> LIVE SOUND HYDE PARK Speaker corner
London’s Hyde Park is one of the most iconic ‘venues’ in London. From the Rolling Stones’ famous concert in 1969 to Queen’s attendance-breaking performance and the Hyde Park Calling annual series of concerts, it has remained as one of the UK’s favourite places to see live music. Audio Pro takes a look at some gear and highlights from past gigs and talks to Sennheiser UK’s Mark Saunders about the issues involved in working in the Park…
AN AUDIO ARCHETYPE WEM founder and ‘Godfather of PA’ Charlie Watkins was the sound system supplier for the very first series of concerts held in Hyde Park. He recalls: “When the Rolling Stones played Hyde Park in 1969 I supplied 2,000-Watts of WEM PA on a slaving system, which meant that you could just leapfrog on as much power as you wanted in 100-Watt drops. In total, there were 20 WEM 100-Watt slaves, which were RCA- type, transformerless amps, each driving a loudspeaker
stack that comprised three horns in a thin column, tucked between two 4 x 12s – a bass 4 x 12 and a dual concentric mid- range 4 x 12.
“I did the Hyde Park concerts until about 1973. During that time, the system developed a fair bit. We started using horn- loaded bass bins, similar to what they do now with the line array format, which is a much lighter system – weight was always the big trouble. I built an exponential flare and drove it with a pair of push/pull 15s, with two 15s facing two 15s and a channel of about two inches in the middle to squirt the frequencies through a great big horn flare. “The systems they use over there nowadays are a bit out of my league. The horns have improved a great deal, with the innovations of companies such as Electro-Voice. We were lumbered with Rola Celestion horns. You couldn’t put a lot of power into those horns. And the mixers have improved, too. When we did the Stones in the Park, we used three WEM Audiomaster five-chanel mixers, which only gave us about 13 microphone inputs.
“But that was the basic WEM system in those days – the original system – and it suited the Stones just fine. I had a lovely telegram from Mick Jagger after we’d finished, saying: ‘Thanks for the marvellous sound on Sunday, they say could hear it in Edgeware’. Well that was seven miles away. They took us all around Europe with our gear after that. As you can imagine, it was a good commercial boost when people saw them using it.
“Chelsea and Morris took over the Hyde Park concerts in 1974. They had a ‘voice of the theatre’ type thing, which was very light and it really put out, too.”
30 audioPRO May 2011
www.audioprointernational.com
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