this is stage left and there is another 12K over on stage right.

Next in line is the power for the main system. Eighteen Crown MA5002VZ power amps that push around 5000 watts or so each, so figure 90,000 watts here plus the 4 MA3600's in the foreground driving another 12,000 watts and we can round that off to 100K in mains power on this side of stage.

And finally, the side wrap systems and center cluster is powered by Lab Gruppen 6400 amps on this tour and we see eight of those sitting next to the 6 XTA 428's acting as system processors. At around 4000 watts each the way we run them, lets toss in another 30,000 watts per side.

All in all, I am seeing around a 1/4 million watts laying around here. Ha ha, that would be roughly equal to twelve hundred and fifty of those Pacific Stereo receivers and if you stacked them all up it would be a tower over 500 feet high.

And now me and 20,000 of my closest friends gather together on a regular basis to listen to one of my all time favorite bands on big huge speakers!

And the rock show:

Pre rock stage shot:

And the other way

Scott the Lampi

And one of the perks of this whole rock things is the cool people I get to meet. Glen Hughes (Deep Purple Singer) is not only a rock legend, he is incredible down to earth, cool and an all around great person, a true honor. Glen recorded his latest CD at Chad's house and I went down and mixed one his shows a while back at House of Blues in Hollywood.

Dave Rat

MLTMGMMHFFA!