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Such
Sweet Thunder
Charlie Butten and his Earthy Sound System
Rolling Stone, September 2, 1971
By Arnie Passman
Cross Wernher Von Braun and R. Crumb and you get Charlie
Butten, a 30-year-old chain-smoking electronics eccentric
who once made an entire stage into a bass speaker. Charlie,
as unassuming a rock person as you'll find, is on a
trip that is placing Santana, for reasons perhaps beyond
their sheer creative powers, in the vanguard of growing
and refining rock music during the Seventies.
Envisioning an acoustic sound for electronic instruments
and a P. A. system that uses the spectral power distribution
characteristics of music and voice, Charlie has custom
built a $35-40,000 live performance sound system for
Santana. The band can now do things on stage that were
previously available to them only in the recording studio.
For Santana's complex rhythms - and its current popularity
and cutting edge for Chicano music - this means a great
deal. And it may mean as much to frustrated fellow performers.
For one thing, through Charlie's system, bass guitarists
can now use that bottom string in live performance -
and have it heard. The best musical instrument amplification
systems begin reproducing flat at 80 cycles. Charlie's
"earthy" system begins at 40 cycles. In other words,
the breakthrough means an additional octave for bass
players and percussionists in concert.
Charlie, a native of Storrington, Conn., moved to Canaan,
N.Y., at the age of five. There, his best buddies became
Doug Hall and Derek Van Loan, who he later followed
to San Francisco. They came under the spell of Von Braun's
rocketry feats so that during their high school days
the trio built howitzers and such as "The Chatham Cannon
Club," out of the local blacksmith shop. And a flare
for electronics followed right along.
Following graduation, Charlie went to work for Paul's
radio shop in nearby Chatham. Then he put in some time
in Troy with the Audio-Visual Division of the New York
State Department of Education and Q & Q Electronics
Supply. In 1962, through Q & Q, Charlie was hired by
the New York State Department of Architecture to work
on wiring for the Alternate Seat of Government (Subsurface).
This came somewhat after the peak of the bomb shelter
frenzy but it was just that, a four-story establishment
roughly three floors below what is now the State University
in Albany.
After knocking around in odd jobs during 1963-64, Charlie
came to San Francisco in 1965. He got a job, briefly,
with the Fargo Company, which made police bugs of the
classic briefcase variety. Then, he worked for nearly
a year as "a mindless flunky" for Cormac, the communications
system and recording studio on 18th Street.
Late in 1966, Prankster Lou Todd, now of the Hog Farm,
persuaded Dave Rapkin, who owned a string of topless
clubs on Broadway, to take over a club way out on Mission
Street and convert it into the best room imaginable
for rock music;. Charlie was contacted to provide the
sound for the Rock Garden, which opened with the Grateful
Dead and Big Brother and the Holding Company in January
1967. Charlie determined to use the stage to enclose
the speakers - literally build them below the musicians!
"The stage was eight by 16 by three feet high," said
Charlie, smiling puckishly. "And I was building a folded
four-throated 16-cycle exponential horn into it. We
got the bass speaker done, but then Todd left and Rapkin
wouldn't let us go any further. He said the sound was
too muddy, which, of course, it was because there was
nothing to go with it.
"The bass stopped at 100 cycles and the highs didn't
go below 500. And I think some of the musicians complained
that it hurt. So, in about March of ®67 (after appearances
by Buffalo Springfield, Love, and the Electric Chamber
Orchestra with David LaFlamme), the placed went back
to Latin music and Rapkin put the bass speakers into
one of his Broadway joints."
With that prologue to the world of show biz, Charlie's
odyssey really began in August, 1967, when Cream cam
to San Francisco to play at the old Fillmore. Charlie
was working at Don Wehr's Music City, an instrument
and amplifier hospital for rock bands in North Beach.
Holed up in the back repairing Fenders, Charlie was
still surprisingly oblivious to the sounds they produced.
One day, Wehr called Charlie at home and said: "There's
some English group coming into town by the name of Cream.
And they've got amplifiers with them, they're called
Marshalls. Have you ever heard of them?"
"No."
"Well, neither have I," said Wehr. "However, from what
I understand, they're pretty fragile and subject to
breakdown. So, somebody should be down there to convert
them over to American power and check ¹em out as they
come off the plane."
Wehr had been contacted to do this by the Marshall factory.
"Apparently he had a Marshall franchise," said Charlie.
