Jeff Booth
There was an incident in the 1980s at LG. ‘The Late Show’ had (I think it was) the Stone Roses. During rehearsal they were OK (sound level wise) but for the (live) TX they turned the wick up resulting in the sound level meters killing the power to the stage amps.
John Hays
I was the SA1 in the studio that day and clearly remember explaining to the group how the noise limiter worked, emphasising that if their volume became so great that the traffic lights on the limiter changed to red, their output would be cut.I made sure the limiter was placed directly in their eye line, and I think they quite deliberately increased their volume to trip the red light, thus cutting the power. At this distance in time I can’t remember whether we fell off the air– I thought we did but I may be wrong.
John Howell (Hibou)
The device that killed the power was the "Aims Minim".
John Barlow
The Aims Minim came complete with an Omni mic which was supposed to be placed in a position that reflected the closest that anyone would find themselves to the band’s PA. A set of "Traffic Lights" indicated the SPL at the mic’s position and although I cannot recall the designated levels "Green" was OK, "Amber" was loud and "Red" was too loud. In the event that the "Red" was lit for more than 5(?) seconds the mains trip was activated removing power from the band which could not be re-activated for several minutes.
The major problem with this was that it worked! Senior Management, at that time, was horrified to think that this might happen during live TXs and I cannot recall it ever being deployed in anger but I could be wrong.
One drawback was that, given the band could see the Traffic Lights, they tended to increase the volume so as to tickle the Red for a couple of seconds and then repeat the exercise, which probably meant that the overall accumulated volume was higher than it might have been! No winning really.
Head of Film Sound (Roger Turner) refused to accept the use of any limitation of sound levels as his view was that his Sound staff were professionals and were more aware of the dangers than anyone else.
Did we experiment with padded cans? I seem to think so.
Floor staff trying to listen to Talkback had the double problem of direct exposure to high sound levels from the PA system combined with spill from the Gallery monitors into the talkback mic. Staff tracking dollies had the additional spill into the Cameraman’s TB Mic. We did issue "Ampliguard/Amplivox" headsets and even tried military headsets with throat mics as issued to Tank Crews but all to little avail.
The loudest performance in my memory was OGWT in Pres B with Johnny Winter & Darren Oates. Staff in Pres A asked for a break in our rehearsals so that the Weather could be transmitted without the leakage!
Dave Wagner
I remember working on an "In Concert" in TVTheatre with George Duke and Stanley Clarke during the Aims Minim era. Stanley came on stage to tune his Bass which was so loud that after just a couple of notes the Aims tripped. I have no recollection of what happened afterwards.
Bill Jenkin
I’m sure they did it deliberately, they got a huge amount of publicity out of it so it.
The programme did stay on air: here is the YouTube link http://youtu.be/HDRz3H30NmY.
Geoff Fletcher
Loudest I ever endured was Deep Purple in Pres B on “Colour Me Pop”. Mike Barrett, Bryn Edwards and I were on cameras that night. Cameras were those Peto Scott (Phillips ) things with the yellow zoom warning coxcomb indicators for boom ops on top. Like working in a broom cupboard!
