Sussing Out Sound Systems

Fender fans will be delighted to hear that Leo Fender and company have come up with a brand new guitar to top their solid body line. It’s theTelecaster Deluxe and despite its ultra clean styling, it has a number of interesting features incorporated into its design. The most important is the revised bridge system which has six individually movable sections. This means that the guitarist can adjust each string for both length and height very easily, allowing custom settings as far as feel and string action are concerned.

The neck on the Telecaster Deluxe is the usual one piece maple unit, but it has less of a curve radius than any other Fender guitar to date, meaning that the neck is very, very thin, allowing easy chording. The solid body has been contoured so that it will hang easily against the guitarist’s body and the machine heads are chrome plated and heavy duty.

The controls and pickups are well placed on this guitar. On the non-cutaway side there is a three position selector for quick selection of either pickup or both together. Each pickup has its own volume and tone control and the pickups themselves are humbucking in design. The Telecaster Deluxe is available in walnut, sunburst, blond, black and natural finishes. Check your local dealer for prices.

Other new equipment worth checking out includes Rogers Drums’ new Supreme Hi Hat. It is higher than most of the hi hats on the market, though it will still fit into a standard trap case. Features include self-aligning spurs that will dig in on uneven floors without any adjustments; an expanded 19-inch leg spread; spring tension adjustment that can be set without using a key; and sure foot action.

One of the major problems faced by most bands when buying equipment is what to do about a sound system. The days when any old borrowed p.a. would do are long since past, and the aware group has discovered that getting the vocal sound out to the audience is a bigger problem than all their other amplifications combined. The problem has been increased since many groups have begun to use the vocal sound system as an amplifier for guitars and percussion as well.

Many beginning groups see an easy way out of this quandary by buying a complete sound system “package” (amp, mixer, speakers and mikes). This isn’t a bad idea; there are some good packages being manufactured by Shure, Yamaha and Peavey. But if you’re working on a limited budget, you’ll find that getting value (the most sound) for your money entails building up your own sound system.

The first thing you should decide is what you’re going to run through the system. If you’re just interested in amplifying vocals you’ll have less to worry about than if you want to mike a bass drum and vocals, for instance. With less than a thousand dollars to spend you should concentrate on the vocal power of any system you buy and wait until you can get more equipment before you amplify anything else.

There are three major entities which you have to deal with in a sound system: the amplifier, the microphones and the speakers. All three are equally important in getting good,. powerful, undistorted sound. On a budget you should cut. corners with the mikes before anything else. You can buy functional microphones for as little as $35 (such as Shure’s Sher-O-Dyne or Electro-Voice’s 631 A) and they will work well, although they won’t give you the frequency response or sensitivity of higher priced mikes.

As for the amplifier, spend your money on power rather than frills. A hundred watt amp that doesn’t have anti-feedback controls or individual tone controls is better than a fifty watt amp that does. This is because amps tend to distort the signal that they’re amplifying as they get closer to the top end of their power rating. A fifty watt amp will distort the signal more as it pumps out, say, forty watts, than a hundred watt amp will distort the same signal when it pumps out forty watts.

Just as amplifier distortion will fuck up your sound system, so will speaker distortion. I’m not a big fan of column speakers for this reason. You need a big, heavy speaker cone that is ready to push out sound when you’re dealing with rock vocals. This means a J.B. Lansing or Altec Lansing speaker (or similar high quality make) that is made to take a certain amount of punishment. More often than not column speakers don’t, have speakers any larger than eight to 12 inches (twelve inches is okay) while a nice 15 inch speaker in an acoustically designed and ported cabinet is much more in keeping with rock vocals. Also, column speakers rarely have separate speakers (for treble sounds), while there is a good deal of treble shrieking through the system when you’re playing. Finally, column speakers are much more difficult to place properly so that sound is dispersed over your audience area. It’s much easier to get a box type speaker off the floor and above the band’s heads than to hang a column speaker in a similar position.

The ideal speaker to use for rock is one of the Altec Lansing Voice of the Theatre speakers which cost from $300 or so on up. They are well worth the investment. i§p^