"But he had put it in the very bottom of his drawer
because nobody had ever heard of the Marshalls before.
All he had was one tiny, little pamphlet. Not even a
schematic. So, I had no idea of what a Marshall was.
"We uncrated ¹em at the Fillmore and I took ¹em back
to my place on Texas Street and fixed ¹em. Cream was
quite happy because they were able to play out of them
that night.
"I ended up just about living with those amps for two
weeks. Which was fine, because Cream was paying me a
pretty good price each night. As I said, at the time,
I wasn't really into rock music and I hadn¹t ever really
thought of even being into the field.
"At first, I couldn't believe how loud the music was.
So, I would zoom away into the back room. But I started
to discover I actually liked rock, not quite as loud
as Cream was playing, but I liked it. They asked me
to become their sound man, but I refused because I didn't
want to leave San Francisco and my friends."
That fall, however, a band Charlie lived with called
the C.I.A. decided to go to New York on the promise
of a gig, and Charlie went along. But when they got
there with $60 between them, no job. Fortunately, Cream
was in town and Eric Clapton hired Charlie for the two
weeks they were working the CafÍ Au Go Go.
"Howard Solomon and Barry Imhoff were running the CafÍ
Au Go Go at the time," said Charlie. "And one of them
managed to keep us in the Hotel Albert quite awhile.
I remember Barry cooking everyone a great Thanksgiving
dinner that included the most incredible stuffed mushrooms.
After Cream left, they kept me on and I worked with
Canned Heat, Procol Harum, and the Paupers."
Charlie was not totally aware of the problems of a rock
guitarist at the time. However, the second exposure
to Clapton's work made him realize that Eric's problem
was that he couldn't get enough feedback from his guitar
without leaning up against the speaker cabinets. Said
Charlie:
"This was a tall set of speaker cabinets with a Marshall
on top. And so someone always had to be behind the stack
to stabilize it, because as Eric would push against
it, the stack would move back and then waver forward.
He could picture this huge stack of speakers falling
on Eric."
Finally, Charlie realized that what Clapton needed was
more gain from his amplifier. "Gain" refers to how much
an input signal can be amplified. (That's not the same
as "maximum sound power," which means how loud it can
get before it begins to distort.) So an amplifier can
be very powerful and not have enough gain or be so small
that it drives itself into distortion right away.
"From what I gather," said Charlie, "Jim Marshall at
the time he built the amplifiers had no notion they
were going to be used this way. He had sort of pictured
more like a Chet Atkinsy-type trip. At one point, he
said to Eric: ¹How do you use it?® And Eric said: ¹I
just turn everything all the way up.® Marshall was absolutely
astounded by this."
"So, I used a little pre-amp to increase the amplifier's
sensitivity to the guitar. The maximum level of sound
was not any higher, but its sensitivity to the guitar
was much higher.
"Marshall, in the construction of the amplifier, had
left one-half of a double tube unused. So, I used it
for my pre-amp. One day, I just took the amp apart and
said: ¹Oh look, they left another half of a 12AX7 that
isn't doing anything.® So, I constructed my pre-amp
on that and wired it to one input jack, which I painted
red. When you want feedback, I told Eric, plug into
the red jack."
This achieved the desired feedback and classic Clapton
sound without Eric having to lean up against the speakers.
In fact, Charlie had modified the amp in such a way
that Eric, upon returning to England, asked Marshall
to make him another one like it. They did, said Charlie,
even though they didn't quite understand why Charlie
had done what he had done.
That success attracted the attention of Bill Hanley,
whose rental firm is the largest supplier of sound equipment
for clubs, concerts and festivals in the country. Hanley
took Charlie back to his shop in Boston ("without even
so much as a toothbrush"), where he offered him the
job of chief engineer for Hanley Sound.
"I lived in the shop for two weeks," said Charlie. "And
I slept wherever I could because I was kind of the bat
in the belfry with my late night hours. As a matter
of fact, at one point, Bill's mother fell over me in
the hall. Fell on top of me, I guess; I didn't even
wake up."
Back in San Francisco, Charlie ended up working for
Wehr through most of 1968, fixing amps and doing custom
work, notably for Harvey Mandel.
"That was a lot more complicated because Harvey was
not only interested in the sustaining effect but the
final, resulting tonal qualities," said Charlie. "Part
of the problem is trying to convert what is essentially
a piece of artistic information into concrete, electronic
terms. That's a large part of the gig, many times."
