Hey there,

I love watching the old rock festivals, woodstock, isle of wight ect. I was reading an interesting article at SOS:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec04/articles/iow.htm

The who and other acts (if i remember) sang through one mic per singer. Hendrix had a seperate condenser mic (looks like one) along with the pa mic. I do know the same guy that recorded Hendrix's Royal Albert Hall (Kramer is mixing it now, it should be released) did Hendrix at Isle Of Wight. Guess he didnt want to fool with whatever splitters or whatever they had to get a better sound.

I know now (like in a studio) there are high end mixers with all kinda of channel options and loads of outboard equipment that
are split off from the PA with transformerless splitters ect.

I know Eddie Kramer said they used shure mixers (audio master i think) for woodstock, and isle of wight had the WEM founder
making the PA and he built a mixer (also called audiomaster, the only monitor mix was what came out of the headphone jack &
sent to stage speakers!).

I am just curious if they used any outboard equipment like limiters, compressors (probably didnt have them for live stuff
then).
I wonder if the Who Live At Leeds was recorded without outboard equipment. Love the drum sound on that. I gotta believe
they had limiters or something to get it punchy like that (or they did that in the mix). That was the Pye Mobile and Pye actually built their own equipment, and there is a old pye compressor on ebay, so I am guessing thats probably the case.

Funny how they get great sounds out of a lowly Shure 565/545!

thanks
Jay

That's a good article. Sound On Sound does good work.

I'm glad that Charlie Watkins did not like that Isle of Wight performance of Hendrix. I'm a fan of Hendrix but that performance sort of harkened his end.

Yea. not his best. I like it on the dvd because It really does give you a feeling of being there. As you know of course, hendrix
was way past tired and was just humping to pay for his studio. Townsend said he saw Hendrix backstage and he looked like
death warmed over. No rehersals so Mitch was stiff (but i still loved his playing). I think he got into it a bit though as during machine gun he went into a boogie ( the only one i have heard him play) and on another song, he had cox and mitchell play a riff
after he went over and explained it, so I think he was looking forward to the recordings from the show.
Its been said so much, but its sad he worked himself to death.

Jay