A2: The Grateful Dead's Meyer Sound VX1 Master Stereo Equalizer

 

Artifact #2.  The Grateful Dead's master stereo equalizer (serial #VX1-H910041...which makes it likely it's the 41st EQ manufactured) for front of house sound at their 1990's gigs (from 9/91 on).  This is Dan Healy's territory.  It's the Meyer Sound VX-1 Program EQ...the top of the line mastering-quality EQ made by Meyer just across the bay in Berkeley, CA.  It's been 22 years since this EQ was built and sent to the Dead while they were on tour, and Meyer Labs is still manufacturing the VX-1 today.  Wow. If that doesn't show you how well these were designed...mmm, analog sweetness. OK, now I know you're asking this, but where in the heck did I get this gem....right?

Well, this is one of those amazing weird little things that you just have to shake your head at.  As most of you know, one of the great Grateful Dead artifact incidents of all time was when some savvy Deadheads got wind that Betty Cantor-Jackson's storage facility was long overdue to have it's bill paid.  It was so overdue that the entire storage locker got auctioned off to...you guessed it...  some savvy Deadfreaks who pooled there $$$ together and won the winning bid for the locker contents.  Thus, today, we have pristine digital versions of so many great Betty Boards (like 5/8/77!). What a haul that box of tapes was (and the Dead turned down the option to bail out Betty and/or buy the contents for their own vault...tsk tsk, naughty Dead!).

Fast forward a few years / decades and I found myself in a similar situation....2 times in fact!  The first was a haul from a unknown roadie (Robbie Taylor?) who sold the majority of his Dead gear to a Russian studio musician north of San Francisco after Jerry died.  The Russian went down to the storage locker and got the entire haul: Meyer bass cabs from Phil, McIntosh tube amps from the 60's, McIntosh solid state amps from the 70's, Hard Trucker protoype cabinets, Alembic gear...and on an on. What a dream! I was lucky enough to get a good chunk of this sale, and will feature some of that gear in future posts.

The 2nd haul was via a famous custom-amp maker, Jason Moore, of MooreSound fame (check out his amps: http://www.mooresound.net/).  Jason put up this VX-1 on ebay a few years back, and I was intrigued when he said it was owned by the Dead, so I gave him a ring.  We hit it off right away, and by the end of the call I was STUNNED to find out that Jason didn't just have the Dead's old master EQ, but he had stumbled on and now owned the entire Bill "Kidd" Candelario storage locker.  Say What?  Turns out Jason had a family friend who owned a storage facility that had a locker that was so overdue on payments that they now become the owner of the contents. Whoa! Deja Vu!

Jason Moore and Kidd Candelario at Kidd's storage locker clean-out (copyright Jason Moore)

They called Jason when they saw that the contents had audio gear in it (figuring he might want it), so Jason came up from San Diego to the Bay Area and went to check out the locker.  Guess who was there to show him what was what?  That's right, Kidd.  So Kidd ends up giving Jason a private tour of all the audio gems he had amassed over the years. While Jason isn't a Deadhead, he did realize that this was special gear, so when he heard Dark Star Palace was trying to preserve as much of this old gear as possible, he was ready and willing to help me make it happen.  Thanks to Jason's help, I was able to purchase several items from this amazing Kidd collection, from the Dead's old 60's-70's mic locker (6 EV and Sennheiser mics) to various EQs (Meyer Sound, White Instruments).

This unit was signed off by Meyer, with complete audio spectrum scans, on 9/9/91.  It was shipped directly to the Grateful Dead (as can seen on the shipping label on the box) while they were staying at the Dumont Plaza Hotel in NYC.  This means that Healy could have added this EQ to the Dead's sound system for the remaining run of shows at Madison Square Garden (which started on 9/8) through 9/18/91 and continued to use it throughout the '90's and the Dead's final touring days.

Dark Star Palace currently has this EQ hooked up into our 24-track recording studio setup, where it sits happily alongside API, EMI, Chandler, Siemens and other classic EQs.  We have toyed with doing a Dark Star Palace series of remastered Dead shows through the Dead's old gear, but that will have to wait until another day.  In the meantime, we hope you have dug Artifact #2!  Onwards to #3.........

Until next time at Dark Star Palace.....

A1: Dark Star RSD LP (Paris '72)

 

Artifact #1.  Where to start?  Well, this little guy was just born today, so as it's the birthday of the first LP called "Dark Star" by the Grateful Dead, we have our first artifact.  I headed down to Amoeba in SF as early as possible as I figured the line was going to be long.  It was already in the high 70's when I got in line, and just a gorgeous day in San Francisco..and whoa..Record Store Day 2012 is absolutely out of hand!  I got there at 10:10AM and the line was already 1/2 way around the block...several hundred folks in line in front of me.  In 10 more minutes, it was closing the loop on the entire block.  I figured I had little chance at all to get one of the 4200 copies of this one-day only gem as each mom and pop record store was only getting a certain handful.  But, I was feeling my mojo, as I was able to get the 2nd to last copy by the time I got in.  Not to mention some amazing gems from Tinariwen, Pete Townsend, Bill Evans, Little Richard, Skip James, Lee "Scratch" Perry, Peter Tosh, Miles Davis...I mean, wow.  Good stuff.  Lots of colored vinyl.  Hope it was all analog sourced....

The Dark Star LP is 180 grams of nice inky-black vinyl.  The cover is in the '72 box set theme art vein with a Parisian Notre Dame gargoyle with a wreath of roses giving a distant Dark-Star-Crashing the tongue.  Not Bad.  The back is an simple circle/white Dark Star motif.  The inner label is classic Warner's 1970's green label.  It looked good. Felt good. Played good.  Why has it taken this band almost 50 years to come out with a LP like this?  1 song, 2 sides, a lot of weirdness.  Good mix overall (better than this weird Live Dead remix on Moble Fidelity..more on that later.) Hope you all can track down one of the 4200 copies. How come these weren't numbered? Don't pull a "limited" Beatles Mono box on us. Anyway, happy 4/20 +1.

Until next time at Dark Star Palace....