According to Wehr, the sustain unit looked like a super
fuzztone. Charlie's work is acknowledged on the first
Mandel album. "When the notes started to decay, " said
Wehr, "Charlie would add volume or something."
So, with Charlie back, the enterprising Wehr decided
to start his own amplifier company. "We flew to Chicago,"
he said, "for the National Association of Music Merchants
convention to investigate amp companies. Then we flew
to L.A. to visit them - Standell, Fender, Vox Acoustic,
JBL, Altec Lansing.
"When we got back here, I rented a shop down the street
and opened the Wehr Amplifier Company, with Charlie
doing the design. He built about a dozen of them like
the ones Santana has - on the power side, with the large
heat sinks. Charlie really blew me out. He designed
a lot of speaker cabinets, too, the bass reflex ones
we use now. He was the first to do a round-back cabinet.
He said it would increase rigidity in the back panel
and eliminate a lot of distortion. And about six months
later, Ovation came out with a round-back guitar. "He
also made a horn cabinet column, with tenÚinch speakers.
It was incredible. I®m sure it could have handled large
outdoor crowds in sufficient quantity."
At the same time, Charlie came up with a guitar with
its own feedback built into it. "Since it is happening
in the guitar itself, you can even play it acoustically
and still have feedback happening," said Charlie. "You
have to feed the energy, the sound from the pickup,
back into the strings, but control it just enough to
get the strings going. In this particular case, it's
magnetic. Its advantages are that it doesn't have to
be outrageously loud and it had duplicability. It was
one of those interesting curios of things that happen,
but don't quite fully happen."
These experiences intensified how Clapton's creative
problems had gotten into Charlie's blood. So, he split
from Wehr ("He's always got a job here") and started
his own amp shop in an eight-foot wide basement in his
home.
During that time, Hanley was doing a show at the Paladium
in Hollywood and flew Charlie down to help him. Brent
Lewis, a showy conga drummer and law student form Beverly
Hills, was on the bill and, as it turned out, Lewis®
sound problems became the big step in Charlie's amp
improvement evolution.,
"It was a maddening project," said Charlie. "It turned
out to be a lot more heavy duty than I figured it to
be. But this is where I really, really leaned a lot.
"Brent mikes his congas very close for a full, big sound.
His original system used tow big MacIntosh amplifiers
and lots of JBL D140Fs, and it kept running out of power
- running into overload at an outrageously low level
for a pair of Mac 275s. "So I tried other amplifiers,
like a Sunn 2000S, which would normally be a loud amplifier.
But doing Brent's thing, it was just barely loud enough
for a monitor speaker before it began to distort. It
was the same thing with other amplifiers. I could only
get about one-tenth of the power out of them I®d normally
expect.
"As it finally turned out, the big problem - as you
initially hit them, that initial shock is very, very
loud. So, if you turn up the amplifiers, this initial
shock would throw the amps so out of kilter it would
take a split second to recover.
"During that time, it would bork, or sometimes just
plain cough and cut the sound out completely. I had
to do a lot of things to overcome this. It finally turned
out that I came up with the system that I®m now using,
with the horn speakers and three-way cross-over. "Also,
the congas have two totally unrelated, harmonically
different tones. The head develops one tone which changes,
of course, with tightening. But the air volume down
in the drum remains constant. So, I came up with a bass
speaker for the longer, whooshier, bottom sounds and
a mid-range to carry the head. By handling them separately
I was able to give Brent the auditorium volume he had
been unable to get before."
Working out of a Terra Linda studio with financing from
John Herbert of Aspen, Colorado, Lewis was able to keep
Charlie working on his drums during 1969. That year,
the drummer also got into chromatic tympany, or "talking
drums" (also known as "Boobams") - a set of 24 tuned
drums that looks like an organ/vibraharp mating when
set up.
These really basic African drums, which Lewis like to
call "Symphonic percussion," have been developed in
the United States over the past 20 years by jazz musicians
David "Buck" Wheat and Bill Loughborough (now Love),
the latter currently the manager of The Committee in
San Francisco. The pair grew up together in San Antonio,
Texas.
Around the time Santana opened the day at Altamont,
Barry Imhoff, who had come to San Francisco to work
for the Fillmore Corporation, introduced the band to
Charlie. They had heard about Brent Lewis system and
felt that with their heavy percussion emphasis, Charlie
could do something for them.
To satisfy their need for natural, non-contrived musical
reproduction, Charlie spent nine months developing a
new set of music tools - speakers, amps and mixers.
The acquisition in February, 1970, of an ample 4200-square-foot
building in San Francisco's produce and warehouse district
helped, and by June, the band was able to use a portable
Butten Sound system in a concert at the Spectrum in
Philadelphia.
But the major assistance came from a half-dozen Berkeley
high school students. Doug Hall, a teacher at the progressive
Bay High School, asked for volunteers to help build
the cabinets for the system .
During late spring, the Bay High team worked heavily
and happily at Charlie's plant. Working up to 30 hours
straight, the students made money for themselves and
the school as well as learning what it's like to work
together on a real project - the educational justification
for their task.
The system was originally built with the Fillmore West
in mind, but the times Santana appeared there since
acquiring their new system, they played through the
regular Fillmore sound equipment. With rare exception,
Bill Graham did not allow the few individual group systems
in his rooms. And compared to what most concerts are
heard through, his Swanson-designed systems were among
the best in the nation.
But, unfortunately, San Franciscans have yet to hear
Santana play through Charlie's system. (A May concert
at Stanford's Frost Amphitheatre gave 7000 people the
surprise appearance of Santana and the return of percussionist
Jose "Chepito" Areas. Along with them were the scheduled
Stoneground, Tower of Power and Country Weather - all
using the Santana system).
Originally intended to be a portable system for 5000
people, the Butten P.A. actually was used only once
for that small an audience. "We did a show last September
at Stoney Brook on Long Island for maybe 4000 people,"
said Charlie. "Miles Davis was also on the bill." Working
conservatively Charlie said he did not realize the carrying
potential of the system. It has since been used for
18,000 people. Actually the first use of the complete
Butten Sound system was in June, 1970, at the Alternative
Media Project Conference at Goddard College in Vermont.
Brent Lewis and his congas were part of the entertainment.
Meanwhile, since Santana had gone on a European tour
on which they would not be using Charlie's mixers and
speakers, the Butten Sound team brought the Santana
gear up from Philadelphia to go with Lewis® six 300-watt,
35-pound amplifiers.
Last fall, Santana's system had its baptism, using eight
identical amps which Charlie said have proved thoroughly
reliable. As far as the other components, the 16 channel
mixer has a frequency response of 40-15,000 cps, which,
said Charlie, is purposely limited because there is
no acoustic result with a wider range.
The mixer has a dynamic range of 70 decibels, but 120db
at input will pass without distorting or overloading,
said Charlie. This dynamic range makes possible the
reduced limiting that enable the system to electronically
extend acoustic space and permit the performer to fill
it at a higher average level - and with organic clarity.
The key to the overload "resistant" system ("It breaks
up nicely, not noticeably") is a three-way electronic
speaker (high, mid-range and low) cross-over, so that
the sound is crossed over before amplification. This,
said Charlie, solves the problem of inter-modulation.
The four-way, all-horn speakers have an average output
gain of 6-10db, and their 300 watts of electronic power
has 1200 watts of electro acoustic effect. This all-horn
design lowers distortion, said Charlie. Moreover, he
explained, the highly directional horn system maintains
the decibel levels in excess of the conventional formula,
i.e., volume drop at square root of distance.
The amplifiers, aimed at Marshall characteristics, but
totally different because they are solid-state, are
really the end product of nearly four years work. What
Charlie has done is to produce an amp that rounds off
the top of the sound wave rather than clipping it. "It
slows up and stops, but it doesn't abruptly hit a ceiling,"
said Charlie. "Even a gentle amount of rounding makes
the tone infinitely better."
Consequently, this eliminates geometrically multiplied
distortion, rather than screaming "BREAK UP!" (Charlie's
amps also generate second- and third-level harmonics
near the fundamental instead of producing hard, brittle
higher order harmonics which would obscure the fundamental.
The system also makes a voice clearer without really
raising the loudness of the amp and the speaker. A significant
advantage, said Charlie, because of the design of the
system, is that it sets up in about tan hour, as opposed
to the three to four hours most rock bands need. Charlie
also said it is impossible to make wrong cable connections
because of the way the jacks and cables have been designed.
All well and good, but how does it sound?
"It's very difficult to gauge audience response," said
Charlie. "I usually talk to the promoters because they're
aware of how it compares with other systems. Their comments
have ranged from ¹nearly as good as I've heard® to ¹the
best I've heard.® The Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
system (Swanson) has a great reputation."
That system was developed by Bob Sterne, whose outdoor
achievements, including Altamont, have made him a revered
man in sound. When he is not secluded on his farm in
Oregon these days, Sterne, who runs Northwest Sound
in Portland, pretty much limits his road activity to
work for Neil Young.
Another indication of just how good the Santana system
may be is the fact that Charlie began working on one
for Miles Davis. At the Stoney Brook concert, the then
Miles® equipment man dug what he heard form Santana.
Subsequently, Charlie got together with Miles one night
last fall between sets in the Basin Street West dressing
room in San Francisco. Said Charlie:
"He wanted it to be very fast, which to me would be
transient response. He wanted a very quick, fast response;
the feeling of the system was lively. He found it somewhat
difficult to remember fully what he heard at Stoney
Brook. He remembered that it was good. Somehow or other
I bridged that gap.
"At first, he didn't know whether he wanted his own
P.A. system or not. And he talked to the other guys.
One fella pointed out he was renting them for so much
a night, and then Miles went out. Then the other fella
went out and came back, and later on Miles came back
and said: ¹Go ahead and start it.®
"Right now, it's somewhere between Miles and all his
managers who disappear. From the best I can learn at
this point, Miles said yes, but his managers, and there's
a whole thing between managers here and managers on
the East coast 'I®m not doing anything until his managers
get it together."
Currently, Butten Sound is being financed by John Herbert,
who has brought Brent Lewis back to Colorado where he
is gigging in and around Denver and in Rocky Mountain
ski resorts. Charlie is presently making spare parts
for Lewis® system, the main recent ones being a crossover
and a patch panel for connecting parts. Charlie said
Lewis and Herbert are very pleased with the development
of the chromatic drums.
As for Santana, Charlie is currently cutting their bass
and mid-range speakers in half and fitting them with
high-powered drivers and custom-build cabinets. "Eight
little speakers are easier to move than four," said
Charlie. "And it also gives them a power increase since
I®m building three high-powered amplifiers to go along
with a new 24-channel mixer."
Another sound system is taking shape, most likely for
rental purposes. According to Dick Rosenblatt, who had
the color organ operation, Kineticolor, that brought
Charlie back to San Francisco three-an-a-half years
ago, speakers have been built for a second system. He
was going to begin working on building the amps until
he became the manager of the Loading Zone.
"The mixer will come later," said Rosenblatt, who was
instrumental in acquiring Butten Sound's current plant
and did publicity for the company through most of 1970.
"Most likely, it will be 20-channel stereophonic. Santana's
system is monaural because that's what they wanted.
But the use of stereo over mono P.A. systems is a rather
controversial subject.
"In a mono system, the sound is heard similarly as well
everywhere in a room. In a stereo one, like listening
in your living room, the changes in balance are more
noticeable - unless you are pretty much centrally located.
But, in either case, the sound, as is the trouble in
most halls, isn't heard at its optimum, right in front
of the stage. About 20 or 30 feet back is best.
"Actually, in Charlie's system, although it has its
limits, further back in a good-sized room, 80-100 feet,
is better, particularly for the mid-range. That equation
lessens in larger halls and outdoors. The point is,
loudest and closest isn't necessarily best."
A needed and welcome financial boon to Butten and his
people took place this summer. What looks like a long-term
rental of a small JBL monitor speaker system was made
to San Francisco's Lone Mountain College for their highly
successful production of the rock opera Tommy. Jack
Davis of the Lone Mountain drama department heard the
system during its late spring residence at Friends and
Relations Hall, the old Family Dog on the beach.
Charlie is not alone in his experiments. Attempts to
improve and advance sound systems for rock bands are
going on and being presented little by little. Pink
Floyd's stereophonic setup has received lots of attention
lately, and the Grateful Dead have been experimenting
for years.
As Dick Rosenblatt pointed out, it's amazing how many
people believe that a group's sound is controlled by
the musicians on stage playing with their dials. The
men behind the scenes are responsible in many ways for
what you hear, and state-of-the-art "techies" like Charlie
Butten are just coming into their own as true artists.
If you want to hear how good a job they're doing, just
listen, as they do initially and a lot, to the drums.
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